Starting a batch of strawberry wine.

I don't have *quite* as much strawberry as some recipes call for, but I figure you use what you can.

Next year, I might do this again but throw in some rhubarb too. This year's rhubarb is already earmarked for making rhubarb-apple wine this fall.

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Hmm. According to the hydrometer I think my batch of chocolate wine is about done. Started at 1.130, and now it's down to 1.024, which is a respectable drop.

But I think I'll let it go another week, and if it hasn't dropped significantly from there it'll be ready to be racked for clarifying. Can't be too sure when you're not using chemical agents to stop fermentation after all.

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Managed to actually stay on task and racked the two batches of rhubarb-apple and a half-batch (2L) of apple wine into fresh carboys. Also remembered to degas, which is important.

Now a few weeks of clarifying and making sure fermentation is completely done, and I'll have a good 8 bottles of wine to sit aside until next winter (or even the following summer).

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Well, that's a shame.

I'm pretty sure that the dandelion wine I started making in the spring is a failure. It's just not clarifying, even after leaving it in the carboy for a couple of months, adding pectic enzyme and even crushed eggshell. Still hardly more clear than when I started.

Not really sure what to do at this point.

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Blueberry wine experiment started, using that old recipe I posted a few days ago. No idea if this is gonna work, I might be just wasting $18 worth of good berries.

If all goes well, in a week this will be yeast water, which should go absolutely wild when I add the sugar.

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Found this in an old regional cookbook I have. It seems to rely on the natural yeast present in the berries, if I'm reading it right.

Almost tempting, I figure 2 quarts of berries would go in a gallon carboy? Figure it would make a sweet, dessert sort of wine in the end.

Might be easier to put the berries in a muslin bag and soak/mash them in that, it'd save straining later.

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Chocolate wine.

Six months old, so anything but fully aged (ideally, I'd want to leave it 3 years for full effect).

It's very nice all the same. Definitely alcoholic, and there's definitely chocolate there, although the fermentation process does change the flavour. It's not what you'd expect. It's more subtle, and obviously you don't have the fats that you'd have in a chocolate bar or something.

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Got four bottles of tea wine put away this afternoon, plus enough for a sample.

Not bad. Needs aging of course, but not as harsh as I'd expect for having just been bottled. The taste is surprisingly light and not as "tea" as I thought it would be.

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Just bottled a batch of "no equipment" apple wine, to show how easy it is to make something decent without any special gear.

The only actual "winemaking" stuff I used was commercial wine yeast and some sanitizer. Otherwise the only gear involved was a measuring cup, a funnel, and a big mason jar as a secondary fermenter. So now I wait about 5 months and try it out at the end of September.

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Been putting off taking care of my wine for the past week or so, but finally got 'round to it.

Three bottles of chocolate wine on the left, four of rhubarb-apple wine on the right. In back is my second attempt at blaand (fermented whey) and an experiment with storebought cran-raspberry juice and the same wild yeast I use to make bread with.

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