What's in your glass tonight?

[Boatboy24]

A "Ward 8"

 

[Hazelemere]

Framboise 2024

15 lbs organic frozen raspberries including Meeker and Lamberhurst
6 lbs cane sugar
3 US gallons of water
raised SG to 1.085 with cane sugar after the raspberries thawed and the after the water as added.
71B yeast
pressed at SG 1.000 to remove seeds
added 2 750 mL bottles of Chambord liqueur (French black raspberry)
added dextrose (corn sugar) to SG 1.006
raised total potassium metabisulphite from 2/8 tsp to 3/8 tsp total i.e. ~25 to 30 ppm free sulphite
addded sorbate and put into my cooler to bottle around Easter 2025

Comments (pre sorbate and 1/8th tsp sulphite addition at SG 1.006):

Appearance: clear after 4 weeks. Ferment is done.

Smell - very fragrant, very slight stink off yeast sediment

Tannin - good

Acid - slightly high but ok for now. It will drop over time e.g. 6 months+. If it doesn't I can always sweeten it a bit more e.g. SG 1.009.

Flavour - this should be very good in 1 to 2 years. I'll leave it my cooler for 6 months before I taste it again. I should get 26.5 regular bottles. 71B seems to be a go to yeast for raspberries.

 

[Hazelemere]

Cyser Kir 2023

This is about 90% Russet Cyser 2023 with 10% Creme de Cassis (French black currant liqueur)

Appearance - clear rose

Smell - really good smell, very interesting. The Cassis improves it a lot.

Tannin - good

Acid - good

Flavour - this is a really good way to drink a cyser. I'd drink this in the summer on ice as a cocktail. A really tasty surprise. I'll keep creme de cassis in the house just so I can make this. When I was younger my wife and I used to drink Dubonnet. This IMHO is better. My wife tasted this and really likes it. Scored it 8.5/10. What a pleasant surprise!

I'm tasting this today while I'm roasting a Canadian Thanksgiving turkey. Black currant liqueur with apple melomel (cyser) is sensational. Making this again is a no-brainer! The aftertaste is fantastic!

 

[tullamore]

a little something to unwind with
root beer flavour

 

[Christopher Anderson]

What's in my glass? Homemade hooch. SWILL. Actually a combo: Australian Shiraz, Lenor (homegrown black Spanish), plus some CS from Lodi. Left overs from various ferments. Combined together and oaked for 5+months. Actually quite surprisingly good.

 

[Ohio Bob]

What's in my glass? Homemade hooch. SWILL. Actually a combo: Australian Shiraz, Lenor (homegrown black Spanish), plus some CS from Lodi. Left overs from various ferments. Combined together and oaked for 5+months. Actually quite surprisingly good.

Behold the power of blending!

 

[Hazelemere]

retaste:

Appearance - clear yellow gold

Smell - honey smell is dominant, complex interesting nose:

Tannin - good

Acid - good

Flavour - intense cyser. very pleasant. I'll make some more this year, in about 2 weeks, with D47 yeast with and without homegrown grape juice i.e. some as Cyser Pyment 2024.

Cyser 2023

retaste:

Appearance - clear yellow gold, very slightly petillant

Smell - honey smell is dominant, complex interesting nose:

Tannin - good from the russet apples

Acid - good

Flavour - intense cyser. very pleasant. I've made this year's cyser from homegrown Cox apples (for the first time ever) plus unpasteurized blueberry blossom honey plus a blend of 4 homegrown white wine grape varieties to make a Cyser Pyment, and then used the russets with my son in law's Okanagan Macintosh apples to make an apple wine. He made a Macintosh cyser with the same honey that I used.

 

[Hazelemere]

retaste (I have 6 left after this):

retaste:

Petite Pinnacle 2021, 2023

Here are my comments on this blend in a glass from my cooler:

Appearance - inky purple

Smell - good rich nose - black licorice, prunes, cocoa, plums, cigar box, tar

Tannin - good

Acid - good

Flavour - intense, rich. the Cab improves the Petite Sirah by giving it more balance (lower alcohol and higher acid). This is my wife's primo red. I'll age it for her so she can drink it with a really good steak. She'll have it today with a really tasty broiled prime rib steak, with garlic mashed home-grown organic potatoes and garlic with fresh organic homegrown pole wax beans and a really tasty organic blackberry apple crumble with vanilla or chocolate ice cream. I mention organic all of the time because trust me it makes a real difference e.g. no glyphosate (Round-up) in your gut, no synthetic fungicides in your stomach. I know I could kill all of the wasps and hornets in my vineyard with synthetic insecticides but I'd rather trap them simultaneously with 3 different traps 1) strawberry jam jars 2) yellow jacket pheromones 3) W-H-Y traps. I'll cull damaged grapes from wasps and/or powdery mildew by hand before I crush and press without any remorse. i.e. I'll joyfully get what I get!

retaste (I have 4 left after this):

Petite Pinnacle 2021, 2023

Here are my comments on this blend:

Appearance - inky purple

Smell - good rich nose - black licorice, prunes, cocoa, plums, cigar box, tar

Tannin - good

Acid - good

Flavour - intense, rich. the Cab improves the Petite Sirah by giving it more balance (lower alcohol and higher acid). This is my wife's primo red. I'll try to keep my mitts out of the last 4. It needs to air to drop tannin.

After 24 hours aeration in the bottle:

Tannin - good

Flavour - this is better aerated

 

[cmason1957]

This summer when Joyce (my spouse) and I visited the local brewery near the lake we go to, in Minnesota, we tried a beverage they made called Bloody Pickled Wizard. It is a beer with pickles added that when they serve it, they add Bloody Mary Mix to. Amazingly good. Me being the inquisitive type person that I am asked how they made the pickled beer. It's a simple cream ale with a small amount of pickle juice and pickles added post fermentation.

Me being a person who knows how to be beer, had to try it. Today was test drink day. Joyce's comment, you nailed it. This tastes exactly like what we had this summer. I am almost impressed by this.

 

[Hazelemere]

Cyser Kir 2023

This is about 90% Russet Cyser 2023 with 10% Creme de Cassis (French black currant liqueur)

Appearance - clear rose

Smell - really good smell, very interesting. The Cassis improves it a lot.

Tannin - good

Acid - good

Flavour - this is a really good way to drink a cyser. I'd drink this in the summer on ice as a cocktail. A really tasty surprise. I'll keep creme de cassis in the house just so I can make this. When I was younger my wife and I used to drink Dubonnet. This IMHO is better. My wife tasted this and really likes it. Scored it 8.5/10. What a pleasant surprise!

I'm tasting this today while I'm roasting a Canadian Thanksgiving turkey. Black currant liqueur with apple melomel (cyser) is sensational. Making this again is a no-brainer! The aftertaste is fantastic!

retaste:

This is delicious! I'm going to try Cassis with some of my apple wine as Russet Macintosh Kir 2024. I bought 2 Cassis at my liquor store and one of the personnel suggested that I try it with white wine at 10/90 ratio. Right on! What a revelation!