Monday, July 05, 2010

Brew 4th, and drinkify

Took a road trip this weekend to Utopia to drop Monkey Girl off for horse camp. Which means there will be 98 percent less sass in the house this coming week. Yet the squabbling between Fairy Girl and Bug has exponentially expanded to fill that void. Funny that.

In a misguided effort to be productive with the remaining time available to me over the weekend, I racked the plum wine I've had fermenting since June 7, separating the plum solids from the proto-wine liquid. Which may sound simple and straightforward, but it isn't. The plums had essentially decomposed into fragments of skin and pulp, none of which had any coherence except when it came to plugging the bung spigot in my fermenter--they were plenty solid for that. So I was reduced to using a ladle to scoop out the wine and pulp and place it in a cloth-lined colander, straining the liquid from the solids. You'd be surprised how quickly those solids can plug up the weave of even a loosely-knit cloth. Eventually, I didn't even have a clearly defined mix to work with as I ladled. What I was getting out was more of a thick slurry, with the fruit and liquid indistinguishable. Out of the six gallons I started with, I ended up with four--the pulpy fruit solids thrown out on the back yard compost heap. I then dissolved four pounds of sugar in a gallon of water to top the proto-wine up to 5 gallons, and provide the yeasties with enough sweet fermentables to bring the alcohol content up to a storage-friendly 12 percent. The good news is that when I sampled a bit of the stuff--it certainly smelled like wine--I was rewarded with a dry wine that tasted very strongly of plums. I think, despite my misguided efforts, that my first attempt at winemaking may be a success.

I have to say here that my racking task was made much easier by the addition of two extra 6-gallon fermenters. My brother Chris was kind enough to loan me his, since he hasn't done any homebrew in several years and doesn't expect to return to the hobby any time soon. So, with the wine safely locked away in one of the new fermenters, I had mine available immediately for more brewing.

I had 9 pounds of honey on hand, and wanted to try some plum melomel, as well as take another crack at the infamous jalapeno metheglin, so my course was clear. I emptied all nine pounds of honey in a large pot and topped up with about a gallon of water, heating the mix gently so the honey would dissolve. Since I want the starting mead to be moderately sweet instead of dry, I decided to only make 3 gallons worth. I put the honey mix in the fermenter, then added 1.5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient and yeast energizer before stirring vigorously to oxygenate the must. I topped it up with cool water to make just over 3 gallons, and then pitched the yeast starter. This is a new yeast for me, Bourgovin. It's a Burgundy yeast, supposedly good for dark fruit wines such as plum. We'll see. I made a mix of honey water and grape juice, to which I added the dry yeast. An hour later it was fermenting vigorously, so I expect good things from it. A month from now, when primary fermentation tapers off, I'll rack the mead into a 1.5 gallon vessel to which I'll add a bit more honey, for enhanced sweetness, and a single large jalapeno. The previous results were quite striking--akin to biting a live wire--and I expect no less this time around. To the remainder I will add no less than 7 pounds of chopped plums. The resulting fruit profile in the finished melomel should be robust. If you ask nicely, I might even share some!

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