fruit progress notes
I made another batch of peach leather, this time not as a side project to canning peaches. Yield: one big mesh orange bag of windfalls makes five trays of peach leather. Remember to line the trays with the drying mesh and the parchment. The mesh orange bag is for selling ten pounds of oranges, but peaches are much denser than oranges because of their respective peels. Connie still has too many peaches and I don't know if she wants me to make them into things. She could do peach wine, I suppose. I'm not going to. Anyway, lots and lots of them are windfalls, only really good for leather and sauce and stuff.
I racked the wine on Monday. This was eight days after putting it in secondary. It tasted, Frank said, "like Smirnoff ice." That is, it was sweet sweet, and kind of harsh tasting, but probably not very alcoholic. It was a raspberry-magenta color, and less murky than before, because it had left a pink smear on the bottom of the carboy (and the extra-wine jug, which is also fitted with an airlock and so therefore is getting almost the same experience as the carboy), but it is still opaque. I guess it must have some translucency because it looks less murky than before. It's rapidly fizzing yet. The nice lady at "Portable Potables" says we should let it get as alcoholic as we want it to be, and then kill the yeast with Campden tablets and adjust the sweetness. I like sweet wines more than I used to, but we'll see.
Emma's Jason's mother has too many Asian pears and I don't like the recipes for them I find online, but they make nice tasting juice. My too many apples are still coming online. I still havde some thinking to do. I think I may take Robyn's too many Asian pears and my too many apples and, surprise, make wine of them. Since I won't make cider. I do have another carboy so I can handle another five gallons of juice.
There are too many grapes coming along but not enough, and not consistently enough, to manage anything spectacular. I'm thinking odd bunches of raisins, maybe. No, I can't just eat them. There are too many. We will also have too manypomegranates this year and I really don't know. The pomegranate liqueur was good but we just aren't big liqueur drinkers.
Those are my fruit progress notes for September 5, 2007.
Also: I have pruned the plum tree way down. I have done almost half the work of pruning the apricot tree way down, including removing the stump of the diseased branch. I have initiated work on the apple tree, thinking that I'd really like to borrow a guy with a chainsaw because I have to remove some large stuff. The almond trees are going to be a big deal again. I'm planning a big attack on the pomegranate after the fruit is done, but I can do all that myself because the pomegranate is all small limbs except for a couple which are close to the ground. I need a new limb saw: Ted says the old one is too dull, and I don't think we can afford to have it sharpened (they have complicated teeth). Also the grape needs severe discipline, and a real arbor, not the haywired one of plastic piping and twine. I also pruned both lemons.
And the lemons need feeding.
I racked the wine on Monday. This was eight days after putting it in secondary. It tasted, Frank said, "like Smirnoff ice." That is, it was sweet sweet, and kind of harsh tasting, but probably not very alcoholic. It was a raspberry-magenta color, and less murky than before, because it had left a pink smear on the bottom of the carboy (and the extra-wine jug, which is also fitted with an airlock and so therefore is getting almost the same experience as the carboy), but it is still opaque. I guess it must have some translucency because it looks less murky than before. It's rapidly fizzing yet. The nice lady at "Portable Potables" says we should let it get as alcoholic as we want it to be, and then kill the yeast with Campden tablets and adjust the sweetness. I like sweet wines more than I used to, but we'll see.
Emma's Jason's mother has too many Asian pears and I don't like the recipes for them I find online, but they make nice tasting juice. My too many apples are still coming online. I still havde some thinking to do. I think I may take Robyn's too many Asian pears and my too many apples and, surprise, make wine of them. Since I won't make cider. I do have another carboy so I can handle another five gallons of juice.
There are too many grapes coming along but not enough, and not consistently enough, to manage anything spectacular. I'm thinking odd bunches of raisins, maybe. No, I can't just eat them. There are too many. We will also have too manypomegranates this year and I really don't know. The pomegranate liqueur was good but we just aren't big liqueur drinkers.
Those are my fruit progress notes for September 5, 2007.
Also: I have pruned the plum tree way down. I have done almost half the work of pruning the apricot tree way down, including removing the stump of the diseased branch. I have initiated work on the apple tree, thinking that I'd really like to borrow a guy with a chainsaw because I have to remove some large stuff. The almond trees are going to be a big deal again. I'm planning a big attack on the pomegranate after the fruit is done, but I can do all that myself because the pomegranate is all small limbs except for a couple which are close to the ground. I need a new limb saw: Ted says the old one is too dull, and I don't think we can afford to have it sharpened (they have complicated teeth). Also the grape needs severe discipline, and a real arbor, not the haywired one of plastic piping and twine. I also pruned both lemons.
And the lemons need feeding.