Journal Khyber's Journal: Going to a Low Tech Hobby 2
A few days ago, I went for a walk down the local riverbed. To my surprise, I wandered upon a large cluster of grape vine, bearing wild grapes, tons of tiny ones.
Well, they're about 70/30 seed/fruit. Go figure. A little sample, and the flavor was a mix of tart and sweet. These would make a good wine, I figured.
I decided I'd go ahead and make a slightly more refined version of what the Romans and Greeks might have had. After the grapes were washed with a light bleach/water solution, rinsed thoroughly, and mashed, I had about 1.5 gallons of juice, to which another 1.25 gallons of water was added, plus 3 pounds of raw cane sugar, and 2 teaspoons of proofed bread yeast. All of this was put into a 3 gallon carboy with a rubber stopper and typical airlock. Right now, I'm getting a bubble roughly every 2 seconds from the airlock.
I'm expecting a wine with not a whole lot of alcohol, and a bit of sediment. There's not much point in doing a bunch of fermentations and filtrations on my first go-around. The smell right now is very light and quite pleasant. Almost like a perfected Boones Farm wine.
This should be ready in about 4 weeks, I'm not expecting a huge return on alcohol content given the yeast is past the best by date
Sounds Delicious. (Score:1)
I've never been able to drink many types of alcohol since an incident in my past where I was hung over badly, but it does sound really good. I bet something like that would be better than anything I could buy at a local shop. If I understand correctly, wine's aren't usually known for their high alcoholic content anyways, right? I'm not even an amateur on the on the topic, but that is what I have come to know from aggragated experiences anyways.
Good luck on the wine! Sounds like a much better use of time
Re: (Score:2)
" I bet something like that would be better than anything I could buy at a local shop."
I appreciate the positive thoughts, but I doubt I'm going to get vineyard-quality on my first ever go!
"If I understand correctly, wine's aren't usually known for their high alcoholic content anyways, right?"
Most are not. Then you have ports, and fortified wines (brandy added to boost alcohol content) and cooking wines of various alcohol contents, some flame up, some won't (usually, the ones that flame up are again, fortif