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!