What's going on in your winery today..

[ms67]

moved the blueberry & cranberry wine to secondary. Finished editing, compressing and uploading a "howto" vid on making wine. opened a bottle of green tea & ginger to celebrate. 'tis a good day.

[ms67]

inspection of the various blackberry sources. by the river, harsh, acidic, small, but ripening. In the garden huge, sweet, juicy and ready for the first crop.

[NorthernWiner]

inspection of the various blackberry sources. by the river, harsh, acidic, small, but ripening. In the garden huge, sweet, juicy and ready for the first crop.

That reminds me... I have yet to go check my secret stash in the woods.

[spritzer]

I am just about to filter 3 one gals... one is watermelon, one is lychee (from juice) and the third is pina colada (pineapple and coconut juice)

On racking, the pina colada and lychee were very pleasant.... I am not sure how long these will last....
I think I will send one in for the VWC, will decide later which one....
The watermelon was ok, but nowt to write home about.

I also have to rack a 5 gal of pinot grigio, and 5 gal of cab sav.

If I have time, I am going to start a lychee, from tinned fruit - eventually

I suspect, I will be faffing in the kitchen for a while, so I may get more, or less than the above done

[kampervan]

bottled 5 gal no1 and racked to 5 gal kits.

[lockwood1956]

Not really in the winery but I started netting my vines (will finish tomorrow)

[koomber]

Racked my Mindcontrol ESB (Extra special bitter kinda went for a play on words: ESB... ESP....) and my secondry decided to leak so I sanitised my arm (thank you tiny spray bottle) tried to fix with no joy, so quickly cleaned out the primary, racked back into that fixed the secondry with a craft knife and a tube of silicone grease and racked back into the secondry. Loads of lovely oxidation.

Also been testing out additions of honey rum to my homemade stout. I've lost track of what the first one tasted like so I'll need to restart the trials

[koomber]

Started a Belgian Wheet beer today with some 'help' from Rich. Improved from last week (Mashtun decided not to kill itself mid mash), but some small errors (lost 1 gallon of wort ensuring that the lino didn't get dehydrated).

Wound up missing my target OG of 1.057 and hit 1.048 instead. I'm sure it'll be fine! If not I've got some leftovers so I'm sure I can do a small batch and make some strong wort to mix in to increase the OG.

[ms67]

3.5 kg of blackberries foraged today, and plenty more to come in the near future from the same spot. So they are now mashed and sitting covered with boiled water and campden ... ready for a straight blackberry wine (firm favourite in this house, following an old faithful recipe).

Gotta pick some cultivated ones from our garden next and freeze them - 'cos all 30 DJ's are accounted for - until i do some bottling.

[goldseal]

Nothing

What I should have been doing was labelling some bottles for the VWC show, stabilising a couple of DJs and digging out a couple of bottles to take up to Pontefract on Thursday, for quaffing purposes.

What I have actually being doing is yet another 12+ hour day, stuck in front of this 'orrible machine, writing code and quoting for jobs.

Can't wait to finish tomorrow evening. Four days off, my first time stewarding at a show, and probably some decent curry.

My problem now is to select a couple of bottles that won't be too shabby alongside Bob's and Mr. Kroll's. No pressure ...

[ms67]

after a couple of days of steeping finally got the blackberry wine started with all the usual additions .... and recorded more clips for another vid.

[NorthernWiner]

Can't wait to finish tomorrow evening. Four days off, my first time stewarding at a show, and probably some decent curry.

My problem now is to select a couple of bottles that won't be too shabby alongside Bob's and Mr. Kroll's. No pressure ...

From what I hear, Karl's the guy we all have to watch out for. Wasn't it last year he walked away with every trophy imaginable?

Mmmmmm.... currrrry.....

[ms67]

1st batch of this years blackberry wine ---->>>> secondary. 30 full DJ's .... no empties ... better get bottling ... cos more new brews starting very soon.

[Darren]

blackberry wine (firm favourite in this house, following an old faithful recipe).

please do share

[ms67]

Started another 3 gallons of blackberry wine. those brambles just keep giving kilos of berries!