Introduce Yourselves here

[Hippie]

Welcome Karl!

If you have any dandy recipes you care to share, please post them in the recipe section. Thanks!

[Duffbeer]

Howd'ya do, Karl, welcome to the forum.

Hi Mamgiowl, thanks for the warm welcome I look forward to getting to know all better.
Karl.

Welcome Karl
great to see you here, hope to have you participate in the discussions.

Do you want some fresh grapes in 2007, (imported from Spain Italy and Sicily) David, heeby and I take them. Because you live so close to us you might want to take some too, (they are between £5 and £7 a box. a box is 20lbs) you are welcome to use my crusher/destemmer etc to process them, or at the very least come and help at crush/destem time and stay for a few beers/wines.

Are you interested in Pontefract and district wine circle (meeting on Mon 8th Jan if you fancy it) they normally meet on the 1st Mon of the month unless its a bank holiday.

anyhooo
welcome aboard
hope you enjoy your stay
regards
Bob

Thanks Bob that sounds great, I'll send you a PM for more details, thanks for the welcome.
Karl.

Welcome Karl!

If you have any dandy recipes you care to share, please post them in the recipe section. Thanks!

Thanks for the welcome Hippie, I'm still a bit of a novice but I do have a couple of crazy recipes I derived, will post them allthough I still don't know how they'll be after a good ageing.
Karl.

[Dead Squirrel Running]

A short history of the world

I looked at this thread for awhile and suddenly realized that someone was asking me to actually wane on about myself to infinite boredom. I do have a 20,000 word PDF file, a history of my family back to Cro-Magnon and then I could fill in with DNA clan members to Adam and Eve in Africa, but possibly some might find it interesting, so self-censorship is in play here. What than could I say? Well friend Hippie, a tightrope walker and internet groveler, might say that it was a wine site, so why not talk about wine. Of course he’s brilliant. That’s why he’s already survived plotting and piloting a Kamikaze internet attack on one wine website. They’re rooming him out on a ten story window ledge now. Brave lad, if he twitches he’s a goner.

Anyway, time to be somewhat serious, I began making wine about the time of one of our frequent American Wars. I can not recall which one, possibly against Mexico or the Philippines. Of course I’ve written a few words, so now it’s time to digress and muse over the fact that we haven’t really had a good war with the Brits since 1812. This country really has no manners. The benefits of warring against the US - as Japan and Germany will tell you is, quite beneficial. Well yes, there is the dead body problem, but as we all know, the Germans were quite efficient in that department and the headless bodies in China and Korea, might chime in, if they had heads, that the Japanese were mighty good at death themselves. But what does all that have to do with wine? Well if they were making wine, maybe they’d be too tipsy to care about what somebody on the other side of the world was doing. As a statesman, I am intellectually deficiently defunct.

I started like most, with fruit wines. Wonderfully beautiful peaches that I horribly ruined with bakers yeast. Doesn’t everyone start that way? A few more failures and I went to the local wine and beer supply store, amazingly still there. They claim to be the oldest in the United States. I believe they started in the early 1950’s. I moved up scale with some help and planted my small backyard with red currents. That worked out rather well, with crisp acidy wine that won some awards at the local county fair. Of course the fix was in as the judges were the husband and wife of Jim’s Home Brew, the authors of my recipe for current wine. But I accepted the award with grace - as I always figured, at least I didn’t screw it up.

Sometime in the 1980’s I wanted to step up to grapes and quit buying the sugar necessary for fruit wines. That has been a consistent philosophy that I’ve stuck with to this day, growing my own grapes in Spokane, Washington. Almost all winemakers here, pro or home, go south to our wine country. Washington produces some great wines, but I can assure you mine are not, although they are as I always say to people who want me to judge their wines, DRINKABLE. Spokane is about two to three hour drive north from the wine country that runs from Walla Walla west to Yakima and up the Columbia River north. The winters are about the same, but length of summer and degree days - added by the Columbia Valley coming in from the Pacific makes a big difference. Still I try.

Originally I planted some American slip skin grapes and made some decent wine, but never could get the brix up to produce more than 8% alcohol. So sugar was added. I than pulled those out and planted Foch, a French hybrid. This has worked out fairly well producing a good, but not great wine in the best of growing years. Usually a brix from 21 to 23, but most years a TA 8 or 9, so except for last year, TA 6.5, pH 3.7 and brix 24.5, and a few others, acid reduction is started right at crush and ferment and maybe corrected one or two times more during rackings. The great thing about Foch is that it survives our bad winters where it drops to - 30F/-34.4C with a wind coming in from the NE at 30mph, freezing giant pine trees solid and blowing them over. About ten years ago I moved in 12 Lemberger a French/German grape. I thought it would give me a better wine and be cold hardy. That just hasn’t worked and I’ve only had the grapes ripen two or three years out of the ten.

Mine is a small back yard, but I’ve usually have around 25 -30 grape plants, including a few seedless for eating, six filbert nut trees and a couple of apples. With a vegi and flower garden there is not much more room, so every time I bring grapes vines in, something’s has to go. Two years ago I brought in a few Syrah and Sangiovese and they seem be doing OK so I expect a few grapes off them in 2007. I’ve also ordered 25 Cab Franc #1, which is reported as cold hardy. I don’t have the room for 25, but it was cheaper than buying 10. I don’t have room for 10 either, but figured I’d try to graft some t-buds off a few of the young plants onto my Lemberger and Foch and the rest I have a fellow winemaker that wants them.

Oh yes, besides my pedigree, I could tell you about my life, my wife and two daughters, but of course that would be an epic. Let me just say if it was a book, it would start out as porno, than slowly drift into baby care, school books, working, working working and than boredom, reading, art, winemaking being annoying and finally old. I did manage to get my daughters educated so they wouldn’t ever have to depend on a scoundrel like myself. Both beauties, one is single, a special education teacher, masters degree. The youngest married, BS degree, not me, my BS degree was free, program administrator, and my granddaughter. Both work in one way or another with developmentally disabled people. I think they had a knack for this because of me, possibly, ha ha.

Depending on how large a file Sir Bobbly Bob has programmed in to this swell site, I’ll put two or three hundred pictures up , but I’m not sure it can even handle this sized text file. Oops, takes very small pix files. My post, believe it or not, has been edited and condensed. I would guess that those who have chosen ‘or not‘, have just passed my IQ test.

[Dead Squirrel Running]

Did you I was done?

Yes, I'm done ragging on with text, but hey I have a few thousand pixs and this is just one day.

Depending how they come up, the first should be of my oldest daughter Angela, a school teacher in Boise. The next are both my daughters Angela and Anna with my son-in-law Sean, Anna and Ava and finally my grandparents, ha ha. I have to admit my grandparents were a lot older in this pix and he's lost 30lbs, no porker anymore. Of course this could lead to another porno chapter in my history, if he was enabled.

[lockwood1956]

oooooo

I was just viewing the photos and they disappeared!!

[lockwood1956]

There they are, I found them and undeleted them


see it works different this side of the pond

[Dead Squirrel Running]

Am I nuts

There they are, I found them and undeleted them


see it works different this side of the pond

Undeleted them to where? Why is it that I feel Francis Eric has his hand in the administrative side or possibly has control of the administrator or even might be the mother of the administrator, etc etc etc.

Maybe a different browser might help me see this invisable nothingness of jpg's I put up that only I can't see. Is there voo doo going on? Step forth you swaggert Francis Eric. Thumbnails text is there, but nothingness is paramount. I must be be Nietzsche, yes I've found my non-existent home, at last.

[Dead Squirrel Running]

Sorry................

Magic - I shut down my Zone Alarm and changed other things around with security and wala - I see the light, the pictures. I want to thank all the members of the internet family for making me the successful pain that I've grown into most willingly and annoyingly at this stage in my life. I'd also like to thank all of my associates, co-workers and former employes who pushed and poked me to become the leader in this profession and most of all my family, whom without their help I would not of obtained the lofty heights to almost, not quite, but almost to become a team good fellow with the likes of Francis Eric, Hippie and Sir Bobbly Bob. I hope I never let them down ......again........

[lockwood1956]

Hurrah!

but wait....you forgot to thank your parents there

tsk tsk tsk

[Dead Squirrel Running]

Thank the Lord for my Ma and Pa - I think

Ah yes, I do thank my parents for the DNA, and that was insightful, not at all spiteful, for those genetic genes certainly did have some effect on the young girls, looking at my butt, in those blue wrangler jeans. But when I write my epitaph, I’ll say I hope I did all the good and bad stuff on my own. Yuk yuk

[Dead Squirrel Running]

Dust off the cobwebs

Couldn't we dig up a dead body for a new member? If I knew this sillyness would be hanging over my head for weeks I might have added some porno pix's or at least a slide show of my summer flowers.

[Dead Squirrel Running]

Alex Bolduin

Alex, please take me off the hook. Say anything. Tell Robert he's nuts. I'll back you up if he deletes your post.

[maistro]

Hey everyone! New here and to wine making. I just moved from a big city to a small town here in Virginia and need a new hobby. I've tooled around with beer making a while back but lost interest. Of all the forums I have come across doing research, this has to be the most fun group yet. What actually got me hooked on this site was the Turbo Cider recipe thread. I liked how everyone chimed in on such a simple recipe. I think the Turbo Cider will be my first this coming weekend to break me in then it'll be some fruit. Looking forward to future posts!

[lockwood1956]

Welcome aboard

hope you enjoy your time here
regards
bob

[Mamgiowl]

Nice to meet you Maistro, have fun.