A catch up Rack n Bottle Day!

Well it's been quite a while since I did any thing in the Brewery, took a little time out today to catch up on a few jobs.

The main aim of  the day was to check and rack Alex's Mead that we made back in September 2014. I checked the SG during transfer and it's now at 1.050 down so a current ABV of 9.3%, drank the sample as you do to make sure that all was okay and it's very good.

While I was  there I also Racked the Elderberry Wine, that was made a while ago as well, August 2014. It had quite a bit of sediment so it needed doing. Sampled this wine which I make each year and yet again it's beautiful fruity wine. I really should make a lot more each year.

As I already had the cleaning and bottling gear out and ready, I decided to bottle up a couple of wines that had been sitting in their demijohns for quite a while and where now lovely and clear. The first to be bottled was the Rhubarb wine that was made nearly a year ago, the one with banana added. Then bottled up the Apricot Wine that was made with the little apricots that Les at work gave me.

Ended up with 5 and a half bottles of Rhubarb (we'll drink the 1/2 bottle tonight) and 5 bottles of Apricot, one of which is ear marked for Les for letting me have the fruit. The Rhubarb came is as a Medium wine and the Apricot as a Dry wine which are now all labeled up and in the Cabin Brewery.

Brewday : Elderberry Wine

Every year I go out foraging for Elderberries, I really like this wine and have made it now almost every year since I started brewing.

This batch, which I intend to make several, is a early batch of elderberry wine, as the berries on the trees are just coming into fruit.

I got my required 1.5kg of berries (stripped from the stalks), but there are quite a few unripe ones in there, so I hope this won't effect the flavour of the finished wine.

The berries are then put in the bucket and crushed with a potato masher, then I top up the bucket to the 5 litre mark with boiling water.

This is then allowed to cool and then it is fermented on the fruit for a week, no sugar is added yet, this is done a bit later on and I'll blog it then.

I'm making this wine the same way as I always do, more details on this page.

Bottled: Two Wines. Parsnip and Elderberry

Bottling day today for the Parsnip wine and the Elderberry wine.

The Parsnip wine is nice and clear and the Elderberry is a very dark thick red.

Ten lovely bottles of booze all ready to age a bit in the cool. Had, as you do, a quick sample of each while bottling, the parsnip wine is sweet and quite nice even at this stage, the Elderberry is superb very fruity and medium dry.

RACKED: Mutant Parsnip Wine & Elderberry Wine

Grabbed a hour from the day today to rack the Parsnip and Elderberry wines. Fermentation has slowed down on both of the wines now with just the odd bubble now and again. Racked both the wines on top of 1 tsp of bentonite mixed into 1/4 of a pint of hot water that was allowed to cool for 30 minutes.

I add this direct to the clean demijohn and then rack the wine straight on top. Both these wines will now sit in the warm for another few weeks just to make sure they have finished fermenting. Once they are a bit clearer, I'll hit them both with a campden tablet each, slosh them both back up and them move to a cool place to fully clear before getting ready to bottle them both.

Brewday : Elderberry + Mixed fruit wine

Had 1.5kg of frozen elderberries in the freezer taking up space that need to be used for Xmas food, also had a ice-cream tub of allotment mixed fruit, jostaberries, gooseberries, strawberries, black and red-currents, raspberries. Not enough to make much with but came to 0.5kg in weight.

I make Elderberry wine every year and is a favorite of mine for drinking. So I have made it up again but added the 0.5kg of mixed fruit to use it all up.

The Recipe is from How to Make Your Own Drinks: by Susy Atkins page 70.

The only things that have been done different to the book is the addition of the 0.5kg of mixed fruit and I boiled the Frozen elderberries up with the water and mixed fruit for 15mins and added 2tsp of  Pectolase just in case when the Must had cooled to 20'c.

Today I strained the Must onto the sugar in the demijohn for it to ferment out. Used 1/2 a packet of Youngs champagne brewing yeast that I had left over. So I hope these changes don't change the wine to much.