Mmmmm, the fruits of summer (photos added back 7/2/17)

This year I planted 6 muscadine vines in the arbor along with the kiwi vines, raspberries, Echium vulgare, and Rosa rugosa.  They are doing well, but of course, not bearing any fruit this year.

This summer I met a couple who have blueberry bushes, apple trees, pear trees, and grapevines at their house but they don’t preserve any of it for future use.  They gave me permission to harvest any of the fruit I wanted……

any?   all?  I don’t want to be a pig….but THAT’S FREAKING AWESOME!

The major constraint I have is time; right now is really, really busy harvesting and planting fall crops, oh and keeping up with the weeds and bugs.

I believe I got enough blueberries to freeze that should last through the winter with my usual 1/2 cup on yogurt every morning.

Right now what I’m excited about is that the pantry smells awesome–A few days ago I went over and picked the dark purple grapes.  There were enough to make 3-1/2 gallons of wine.

I washed and sorted the grapes…..

Then I tried to figure out how to smash them to release the juice from the pulp and the skins–didn’t really want to use my feet.  I thought it looked like a lot of fun in “A Walk in the Clouds” when the ladies were all dancing in the grapes with their pretty dresses……Kenau Reeves…mmmmmmm

Back to reality.  I bought a hand crank food mill thinking that might smash the grapes, but they just rolled around in there around the blade.  Maybe tomatoes or peaches will work in there…….

I have a KitchenAid stand mixer and have been trying to figure out how to utilize it in the process–the strainer attachment kept clogging up.   I had to become smarter than the grapes.

Voila!  Put the grapes in the mixing bowl, use the whipping whisk attachment thingee on about 3 clicks of speed (pretty slow) and after about 5 minutes the grapes were all smashed up–yay!

After placing the pulp and skins in cheesecloth and squeezing and straining juice into the crock and adding all the other ingredients including yeast, this is what is making the pantry smell awesome….

This wonderful, bubbly mass of yeast and juice–has a fragrance that’s a cross between blackberry cobbler and sourdough bread!   This lively concoction will stay in the crock until the bubbling dies back, then off to the glass carboy for several months to complete fermentation.

 

Winemaking and Rainbows

This is about Week 6 of my winemaking adventure.  So far I’ve got Pear Wine which was the first batch started, Blackberry, Strawberry, Raspberry Jam, and today a batch of Muscadine was mixed in the fermenting crock.  Everything seems to be going okay so far…….(the taste test will tell in the end).

 

The big carboy is the pear wine and the others are in gallon jugs.  Sometimes there is too much “must” to fit into a gallon jug so that’s where the smaller bottles with balloons on them come into use.  I’ve changed the name of my dining room to the “wining room” because that’s where all the jugs are parked for fermenting….right beside the dining room table covered with beans and such that need to be shelled for saving and storage…

 

I picked up a quart of pure Muscadine juice at the grocery store the other day so I’ve got that brewing in the fermenting crock in the pantry where the freezer keeps the temp just a little warmer than the house if I leave the door closed.  My favorite “store bought” wine has to be the award-winning Stonehaus Winery Muscadine–just up the road in Crossville.

Now for the rainbow…..this fall has been great weather-wise; mild temps, bright sunshiny days….but the leaves just sort of turned color really quick then fell off.  The peak of color seemed to be yesterday, but only when the sun shined brightly.

A cold front moved through today which caused things like some wind, lots of clouds blowing around, and bright sunshine and rain at the same time, in the late afternoon.  You know, the perfect setup for a rainbow

 

I didn’t notice while I was taking the picture, but it almost looks like there are two rainbows there, doesn’t it?

Pear Wine Progress

Last Friday I started a batch of pear wine.  The next day my sisters and I had planned a “sister’s day out” in Knoxville and since I’ve gotten into winemaking, I wanted to visit the local brewing store.

We got into the store and it was packed!  One lady working and being the novice that I am, I wandered around the store trying to recognize terms from the winemaking instructions and recipes that I had read.  My sisters walked outside and chatted on the sidewalk while I wandered around the store.

Specifically, I wanted a hydrometer, a few more air locks, tannin, and a few other things, but mostly a hydrometer.

There was a customer standing in there waiting and I asked him if he knew what a hydrometer was.  He said “oh yes, they’re over here” and he handed me one.  It said “thermometer” on the box but he assured me that it would read alcohol content, temp, and specific gravity (which is what a hydrometer reads).

Everyone waiting in the store let the lady who just started making wine last night go next (that would be me).  I got $60+ dollars worth of stuff and justified it in my mind that it would make way more than $60 worth of wine.

On the way home I discovered that the thermometer in the box was really just a thermometer in the box and not a hydrometer at all–buyer beware!  I wanted to return it but I got back to the store 14 minutes after they had closed.  DARN!  I guess I’ll keep it, but I really feel the need for a hydrometer to see if the must (juice that is going to be wine) is ready to move to the big pretty glass bottle (carboy)..

In desperation yesterday, I went to an auto parts store to see about a hydrometer.  The clerk asked me if I was checking battery acid and I laughed and told him that I was actually making wine.  We looked at the hydrometers and they just had little balls that float and do happy things when the antifreeze solution is right–not what I need for wine/sugar/alcohol levels.  He then told me that he had seen a new store on Main Street in town that had a sign that read “Brewing Supplies”–so I went–Oh Happy Day!

I got a hydrometer for less than $7.00, checked the “must” in the crock and it was ready to be “racked” into the carboy.  Oooooh, messy job with a 1/2″ hose, but I got’er done.

Filled up a 5 gallon carboy and part of a 1 gallon jug…..

 

The recipes instruct to keep the first fermentation in a warm spot and the secondary in a somewhat cooler spot.  I moved them into my foyer–dark, cooler, and–and–and– it reminds me of having a fish aquarium because I can hear and see the bubbling of the yeast–it makes me smile 🙂

I’m Making Wine!

Anyone who has been around me for any length of time during a day, week, or month lately, knows that I’ve been plotting to make wine.  Since the beekeeping project has been such a huge success (NOT!) I thought I’d take up another hobby–winemaking.  I don’t know where I got the urge to torture myself throughout life with new projects, but here we go again.

A few weeks ago my boyfriend said he had a friend who had a friend who had pear trees that had lots of pears on them that they weren’t doing anything with.  What a shame to let all that fruit go to waste…..so, we go wandering into the outskirts of the county, and fill buckets, tubs, baskets, beer cartons, ice bags, you get the picture, with beautiful, full, tasty, pears.

He asked me what I was going to do with them.  I answered “make wine”!  He laughed and reminded me that I had never made wine before and I told him that this was a good time to start.  I also remember saying that if there was a fruit that was hard to make wine out of, it was probably pears.  I still don’t know enough to validate that statement. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Soooo, I’ve had boxes of pears in my kitchen for about a week now and they really need to be used.  I was able to scrounge up two carboys (that’s another story), went to a health food store and picked up yeast and some other stuff you use in winemaking, and at 7:30 last night I decided it was time.  Why 7:30?  Well, the sun had gone down and I just decided it was time.  I drug out the fruit pressing attachment for my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and washed, cored, chopped, and ground 20 pounds of pears and processed them through the mixer.  I added all the sugar I could find in the house, everything I bought at the health food store and added 30 pints of water to the pear juice to make 5 gallons of “must”.  (That’s what you call wine before you call it wine)

When I first moved to the farm I was renting a doublewide, that the previous owners lived in, while I built my house.  There’s a really cool old barn near the doublewide and I, of course, went prowling in the loft.  Several treasures were found in the loft that the owners told me I could have; a cool iron bed, an awesome oak desk, and a 10 gallon ceramic crock that they had used to make sauerkraut in.  Perfect for winemaking, but it weighs a ton!  I cleaned the crock in the shower the best I knew how, and put it on a stool for easy reach.  Once all the juice and wine-making goodies were in I can’t imagine what it weighs.

I didn’t get any pictures of the pear slaughter but it was a mess.  The chickens got a 5-gallon bucket full of cores, peelings, and bruised fruit, and I have a half full crock of what I hope will be awesome wine……someday!