Wine notes
Last year's wine was made from slightly underripe plums and it will have to age for a couple-few years before it can really be drunk.
This year's wine is two very small batches because I picked a bucket of plums and let it sit for a couple of days before I picked the other bucket and I meant to process them together -- but the first bucket had decided to go ahead and start fermenting with wild yeasts and it tasted pretty good for that particular stage (that is to say, it did not taste good in the sense that you would actually drink it, it just tasted promising). So I have them in separate primary fermenters (foodgrade plastic buckets), with montrachet yeast in the other bucket. If the wild bucket stops fermenting, I can either buy another packet of yeast or combine the two buckets, depending on what seems right at the time. At the moment I wouldn't combine them as they taste quite different (both pretty good). The montrachet bucket has a lighter, oranger color, and the wild bucket has a deeper, more maroon color. They taste and smell different, but they both taste very sweet and full at this stage (where not much alcohol has developed).
I bought a hydrometer -- I don't know why I didn't before, it was only six dollars! I thought they were more like thirty, so I was dragging my feet. The way it works is that you measure the specific gravity before you start, and then when you finish, and by doing some easy math, you calculate the alcohol by volume. Otherwise, you don't know how strong your wine is without a laboratory.
Speaking of which, yesterday I opened a bottle of my 2007 "good effort" wine. That's the wine we took to River Run the last summer the nice fellow was alive and the winemaker said it was a good effort, which pleased me as being real praise from a winemaker -- not the elaborate praise you might shower on a person who you have no expectations for. Anyway, I thought it might have gone off because I didn';t store it well, but it was actually a bit better than I remembered, which is a point in the school of thought that says plum wine needs a lot of aging in general (I have seen opposing opinions online: I am now firmly in the pro-aging school). And it was pretty strong, too. We drank little sips, but I drank a few little sips, enough to account for a small glassful, and I was totally useless the rest of the day. I don't drink much, obviously, and I have always been a bit of a lightweight, but not to the point of going to bead at three in the afternoon and not really getting up till morning. Not having measured the specific gravity of that wine when it was on the must, I can't tell you how strong it really is, but it tastes like brandy.
And that leads me to another point. I have long wanted to make brandy. Ted had made a still at one point, but I don't know what happened to the pieces of it and I would be a bit scared of it now as the chamber was one of those bulbous glass laboratory vells. The Chinese and the Italians both make small pot stills (stainless steel and copper respectively) for less than two hundred dollars, but considering I'd make at the maximum a quart of brandy a year, this is definitely not a cost-cutting measure. So I don't know. Making one myself from odds and ends the way that people on the homebrew forums do looks equally expensive, especially since it entails welding!
edit: this year's plums are a bit overripe. I think that's a good thing in a plum wine.
Finally, apparently rhubarb wine is a thing. And apparently a potentially good thing, though you have to deal with excess acidity (not difficult, you use chalk). This is an interesting proposition to me because I have an ambitious little rhubarb patch which would like to remind us that the Triffids also were plants and were capable of taking over the world in a day or two. "Not that we're threatening you all, or anything," they say. "But look at our magnificent leaves, are they not big enough to clothe small children? And our mighty green stalks! We laugh at your cutting knife! We will have more and more of our shining green cohort every day!"
Yes, they are green, not red. Because I knew nothing nothing about rhubarb when I planted it for the nice fellow. If you care aboujt the color of your rhubarb, do your research and get a variety that is the color you are after, is all I can say about that.
This year's wine is two very small batches because I picked a bucket of plums and let it sit for a couple of days before I picked the other bucket and I meant to process them together -- but the first bucket had decided to go ahead and start fermenting with wild yeasts and it tasted pretty good for that particular stage (that is to say, it did not taste good in the sense that you would actually drink it, it just tasted promising). So I have them in separate primary fermenters (foodgrade plastic buckets), with montrachet yeast in the other bucket. If the wild bucket stops fermenting, I can either buy another packet of yeast or combine the two buckets, depending on what seems right at the time. At the moment I wouldn't combine them as they taste quite different (both pretty good). The montrachet bucket has a lighter, oranger color, and the wild bucket has a deeper, more maroon color. They taste and smell different, but they both taste very sweet and full at this stage (where not much alcohol has developed).
I bought a hydrometer -- I don't know why I didn't before, it was only six dollars! I thought they were more like thirty, so I was dragging my feet. The way it works is that you measure the specific gravity before you start, and then when you finish, and by doing some easy math, you calculate the alcohol by volume. Otherwise, you don't know how strong your wine is without a laboratory.
Speaking of which, yesterday I opened a bottle of my 2007 "good effort" wine. That's the wine we took to River Run the last summer the nice fellow was alive and the winemaker said it was a good effort, which pleased me as being real praise from a winemaker -- not the elaborate praise you might shower on a person who you have no expectations for. Anyway, I thought it might have gone off because I didn';t store it well, but it was actually a bit better than I remembered, which is a point in the school of thought that says plum wine needs a lot of aging in general (I have seen opposing opinions online: I am now firmly in the pro-aging school). And it was pretty strong, too. We drank little sips, but I drank a few little sips, enough to account for a small glassful, and I was totally useless the rest of the day. I don't drink much, obviously, and I have always been a bit of a lightweight, but not to the point of going to bead at three in the afternoon and not really getting up till morning. Not having measured the specific gravity of that wine when it was on the must, I can't tell you how strong it really is, but it tastes like brandy.
And that leads me to another point. I have long wanted to make brandy. Ted had made a still at one point, but I don't know what happened to the pieces of it and I would be a bit scared of it now as the chamber was one of those bulbous glass laboratory vells. The Chinese and the Italians both make small pot stills (stainless steel and copper respectively) for less than two hundred dollars, but considering I'd make at the maximum a quart of brandy a year, this is definitely not a cost-cutting measure. So I don't know. Making one myself from odds and ends the way that people on the homebrew forums do looks equally expensive, especially since it entails welding!
edit: this year's plums are a bit overripe. I think that's a good thing in a plum wine.
Finally, apparently rhubarb wine is a thing. And apparently a potentially good thing, though you have to deal with excess acidity (not difficult, you use chalk). This is an interesting proposition to me because I have an ambitious little rhubarb patch which would like to remind us that the Triffids also were plants and were capable of taking over the world in a day or two. "Not that we're threatening you all, or anything," they say. "But look at our magnificent leaves, are they not big enough to clothe small children? And our mighty green stalks! We laugh at your cutting knife! We will have more and more of our shining green cohort every day!"
Yes, they are green, not red. Because I knew nothing nothing about rhubarb when I planted it for the nice fellow. If you care aboujt the color of your rhubarb, do your research and get a variety that is the color you are after, is all I can say about that.