Today we left Ashcroft House with the intention of visiting both the Butterfly Gardens and Butchart Gardens, which are fairly close to each other north of Victoria. But we never made it to Butchart Gardens. Instead, we spent almost three hours entranced by our close encounter with thousands of flying jewels.
A close encounter of the [...]
Red grapes in particular use birds as part of their reproductive strategy: the grapes signal that their seeds are ripe by turning red (véraison), the birds descend and eat the grapes, then perch in trees and deposit the seeds in a little splash of fertilizer, and the grapes grow up the tree to repeat the [...]
Today I racked the kiwi fruit wine from the primary fermenter into a six-gallon and a one-gallon carboy–apparently there’s a lot of water in kiwi fruit, since I only started with five gallons of water. I had to top the smaller carboy up with about a pint of distilled water. The specific gravity is about [...]
Today I splash-racked the six gallons of persimmon wine into a five gallon carboy–there was a hint of hydrogen sulfide in it since I’d left it so long on the lees–and topped it off with about a pint of distilled water (there was a little more than a gallon of lees).
It tastes pretty acidic, [...]
This morning I added the pectic enzyme to the primary fermenter, and the left it covered for the rest of the day. In the evening I moved the fermenter out to the garage, into the fermentation chamber, and added the wine yeast. At this point the chemistry of the must was as follows:
Specific Gravity = [...]
Tonight I started five gallons of kiwi fruit wine, adapted from this recipe.
15 lbs fresh green kiwi fruit
13.25 lbs granulated sugar
5 gal water
5 tsp acid blend
2,5 tsp pectic enzyme
1-1/4 tsp tannin
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2.5. tsp Fermaid
1 pkt Lalvin EC-1118 wine yeast
Deborah and I peeled the fruit two nights ago while watching Buffy the Vampire [...]
I checked the chemistry of the persimmon wine this evening before pitching the yeast.
SG: 1.113
pH: 3.79
TA: 0.24
The titratable acidity is way too low, but some acid may be locked up in the pulp, so I merely added another tablespoon of acid mix, to match the original recipe. I’ll check in again after fermentation and adjust [...]
Today I started six gallons of persimmon wine, using fruit from the Quaker Center in Ben Lomond and a recipe in the Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook by Raymond Massaccessi (available from Fermentation Solutions).
One certainly doesn’t need a crusher or press for ripe Hachiya persimmons: they squash quite nicely. Just pull the top off, quarter with [...]
When I checked the chemistry of the tomatillo wine this evening, prior to adding the yeast, I got the following readings:
SG: 1.052
pH: 3.7
TA: 0.53
Since the specific gravity was too low, I added a pound of sugar, and then, to my horror, found as I stirred it in that the original dose of sugar had not [...]
Tonight I began making an batch of tomatillo wine, based the recipe for green tomato wine iin the Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook by Raymond Massaccessi (available from Fermentation Solutions). I’ll list the ingredients up front, and then post each step of the recipe as I do it.
3.5 pounds tomatillos
1 oz sliced and bruised ginger root
6 whole [...]
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