Last summer, I made 1 batch of blueberry wine from the blueberries picked locally here in NH.  Well, this year, I have arranged to make 5 total batches of blueberry wine as an experiement.   Last week, I started the fermentation of 90 lbs of blueberries to make 30 gallons of blueberry wine.

I won’t give all the details that I normally do… because this is, well, a new chapter in the winemaking process.  In this process, I started the fermentation of 5 seperate batches of blueberry juice.  The only difference in the 5 batches, is the yeast I used.  Each of the 5 batches is using a different yeast.  Everything else is exactly the same.

So… we are now 1 week into fermentation and all is well.  Perking away and smelling great.  More details to follow.  Check out the pics.  Very cool!

In preparation for bottling, I cleaned and sanitized 30 bottles, added metabisulphite and sorbate, and then added the dissolved sugar.  Interestingly, when I added the dissolved sugar (melted in about a cup of water), the sugar re-crystalized in the carboy and took some vigorous stirring to get it  dissolved again.  That’s the first time I’ve come across that phenomenon.  Perhaps the juice was too cool after sitting in the cellar for the past few winter months.

I was able to cork 30 bottles of this nice sweet juice.  With an alcohol percentage at around 13%, this should age to be some very pleasant wine.

Measured the Apple Cider Wine gravity today to find it at 0.990, perfect dryness.  It appears that there is still some malolactic fermentation taking place, but certainly, the wine is ready for clearing.  I racked the apple wine off the sediment into a new clean carboy so it can start fining and aging.  I was amazed at how much of the lees already settled out of this must.  Amazing.  It was a thick yellow mush of apple waste.  And it smelled…like junk.  I was especially amazed since I had already racked off the lees once already.

I took a quick taste of the wine and found it very tarte, which makes sense considering how dry it is.  Will definitely need to back sweeten this apple, as I’m not sure this really dry wine would be pleasant to drink.  Add sugar, and what a difference it will make.

Now it will sit for several months and settle out.  Rack again, and sit again.  The waiting part is definitely the hardest.  Its all about time.

The peaches fermented out to VERY dry and required some back-sweetening to make it palatable.  The peach wine has a distinct, sort of pungent aroma, but yet a very nice smooth flavor.  So, I’m not entirely sure if it just needs to age or if it will have that aroma forever.  Only time will tell.

I added 1.5 pounds of dissolved sugar to the wine just prior to bottling.  This of course, after adding potassium sorbate to prevent re-fermentation and 6 more campden tablets to ward of the bugs during aging.  I will get a label on it soon and get all 26 bottles on their side for the next year or so.  I intend to uncork one in about 6 months to see how the aging is going.  There wasn’t enough to get a full 27th bottle…so I guess I’ll just have to drink that now.  Darn.

The next day, on December 10th, I racked the wine through a fine filter into a secondary carbuoy.  The specific gravity was down to 1.000.  I was able to get a full 6 gallons leaving behind a murky sludge of lees behind.  I took the carbuoy down into the cellar which stays pretty consistently around 60 degrees farenheit.  Up until now, the juice was fermenting on the first level of the house where I could keep it at around 70 degrees.

Windy Ridge Orchard is a terrific, family owned operation in North Haverhill, New Hampshire, a place we visit every year during harvest season.  They grow several varieties of apples and pumpkins, blueberries and other fruits.  They have a nice little cafe, the “Cider House Cafe” that serves seasonal breakfast and lunch and all with some homegrown fruits in their food.

The conversation turned quickly to her desire to do “something” with her left-over frozen apple cider, and perhaps other juices accumulated over the season.  I told her how I was learning about how to make wine and that I’d be happy to work with her.  A few weeks later, she delivered 6.5 gallons of frozen cider from this past harvest, to try and turn into apple wine.

So, on December 1st, I embarked on another batch of apple wine.  This time, from real cider, that I’ve learned is simply apple juice that has not been pasteurized.  The juice itself was frozen in 7 x 1-gallon containers with the Windy Ridge Orchard label.  It had a brownish, cider color with a strong apple smell and powerful taste.  You could just tell how fresh the juice was and how great it will ferment into some awesome wine.

I let the juice thaw slowly overnight, then started the must in a 6 gallon primary fermentation vessel.   I immediately added 6 crushed campden tablets, 6 tsp of acid blend, 10 tsp of pectic enzyme, 9 tsp of yeast nutrient, and 1.5 tsp of tannin powder.  The juice alone measured a specific gravity of 1.060 before adding sugar.

It took 7 lbs of granulated sugar to bring the juice up to 1.090 a good starting point for apple wine.  With all of that sugar added, I actually had nearly 7 gallons of must to start with.  The bucket is really meant to start with around 6 gallons.  Nevertheless, I proceeded, knowing it was a bit full.

After setting and sanitizing for 24 hours, I added 1 packet of Montrachet yeast.  The recipe I was following from Jack Keller’s site, calls for champagne yeast.  Not having any, I decided to go ahead with Montrachet.  Curious to see how it ends up.

After 2 days, on December 4th, I opened the bucket and tested the must which has begun to ferment.  The SG was at 1.080, down slightly.  We are on our way.

I let the frozen juice sit out for a few minutes while I prepared the containers and the equipment.  This will be the first batch of wine that I make that I do not have a recipe to follow.  So, I rely on what I know about making wine from juice to swing without a net.  I know that I will want my starting specific gravity between 1.090 and 1.095.  The acid level should be at around .60 tartaric, and the temperature should be around 70F.  I also know that I want to make sure the juice is sanitized and preserved right away, so that it resists spoiling.  So, here we go.

My first step was to dissolve 6 campden tablets (metabisulphite) to sanitize the juice and 3 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to help breakdown the cellular structure of the fruit juices and aid clearing later.  With the help of my daughter, we emptied 18 partially frozen juice concentrates into the primary bucket.  We added about 3 cans of hot water to the mixture as we emptied each frozen can while my daughter stirred for me.  We were close to 6 gallons of juice.

Once all the juice was in the bucket, I added 1 1/2 teaspoons of tannin powder and 6 teaspoons of yeast nutrient.  Using an acid titration test kit, I measured the acidity of the juice.  My initial reading was in the .40-.50 range, a bit low.  So, I added 6 teaspoons of acid blend (1 per gallon juice) to raise that level.  After doing so, the juice measured at .60 tartaric, perfect. 

Without adding any sugar, the specific gravity was 1.060 (note: the juice has some high-fructose corn sugar in the ingredient list), which is much higher than any of these fruits would have on their own.  Knowing I wanted to start at around 1.090 or higher, I added 6 1/2 pounds of sugar.  I’ve learned that  a pound of sugar in a 6 gallon bucket adds around .005 to the specific gravity, and in this case it raised the SG by .033 to 1.093.  The potential alcohol of this wine is 14%.

I covered the primary fermenter and will wait 24 hours for the juice to sanitize and prepare for the addition of the yeast.  The only question now is…what kind of yeast to use.  That is something to research tomorrow.

This is after I took all the precautions I could think of to beat the early spoiling of the must.  I froze the juice, sanitized it, and event started the yeast culture early.  Obviously, all of that was not enough.  I’ve read that watermelon wine is likely the hardest wine to make and requires allot of attention.  I’m not sure I’m ready to take it on again.  Perhaps when the melons are fresh next summer, I will give it another go.  If anyone knows the trick…I’m all ears.

After letting the syrup cool and adding it to the wine, we determined that we would need to sweeten it further.  So, we added another 1/2 pound.  That did the trick and we got the strawberry wine just where wanted it.  We were able to get a full 32 bottles, plus a couple of glasses of the wine, corked and ready for aging.

The wine has an amazing strawberry aroma when you take a sip.  You initially get a burst of strawberry flavor, which then fades while you swallow.  The wine finishes with a great berry aftertaste that leaves you looking for the next sip.  The wine is still a bit tart, but will certainly smooth out with aging.

The advice is to let it age for 1 year.  Lets see if I can do it!