What's going on in your winery today..

[koomber]

Tested the pH of my Elderberry must using my newly liberated pH meter

(It was 4.8g/L TA Tartaric)

[Rich]

pushed the cap on all the grapes at 5am.. Then at work for the day. Good cap on both reds, monte smells really nice! Good colour in both

[Skeggyrik]

Thought I should post here in addition to my welcome post.

http://www.winesathome.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1928&page=194

My first try at wine making is a California Connoisseur 6 bottle kit that has now been bubbling away quite happily for the last few weeks and is almost done.
The black treacle, raisin and demerara sugar wine has now slowed and is nearly complete, will check the SG when I rack it next.
The blackberry has now stopped all signs of fermentation so tonight's job is to rack it and stabilise it as long as the hydrometer tells me it's done, otherwise I will be back on asking questions about how to get it finished!
The apple is still slowly making it's way down the scale and the apple and blackberry is still going strong bubbling away.
I got given a bag of apples at work last week and that came out at about 3 litres of juice once pulped and put through my straining bags. I added a little sugar solution bring up the SG a little and started that off last night with the yeast with an aim to have a 6% cider in couple of weeks. I am hoping to see some action in there when I get home tonight.

[grumpy]

Sieved 1 gallon Gooseberry (recipe origin unknown)
Sieved 2 gallons Lychee (thanks for the tip)
Racked 1 gallon Ribena (recipe courtesy 0f CJJB)
Filtered 1 gallon Peach (recipe coutesy of CJJB)
Put two part finings in 2 gallons dried Elderberry and Dried Bilberry (recipe an amalgamation from various sources)

Drinking a rather nice Blackcurrant (my own recipe)

[goldseal]

The heated 'tent' in the garage appears to be working - a big, thick cap on the Merlot and on the Monte.

This morning I'll be steam-juicing greengages, some for greengage vodka, and some for freezing.

[goldseal]

... and done.

3.6kg greengages yielded 3.3l juice. 500ml has been mixed with 700ml vodka, the rest has been sulphited prior to being frozen.

[Rich]

Cap mashing today, starting before work at 5am again..

Also bottle cleaning/delabelling.

[ms67]

Bottling 2 gallons of quickie Elderflower wine, slightly different but only in a single aspect. Love my comparative brews.
Bottling 1 gallon of Blueberry and Cranberry quickie too.

[kampervan]

pressing some apples to check press still works

[koomber]

Pressed the Merlot at an SG of 1.000

Got 27(ish) litres out of 5 boxes(!) and about 2 L of sediment. Didn't really have to sqeeze them much either. Didn't other doing a first running though.

Utterly fantastic batch of grapes. Many thanks to Rich for letting me use his Grape Press.

Also racked 2 Gallons of 'Elderberry Disaster Juice' which I cobbled together as the Elderberries were gettin a bit lively on onday due to my poor handling.

[koomber]

Just racked the Merlot of the sludge. Then I weighed the 'Fermentation Vessel' (because calling it a fuel can would lower the tone) and the results are in.

Fuel can = 500g
Merlot + Fuel can =27900g
Merlot = 27400g
Merloy SG= 1.000 (ish)

Merlot Volume - 27.4L
Merlot Volume for the elderly - 6.02 Gallons.

And there is still some more in a DJ to be racked of the remaining sludge.

I'd be intersted to see how it compares with everyone elses results. Especially those who wern't able to blag some Trenolin Rouge from Rich

[goldseal]

I think my reds are going to be ready for racking Mon/Tue/Wed. Problem is, I'm away Tuesday! I need to decide when to start the starters for the 2nd runs (I'm using K1V in an attempt to overpower the yeasts in the grape skins) - actually not so much starters, more like 'most of the wine'.

[kampervan]

broke drill doing apples so will have to go to b&q in morning

[Mamgiowl]

Ooh, what a coincidence! I did the same thing this afternoon.

Spooky

[fatbloke]

Filtered and transferred a gallon of 08 Tinned Strawberry into a "bag in a box" and started supping........

The RFL Grand Final made it go down even better.........

regards

jtfb