What's going on in your winery today..

[robwrx]

Spent the afternoon cleaning 15 filthy DJs and 2 23litre glass carboys. The best £7.50 I've spent on e-bay!

[mrdexter]

Just finished the second racking of 5 gallon wine #1

Now 4 gallon as I left it unattended and the hose jumped out of the receiving carbouy. Carpet smells good though.

[mrdexter]

Managed to spill another half gallon of #1. At this rate I'm going to have to ferment much bigger quantities!

Racked my second Beaverdale Shiraz and stabilised, ready to de-gas.

[mark g]

orange & carrot juice wine.

Today i have started two gallons of orange & carrot juice wine.
it's looking very good and fermenting very fast.

[Rich]

This evening I've racked my Kenridge port kit, degassed, and left with finnings in. Then set up the brewery for tomorrows beer brewing, Hop Back Summer Lightning copy from G.Wheelers British ale book. Got a wine #1 to knock up too, to Goldseals spec with late added gooseberries.

[NorthernWiner]

Today, I'm racking the remaining 2009 wines out of barrels and blending various 2010 red wines to refill them (I have a new barrel to fill as well). With the exception of some Zinfandel, and a couple of other small batches, I made mostly Bordeaux varietals last autumn.

The blends I've settled on:

* Barrel 1 (new French oak, M+ toast): 83% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Merlot, 3% Petit Verdot

* Barrel 2 (2 yr old French oak, M toast): 64% Merlot, 34% Cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot

* Barrel 3 (small, neutral American barrel.): 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 20% Cab Franc, 10% Petit Verdot

* Barrel 4 (neutral French barrel): 88% Zinfandel, 12% Petite Sirah

I still have 4 gallons of Petit Verdot I'm not sure what to do with. I'll probably save it to blend with something next year.

[koomber]

Brewed up an American Blonde Ale (which is short hand for a blonde ale with lots of hops). Loaded it up with Northern Brewer and Styrian Goldings.

Starting to get consistant OG's from the brewing kit now. Getting very good efficiency too which is surprising. Something around 75%.

I also had a chance to test out the CFC in anger today. Worked as intended, though my tap adaptor seems to have developed a leak with an unerring (and unnerving) ability to hit me right, bang in my eye.

[robwrx]

Bottled my 2nd ever wine no. 1. It was made with apple juice and tasted significantly better than the first wine no. 1 that was made with orange juice. Also got to use my floor corker for the first time, it was ace.

[ms67]

in the last week ...
Fined the Muscat, now clear
Stabilised the VCdR
Started 5 gallons of Green Tea & Ginger
Bottled 2 gallons of Blueberry & Cranberry (gave away 5 bottles as late xmas gifts cos i was too busy to do it at the time)
homebrew blogged a bit too.

must do more in the next week as life will get crazy again after that!

[NorthernWiner]

Had a disastrous night racking. Every thing that could go possibly wrong did.

I put up a new "heavy duty" shelving unit over the weekend to hold a couple of barrels. It was supposedly designed to support 450 pounds per shelf. So I put a 55L barrel (170 lbs when full) on the bottom shelf, and a 25L (90 lbs) on the shelf above it.

It was all good until I filled the barrels. I filled the larger one first. No problems. Then I filled the smaller barrel. As I started to clean up, I heard the unmistakable sound of metal shearing, and turned to see a shelf begin to buckle. I caught 90 lbs of barrel as it started to crash to the floor. Fortunately the larger barrel only had a few inches to fall, so no damage to it other than a little spilt wine. It did roll onto my foot, however, and crunched Mr. Pinky in the process.

I proceeded to swear quite a bit, but cleaned everything up and went back to finish the racking. I started the autosiphon as my wife came into the room to check out the collapsed shelf. As I started talking I stopped paying attention to the racking. The hose wasn't quite long enough and popped out of the carboy. Before I could say "aw fuuuuuudge" and crimp the hose, a gallon of wine had already spewed onto the concrete floor.

Needless to say, my wife found the whole scenario quite to her liking, and made no attempt whatsoever to conceal her amusement. Didn't even help clean up the mess.

[lockwood1956]

Needless to say, my wife found the whole scenario quite to her liking, and made no attempt whatsoever to conceal her amusement. Didn't even help clean up the mess.

tch!

women eh?

(runs for cover)

[Rich]

Needless to say, my wife found the whole scenario quite to her liking, and made no attempt whatsoever to conceal her amusement. Didn't even help clean up the mess.

Oh dear Steve, Doesn't sound too good. Not knowing her sense of humour but.. Would she see the funny side of being given an empty bottle/glass when it comes time to drink it? Her bit obviously went on the floor!

Yesterday in the brew shed, made 1 gallon of milk Stout. 'Brew in a bag' Aussie style on the stove top. Will be interesting to see how it comes out.

Today.. Helped make a Courage Directors clone with Brian. Then sorted out my ingredients for a 5 gallon #1 to assembly tomorrow afternoon. Now time to relax with a glass or two.

[NorthernWiner]

I can't say much bad about my wife. After all, she does put up with me and my silly hobby.

Today I am de-labeling and prepping bottles. Next weekend I have 40 liters of Marquette (a locally grown red) to bottle. The LAST of the '09 wine. Finally! Woo-hoo!

2009 for me will go down as the year I made too much wine. Some of you guys who make many hundreds of liters might not think it to be that much, but I processed close to 1200 kg of red grapes and 300 L of white juice that year. It's a lot of work for one person in a cramped room in the basement, not to mention it taxed the limits of my winemaking equipment and storage. By contrast I only processed 725 kg and 150 L of white juices in 2010. That's probably about where I'll keep it in 2011 as well.

[ukric]

Racking racking and more racking. I've been away with work this week and am away all next week (missing wine circle :'( ) So trying to cram as much in this weekend as possible.

[koomber]

Popped my kegging cherry today. Launched my "Forget Me Malts" Belgian Blonde into a keg and stuck 23 PSI on it (at room temp) I'll pop it into the frdge and then keep it at about 12PSI and hopefully it'll be ready to drink in a couple of weeks.

The ferment came out a fair bit dryer than I thought so it's wound up at 6.13% ABV. Should be interesting, if it isn't incredibly thin....