LONG night of winemaking!

[grapeman]

That sounds like a winner to me! I'll have to wait a little while for the "nip" to get a little bigger. I may try one batch with fresh leaves and one with dried. That's what we would use for the tea. Don't see why the tea wouldn't work as the base. When it's done I'll need to remember where my inspiration came from. When you say you want a bottle is that 375,750,1500 ml, or gallon?

Thanks

 

[linda0210]

My general herb recipe (for 1 gallon) would be:
<ul>
[*]2 quarts of loosely packed fresh catnip leaves
[*]2 pounds sugar (so that SG is 1.080 or so)
[*]water to 1 gallon
[*]2 tsp acid blend
[*]1 tsp pectic enzyme
[*]1 tsp nutrient
[*]1 tsp energizer
[*]1 packet of yeast[/list]


Proceed as normal - i.e. boil the water, pour over leaves.
Wait til it cools, add pectic enzyme. Let it sit overnight, add
the rest. Transfer to glass at about 1.040. Rack when
there's about a half an inch of sediment, after 2 or 3 rackings, add a
can of white grape concentrate. Sweeten to taste, don't forget to
stabilize and campden and so on.

MedPretzel



When you add the concentrate back in , does it start fermentating again?

 

[MedPretzel]

No.....


That's why it should be stabilized before you add it. At least that's how I do it. It gives you a slightly sweet wine, which, for most herb wines, is an almost neededthing.


&amp; Yes......


if you decide to add the concentrate at the beginning, you can most certainly have fermentation. It just wouldn't give a sweetness to the end result. If you do not stabilize, you would get refermentation as well.

 

[MedPretzel]

Update on some wines:





Racked the apple again... Cleared up okay using sparkelloid.


Racked the plum again... Still looks "eh..."





Had a lot of foaming on them both, so I splashed, and splashed and splashed (some got on the floor.

) but looking better.

 

[linda0210]

No.....


That's why it should be stabilized before you add it. At least
that's how I do it. It gives you a slightly sweet wine, which,
for most herb wines, is an almost neededthing.


&amp; Yes......


if you decide to add the concentrate at the beginning, you can most
certainly have fermentation. It just wouldn't give a sweetness to
the end result. If you do not stabilize, you would get
refermentation as well.

so stabilize it first, wait and then add the juice and stabilize again?

 

[paubin]

Linda, once you stabilize your wine you dont have to stabilize again.
Although its a good idea to continue to let the wine bulk age under an
airlock for a while just in case fermentation does start up again which
is pretty unlikely.

 

[MedPretzel]

Well, I've been in the clearing phase of my wines... still.





They're all set at 0.990, and just not clearing, it seems. The chickweed and sage are pretty clear, but still throwing a fine dust of sediment. I will have to do some racking soon, but don't know when.


The hibiscus-clovertop wine is coming along nicely. The plum tasted thin to me, as did the sage wine. The juniper is nice, But I'll have to sweeten it up majorly before bottling. I'm drinking one from 2004, and it's very sweet, but good.


My caribbean port is sort of stuck at 1.030, but I think this is normal. Or? I've never made port before, so it might be something not quite right.





The dandelion wine just looks gross. Yech!


Well, I'll try to post some pictures soon. Sorry if I've been slacking a little.

 

[Dean]

Martina, from my experience, ports typically finish between 1.030 and 1.020 of residual sugar, so I think your port will be just fine! I also find that the sweeter the port, the earlier you can drink it! However, the sweeter the port, the better it gets over time as well!

 

[OldWino1]

Yall are out there with these types of wine. I am so boring with
the kit grape wine. Well at least it tastes great also.

 

[MedPretzel]

Here's a picture. After the picture, I topped up the beer, exchanged the red stuff out of the airlocks, and finished the wine.

Edited by: MedPretzel

 

[PolishWineP]

Mmmmmm.....

 

[MedPretzel]

Well, I might be bottling the applewine tonight.

I will try to get some pictures posted if I can.

 

[MedPretzel]

Well, I haven't been doing too much wine per se.... But I thought I'd throw you out a couple of pictures of what's been happening to me the last few days.


I'm Martina, Master of the Mold and Mildew.

As some of you may know, I have an 80 year old house with an old coal cellar. I have my winemaking laboratory there, and much to my dismay, I found a whole lot of animals living down there which weren't yeast and were not cats.

So, believe it or not, I have spent 3 solid days "demoldifying" my basement, andtrying to make it easier to clean for next year's round of humidity.




This is the new setup.

I got rid of all the cardboard wine boxes (well, almost all of them), and put them into the 18-gallon sterilite containers you see on the wall. Although I found a ton of mildew on everything around my wine-lab, there was nothing, nada, zilch in those containers. I bought 8 more of them at Target (were on sale for 3.99), and put all my wine and empty bottles in them.


This is what I got rid of.

So, yes and no, I haven't been doing much wine lately, but I've been down in the wine-lab for a good part of the week. I just hope that it will be done for at least this year. We've been having such ... humid and moist weather (more rain than usual - a couple of towns over had flooding last week), that it's been a real bear to deal with.


I put all my wine-supplies in a plastic see-thru container as well. 12 quart-see-through kind. I now just have to flip open the lid and everything is in one spot. The empty primaries are hanging from the ceiling with bicycle hooks. The dehumidifier is now running 6 hours a day, as opposed to 4.


Here's another view:

Yes, and those are still the kitty-litter pails. One has holes drilled in the bottom and is now functioning as a "carboy-drainer-holder" and one has all my empty and fileld beer bottles.


For the curious: an 18 gallon container holds approximately 10 gallons worth of wine. They weigh about 65-70 pounds when full with wine bottles, so it's still pretty easy to lift, pull away from the wall, etc. I have them now set up about 3 inches away from the wall, and about 6-7 inches apart. No more than 1 on top of another, because the walls of the lowest one can't take the weight. But this way, they seem to be fine. And trust me, it seems to be effective against mildew.






Oh yes, I bottled my apple wine tonight. I tipped one of the bottles over and it ran all over the wine area, so it's triple clean there now.

Again. So, that explains why there are no pictures of the bottling process. I got sick and tired of that damn mop.

 

[Waldo]

Martina, do you keep any fans running in the area. One of those on the stand that rotates would help a bunch in keeping trh mildew down. Another thing that would really help if you felt really industrious would be to paint the walls with Kilz. Having an area that largeto mewould be worth the struggle with mold/mildew

 

[masta]

Wow that was a lot of work and I know what it is like to get mold all over everything since it happened to me a few years ago in my fermentation area. This year has really been tough here in the NE since we have had lots of rain and many hot and humid days also.


I had to switch to an air conditioner in the basement after I built the wine cellar since the cooling unitfor the cellar vents into the basement. I must keep the temp down below 80 degrees in the basement so the cooling unit in the wine cellar will work properly. The dehumidifier works great to remove moisture from the air but really generates a lot of heat.


Yesterday we wiped down all the wood surfaces in the fermentation room with a chlorine based cleaner to remove a slight film of mold that had started.

 

[MedPretzel]

Martina, do you keep any fans running in the area. One of those on the stand that rotates would help a bunch in keeping trh mildew down. Another thing that would really help if you felt really industrious would be to paint the walls with Kilz. Having an area that largeto mewould be worth the struggle with mold/mildew

Yes, we have a couple of fans going down there constantly, the dehumidifier going (now) 6 hours a day, and we painted the walls with Kilz before we put the off-white paint on it.


But, like I said, it's an old coal cellar. I think I'm just going to have to accept that fact, make cleanup as easy as possible for next year, and hope that we have a somewhat drier summer.

Martina

 

[Dean]

Wow, I resolve to no longer complain about humidity on the west coast anymore! I thought we had mold problems here with 6 months of rain, but it's nowhere near what you east coasters and mid-westers have to go through. Eep!

 

[NorthernWinos]

Martina...is there a reason you only run your dehumidifier only 6 hours a day????We run ours 24/7, it seems it runs a lot at first when we first set it up, but then once it gets caught up on some of the moisture it runs less.
We have a walkout basement and haven't had any rain to speak of, [terribly dry here]but think it gets the moisture just out of the humid air. I have it sitting over a floor drain and just take the drip pan out and it drips into the floor drain. Had another unit that had a place in the drip pan you could run a piece of garden hose to a floor drain that worked good too.
Dehumidifiers really take the moisture out of a moist area....but think you should maybe run it more, would mean more emptying the pan, but worth it...

[]

 

[Wade E]

Wow, thats quite a wine set up there and alot of wine in carboys. Impressed!

 

[MedPretzel]

Martina...is there a reason you only run your dehumidifier only 6 hours a day????We run ours 24/7, it seems it runs a lot at first when we first set it up, but then once it gets caught up on some of the moisture it runs less.
We have a walkout basement and haven't had any rain to speak of, [terribly dry here]but think it gets the moisture just out of the humid air. I have it sitting over a floor drain and just take the drip pan out and it drips into the floor drain. Had another unit that had a place in the drip pan you could run a piece of garden hose to a floor drain that worked good too.
Dehumidifiers really take the moisture out of a moist area....but think you should maybe run it more, would mean more emptying the pan, but worth it...

Yes, well, the reason I run it only 6 hours a day because of electric costs. But, I think I'm going to run it more often...


I let my dehumidifier also drain right down the drain. It's very helpful not to have to constantly think about it.


Thanks for the compliments - I have entered about 10 wines into our county fair again this year. Hopefully I'll be doing better than last year.