Sunday, January 11, 2009

Winemaking 101

Wow -- today I finally did it. I started a batch of wine. I've been thinking about it for a couple of years: I even bought the stuff about this time last year, but I just kept putting it off and putting it off. Right now, I feel like I just sat through a 3-hour chemistry exam. But I learned so much! Like how to use a hygrometer and how to convert Imperial gallons to US gallons. And that a liter and a quart are quite close in volume. And that fermentation takes place best at 70-75 degree F.

I used frozen blueberries from last summer's crop. The recipe specified that frozen blueberries work really well, as the freezing and thawing process pierces the skin of the blueberry, which is necessary for making blueberry wine.

Now, I only have to wait somewhere around 15 months to see how it turns out! I figure this wine will be ready to drink somewhere around April 2010. That's quite a wait, but we should have wine before we have asparagus, and asparagus before we have apples from the newest apple trees. That's part of why I call it "Garden for Life"!

3 comments:

Jan said...

Wow--blueberry wine;) I didn't realize you could do all this. I haven't visited you in a while. I accidentally deleted you on my fav list on blotanical but put you on again...sorry about that. Did you know your feed isn't working at blotanical? No one can see your posts, that's why you aren't getting many visitors. If you want blotanical to see you, then you need to tell stuart there's a problem with your feed.

Sarah said...

Thanks, Jan. I'll follow up on that at Blotanical.

Chris said...

Fun isn't it! Do you have any other wine in the works? We have made quite a few different ones. Raspberry was quite good. We haven't tried blueberry yet. Even though we let them age, we like to have a few small bottles of wine that we can sample and see how much the wine changes over time.