cider update

so the cider fermented down to 1015 SG yesterday, so I racked it into a demijohn for secondary fermentation. I topped it up with some apple juice as it was slightly under the 1 gallon of the demijohn. Left it and the wine kit in beside the hot tank, as it stays at a steady temperature of 22 degrees celsius. Pictures to follow.


Happy winemaking!

its cider time!

so, whilst checking my wine the other day I noticed one of my protein jars was nearly empty and its slightly bigger than the demijohn. so I decided that it would make an excellent primary fermenter. its big, food safe and empty!

i went to tesco and bought 5 litres of apple juice. it was quite cheap at 56p a litre. poured it into the container and measured the SG. sitting around 1045 which hopefully will give me around 7% alcohol. I planned to use cider yeast, but my homebrew store was out of it. I had to use champagne yeast instead, but they were out of lalvin, so had to make do with young's. after using lalvin yeasts for the first time with the wine kit i have decided to try and use them wherever possible!

so i didn't add any sugar to the juice and added the yeast leaving it for 15 minutes before i stirred it in. it has been fermenting away for a couple of days now, getting quite a strong cidery smell and plenty of nice fizzing! will test the SG in a couple of days. i plan to rack to secondary when it gets to about 1015 SG

Happy winemaking!

another new adventure.

hi guys, having been a bit bored since classes finished and with my new collection of demijohns, I decided to try a wine kit to make some homebrew! I bought a Vineco merlot kit from my local homebrew store and tonight i set about making it. I first sterilised the equipment using a Campden tablet solution. The wine concentrate was then added to the demijohn. I added bentonite and a packet of oak shavings, which will hopefully impart an oak aged flavour to the wine. I then topped up the wine with cold water. The yeast, Lalvin EC118, was added to a small cup of water to rehydrate for 15 minutes. First time using lalvin yeast and I'm impressed. I haven't seen such activity in a starter solution ever with the previous yeasts I've been using! after 15 minutes the yeast was added to the wine and as per instructions the airlock was added. heres a few pics of the process.

lets just hope it tastes alright!!

happy winemaking!

new arrivals!

Hi guys, got a bit of a bargain on ebay this week! picked up 12 demijohns, the glass ones which i prefer, for an absolute steal of £15! adding on my petrol it still only came to approx £22! much cheaper than buying them brand new! 9 clear and 3 brown. they do need a good cleaning out, but for the price I'm more than happy to do that myself! heres a couple of pics

Plastic vs Glass & Cork vs Rubber

Hi guys!

I have been wondering what your opinion are on the above matters! do you prefer glass demijohns and carboys to their plastic equivalent? I know i certainly prefer glass over plastic.

I'm still on the fence over the cork vs rubber bung debate. I'm only taking about using it in the fermenting vessel.  I know cork is traditional and all that, but I have been told rubber gives a better seal. But then there is a risk of the rubber imparting a flavour to the winem or so I've been told.

So, what are your views on this? let me know in the comment section of this post!


Happy winemaking!

second racking!!

Ok, now i'm really spoiling you guys! two updates within the space of ten days! Am i generous or what???!!

onto the wine now, and over the weekend mum had a chance to rack the apple wine and the apple & plum wine. When i left them in september just going under secondary fermentation, the were very cloudy and clearly had a lot of sediment and yeast suspended in it. Pleased to say that after several weeks fermenting the wine has cleared dramatically as you will see in the pics below! :) following the same procedure as before the wine was racked into a clean demijohn/bucket and topped up with a sugar solution. The air lock were fitted once again and the wine was allowed to happily ferment for another few weeks!

 apple and plum just before racking

 apple and plum almost racked

 midway through racking the apple and plum

 apple and plum

 taking the hydrometer reading

 my collection of demijohns. L-R rhubarb, damson and apple. Using plastic demijohns for the first time ever, not a fan. I'd be interested to hear what other views people have on them

 apple wine just before racking

 apple wine being racked

 apple and plum in its new home

apple and plum just started

 apple just started!

Happy winemaking!

FINALLYYYY got some new pics and updates!!

Hi guys, sorry for the biggggg delay in posting this new update but i promise my excuse is top notch! I'm out of the country at university! See, told you it was good!

The wine has been left in the capable hands of my mum and last weekend the Damson wine was racked into a new demijohn after fermenting for about 4 weeks. It was the first time mum had ever racked wine and at first it seemed a daunting experience. but after a few phone calls back and forth the racking was successful! yayyy! :D Made sure plenty of pics were taken as they explain better than I can how the whole process went. The pics are shown below. The wine was topped up with sugar syrup  and left to continue on its merry fermentation. next up is the apple wine and apple & plum wine!

 Apple and plum in the bucket, apple and then rhubarb

Same as above!

Damson ready to rack

Racking underway

Almost finished!

The latest vintner in the family! 

Happy winemaking!

Sorry for the lack of updates!!!

Hi guys,

Well last week, I moved back to scotland to continue my course at university leaving the 25litres of wine in the hands of my mum! It has all been placed into secondary so its just being left to bubble away nicely. :)

Now, in the meantime I am itching to get making some more home brew! So I have been toying with the idea of getting a couple of demijohns and using some store bought apple juice to make some cider!! Watch this space!

Happy winemaking!

first time racking!

So today was the magic day, when I was able to rack my rhubarb wine for the first time. Not only was this the first racking of this season, but it was my first racking of a wine, ever!! It went rather well I'm pleased to say!

The fermentation had slowed considerably overnight,  so we decided to rack into a clean demijohn. The equipment was sterilised and we set about siphoning the rhubarb wine into its new home! the process does take time, as i am using a 1/4" tube. Took about 15 minutes getting the gallon of wine transferred. I'm sure it'll take me a lot less time to drink it though haha!

Now, I'm hoping someone can shed light on this, but when we were siphoning the wine, we couldn't help but notice that the smell was a bit unpleasant. Hoping its just the yeast that is smelling. The wine is starting to clear and i'm hoping to be able to maybe bottle it in the next few months!!

The apple and apple and plum have now progressed to secondary and are bubbling away nicely! The apple, in the glass demijohn is almost mesmerising to watch as the yeasts at the bottom seem to explode sending a good whoosh up the bottle in a swirl! almost like watching a mini tornado in the bottle!

happy winemaking!

apple-tastic!!

Hi guys, I'm back with some more wine chat!

Well, as you can see with the photos I posted last night, I have 5 gallons of wine fermenting away nicely. So having decided that 2 gallons of rhubarb and damson brewing away, I decided to make some apple wine. Now I had originally planned to make some more cider with the apples I had obtained. A nice gift from my grandmother! :) but I decided to make the apple wine as I could get more wine from the apples than I could cider!

So, I set about coring and cutting 5 kilos of apples. Not an easy task when the apples themselves are rather tiny!! After 45 minutes I had finished and the apples were added to the mashing bucket. A gallon of cold water was added along with some pectic enzyme to break down the apples. They were left to sit for 3 days stirring twice daily. I strained through muslin after the 3 days and added 2lbs of sugar to bring my SG up to the region of 1080-90. It was then added to the demijohn and covered with muslin.

With the remaining apples, I decided to experiment and I added 2 kilos of plums to the apples and again left them to soak for 3 days. This time i decided to be really crazy and make 2 gallons of wine. yes, thats right, 2 gallons! I'm moving up to the big time now and I think I can hear the winemakers of france quaking in their boots! The wine went through the same procedure as the apple, stirred twice daily and strained after 3 days. Now being two gallons, this wouldn't all fit into a standard demijohn so I asked a friend who does catering if she would have any food grade containers I could use. She happily obliged and I got 2 2 gallon buckets!! The wine was transferred to this and I again added sugar, around 3.5lbs to get the SG up to 1080.

I had to wait 2 days for my yeast to arrive, I'm using a bordeaux style yeast that will hopefully give me a nice dry white wine when all is done. :) however whilst waiting for the yeast, the apple wine started to ferment by itself, clearly there was still some wild yeast spores on the apples after I washed them!!

Well, the yeast arrived on time, and was duly added to the must of both wines. After a few hours, the apple started to show some activity. then after an hour, a lot of activity! The wine frothed up through the neck of the demijohn and right through the muslin!! A quick fix later, I placed a jam funnel over the neck of the demijohn which allowed me to place a cloth over it, but it was elevated enough so the froth wouldn't come through the cloth!


Happy winemaking!

as promised here are a few snapshots!

Rhubarb just under airlock

Rhubarb after 3 weeks

Damson after a week

 Apple in primary

 apple and plum in primary

the addiction spirals.....

So as previously mentioned, I have now become slightly addicted to winemaking. After the rhubarb wine was left to ferment, and a long browse through Amazon, a parcel was soon on its way to me, containing yet more airlocks, yeast and chemicals! All in the name of winemaking :)

In the meadow we have a damson tree that this year bore a lot of fruit. Spying a chance, I decided to make this the next wine. I collected 6lbs of damsons for the wine and a bee sting just for laughs! NOT! It stung like crazy for 3 days and was not good! :( Anyway, the damsons were left to soak for a week in boiling water with pectic enzyme to help break down the fruit. Left for a week stirring twice daily.

Another 7 days and its time to get on with the wine. I strained the pulp from the wine and added 4lbs of sugar and then my yeast. Now this is where the problems started. The yeast didn't really seem to activate. Four days and nothing. Moved it to a warmer place and still nothing. So I made up a yeast starter and added it to the must. Finally after leaving it for two days it started to ferment. Its been bubbling away now for around a week now :)

Will get round to posting some pictures soon.

Happy winemaking!

humble beginnings

So, I've never really thought about or considered a blog but having been laid up following surgery, I have decided to write about my delve into the ancient art of winemaking. Now being a student, many have already teased me about making illicit liquor to inebriate myself and my fellow students on the cheap! Sadly as good an idea as this is, the wine probably won't be ready for another 14-15 months, by which time I (touch wood) will have graduated with a 1st class degree in the exhilarating subject of sociology and criminology. A riveting thought I know.

As previously said, I have been laid up the past few weeks following some minor surgery. After mum collected several kilos of rhubarb from the garden, the idea came about we would attempt rhubarb wine. Now, I'm no stranger to homebrewing as four years ago, I made cider which worked out around 9% and was rocket fuel!! I am however a newbie to winemaking. After doing a bit of reading online, and trying to determine which method to follow, (there was literally hundreds of variations on add fruit, water, sugar and yeast and leave to ferment!) I finally settled on a fairly straightforward method. Cue raiding the attic to find the equipment I stowed away after the cider several years earlier.

The fruit was cut up and placed into boiling water along with raisins and 3lbs of sugar and left for a week to steep in order to extract the flavour from the rhubarb. After finding a homebrew shop in stirling, the yeast, a new airlock and a demijohn were bought. My first experience with plastic and have to say i'm not impressed. Anyway, i stirred the fruit twice daily for the week and once the 7 days were up it was strained to remove the pulp and then I added the yeast.

Now, at this stage I was beginning to worry. Having read numerous articles by now, I was expecting a frothy, vigorous fermentation. Sadly this was not the case. The yeast had barely made any effect on the wine after two days and according to the recipe i should have experienced a good frothy fermentation by now. I decided to move the wine to the kitchen near the cooker and after 2 hours hey presto! I had a good frothy wine in the bucket! 'Appy days!!!

After another 7 days and the wine was to be transferred to the airlock. This simply means that I exclude al air from the wine and allow the yeast to really convert the sugar into precious alcohol! Well, fair to say this was a far from simple adventure. Filling the demijohn with the wine it began to froth up again and at one point resembled a scene from Dante's Peak. Not good. After getting it calmed down, the demijohn was fitted with bung and airlock and left to ferment in a cool place.

And that was it. I was now hooked on winemaking. Suppose if uni doesn't work out I could alway be a Vintner!!