Beginnings.

I started making my own wine in 2005.  I think I was frustrated with how much money I kept giving the liquor store.  I made a couple batches of dandelion wine using bread yeast.  My impatience with the process led to the consumption of some very questionable hooch.  It was fizzy and sweet and light.  Not entirely unpleasant but far from fantastic. I love the process.  It makes me feel like a mad scientist because of all the bubbling and strange smells and the element of 'magic' involved. (I know, it's a very explainable science) It's especially rewarding because after concocting these strange brews, I catch a buzz from them.  Quite nice. I have kept it up with the dandelion wine every year since then and it's always different.  Gradually I started experimenting with other country wines.  The beet wine from 2007 is probably my favorite.  You have to really like beets to enjoy it, but it's actually a well-balanced deep red wine. Dry and spicy.  Other  wine projects have included blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, elderberry, lilac, grape, peach and ginger.  In fact I just started a batch of ginger champagne that I'm very excited about.

And Here's the beginning of a cherry mead...

Wine Journal:
June-July, 2010

Well for the first time in 5 years I didn't make a dandelion wine.  The flowers didn't come out all at once the way they usually do which made it hard to get enough for a batch.  The blueberry wine from two years ago is superb.  Too bad I drank most of it while it was still not very good.   I began a batch of strawberry mead and bottled up the Ginger Champagne that I started over the winter.  It was super spicy upon bottling.  I conditioned each bottle with maple syrup that my parents made and the ginger was grown locally here in Amherst by Old Friends Farm.  I made up a nice label and am about to put them into the basement.  Here are some pics.

this is the yeast that settles on the bottom.  looks like another planet.

It's important to relax the bottles before storing.  and to take off old labels.

So we pitted about 10 lbs of cherries. Then boiled 2 gallons of water and dumped it over them in a 5 gallon bucket.  When the water cooled to about 80 or 90 degrees I added about a tablespoon of wine yeast.  The yeast eats the sugar in the cherries and pulls the color from the fruit into the water.   I stirred several times a day for about 4 or 5 days before straining out the fruit, adding 5lbs of honey, some citric acid, and yeast nutrient and putting it all into gallon jugs with fermentation locks.  They've been bubbling away vigorously for days now.  The color started off nice and deep red, but we've been in a heatstroke here so the yeast has been so active that the liquid now looks more orange and creamy.  Hopefully it will settle down.