rosehip not medium

I transfered the rosehip must from the bucket to a demijohn tonight via a nylon seive as per the recipe. According to Mr Berry, it should be a medium wine – which I like – an SG reading results in the specific gravity being 0.990 or very dry – which I don’t like. I added 30g of sugar (no idea why; seemed like a good idea at the time) and repeated the SG reading with the same results.

Still continuing to try to revive the nettle wine, I have added more nettle wine must to the starter bottle. I had to relieve the pressure in the starter bottle over the weekend as it looked almost ready to burst. When the bottle is almost full and still fermenting, I will add it to the must and see what happens. It is still fermenting but very slowly.

The mead, marrow and youngs kit are all going at a steady pace now. The peach is still going bananas!

Winemaking day

I had every intention of making my mead today then getting out in the garden. When I got up it was drizzling, this became heavier and now it is tipping it down. So today has been a wine day. I washed and sterilised all the demijohns and a bucket for continually dropping equipment in. I started by making the mead which is now in a demijohn outside cooling down.

I’ve transferred the marrow into two demijohns. I read in Mr Berry’s book that if you need to top it up, you use a syrup of the same strength as that added to the original must so I’ve added a pint with 6oz (170g) of sugar added to each demijohn.

The peach was transferred to a demijohn which just leaves the prune and the rosehip (yuk!). I have taken reading from all the wine I’ve got going and put the results in a table:

Wine	Temp	S.G.	Notes
marrow wine 1	17	1.69	Decanted from bucket to demijohn. topped up with 1 pt syrup ( 6oz sugar dissolved in 1 pt warm water).
marrow wine 2	18	1.62	topped up with 1 pt syrup ( 6oz sugar dissolved in 1 pt warm water)
peach wine	19	1.89	Decanted from bucket to demijohn. Fermenting quickly
youngs wine	20	1.28	fermenting quickly still
mead
nettle	18	1.78	appears to have stopped
Elderflower
Rice & Raisin 1
Rice & Raisin 2
Rice & Raisin 3
Royal Elderberry		1.66	started in 2006, stopped over 12 months ago, left in shed. will  put in warm spot or add restart yeast.

It’s quite fun doing this but remember to sterilise everything in between taking readings or you might transfer bacteria around and spoil all of your wines.

Nothing much to report but a report on everything

Changed the time!
Its not Thursday it’s still Wednesday for me, although it is 10 to 2 in the morning) so I’ve altered the time this was published.

Home
Not much happening today. I spent a lot of it looking at finances and realising that we have none! It’s not helped by DFS not going to work – off again today because he “can’t be arsed with working for them lot”. In the meantime, Christmas is only a few weeks away and we haven’t even got a card – the kids want laptops which is impossible. Once I’d stopped panicking and getting upset, I tried to look for a solution instead of concentrating on the problem and I’ve decided there isn’t a reasonable solution. Become single again so I can make a claim, win the lottery, get DFS to go to work, get the miracle job that fits around school and pays decent money, tell all the finance companies that DFS made arrangements with (he has HP on 4 vehicles… don’t ask) that we’ve changed our mind. I think I’ll go back to crying.

Kids
DDJ had yet another school trip. This time she went to the Beatles museum and had a great day. I also sorted out which high school they will be going to. I can’t pick one but to be fair, I haven’t put any effort into choosing as I did for DSL. What’s the point? I spent ages looking at schools for him, we decided this was the best, he was bullied throughout and hated it. He wouldn’t move schools just in case the next one was worse except he’d lose his best friend too. He never did very well at school, he just went and got his head down but put no effort in and came aways with minimal grades. Both the kids want to go to this one and I think if they are happy, they should learn better. DSL continues to spent all of his days in bed. One day this week he didn’t get out of bed until after 6pm! Most days average between 3 and 4 pm. It’s really getting beyond a joke. When he is awake, he is playing a game either on his pc, his xbox or his ps3. What a life eh? He will be upset in a minute when I disconnect the internet – by the way, if anyone can advise me about a program that I can install to restrict users on a BT Home hub version 1.0, I’d be very grateful. I’ve rang BT and they tell me there is nothing I can do.

Garden
Back to the garden and nothing much has been done. At least it wasn’t raining today; it was bright with sunny parts but still a little cold. The chicken coop base went down, it’s almost planned now! I painted the sides, we burnt even more of the old shed and that’s about it. I put the last lot of wood for tonight in the firebin after midnight with a brilliant full moon making the fence almost glow in the dark. It was almost magical out there tonight. Everywhere had the silvery-blue sheen, the air was slightly crisp and it was so quiet. It was similar to how it is when it’s snowed. Then a big gust of smoke completely engulfed me and I choked my way back into the house.

The window sill garden is still operational despite somebody flooding the lettuce seedlings. I think there are 5 germinated. The beans have only just started to sprout in the bathroom and the peas are beginning to get leaves.

Wine
On the winemaking front, not much is happening. I’ve got 4 demijohns sterilising on the cooker ready to make mead and transfer some of the buckets of wine into. I’m sure the rosehip is turning to vinegar, it tastes awful. I’ll leave it and see. The youngs kit is bubbling away like crazy. I’ve videoed it and will add it to my list of things I want to add here. As to the rest,  I’m stirring whatever needs stirring and leaving whatever doesn’t.

Dog
Tonight is night 3 for Lexie sleeping in the porch. So far she hasn’t messed in there so that’s one step the right way. I thought I’d emptied it but she managed to destroy a new boxed catflap that I overlooked on the first night and the last night she managed to get a feather duster that was hanging up 7′ up the wall. I’ve no idea how. Now it is completely empty so I’ll see how that goes. I’m ashamed to admit, I still haven’t taken her for a walk.

Other
I’m 40 on Friday. Whenever I think about it I feel sick. Why won’t time stand still?

Youngs wine kit stage 2

Tonight was day 3 of the kit so I have topped it up with water direct from the tap. It is fermenting quite quickly. I have video (on my phone so terrible quality) that I might upload.

I am still stirring the prune and the rosehip. The started bottle for the mead is looking alright so I will probably make a start on the mead tomorrow.

prune wine & mead

Made a start on the prune wine tonight. I thought I’d bought dried but there were “ready to eat”. They were also over 3 months out of date. Oh well, I should imagine that it wasn’t always perfect fruit used in winemaking. So far all I’ve done is bunged it in a bucket with 4l water and a spoonful of pectic acid. I need to stir it now daily for ten days.

I’ve also made a starter bottle up for making mead. This is preparation of yeast to get it going before adding it to whatever you are making. In a saucepan I  put:

• 1 tbsp of malt extract
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp citric acid
• 300 ml of water

I bought it all to the boil, boiled it for a minute or two and then placed it all in the fridge. While it was cooling I sterilised a wine bottle. Once cool I used a funnel to add 1 tsp wine yeast to the sterilised bottle then poured the cooled malt mixture through the funnel (to clean any yeast through). I placed a cotton wool ball in the neck of the bottle and placed the bottle behind the TV (running out of places to put all this wine!). It will be there for three days and hopefully, the yeast will be thoroughly enjoying itself and multiplying rapidly.

The kit I started yesterday seems to be doing well and has a nice yeasty froth on it.

Note to self: Have borrowed 4 demijohns from mom who has loads! I can see this being a regular occurence but had to promise payment of alcoholic “samples”.

Youngs white wine kit

yesterday I bought a wine kit from WIlkinsons for £4.99. I am hoping to make it for Yule gifts. Reading the outside it said it contained grape juice concentrate and glucose syrup. Don’t believe them! I pulled the ring tab on the tin expecting nicely cartoned ingredients and almost spilt a vary full tin of gloop all over the place. I assume its the juice and syrup blended but not sure how much glucose is in it because I also had to add a sugar syrup. Inside  where the instructions are  – yep thanks for that it gives you a list of other items and ingredients you need, most of which I have but some of it I don’t such as potassoim sorbate and wine finings. I’m now wondering why this kit is faster than bunging a can/carton of grape concentrate in a demijohn with some water, sugar and yeast and leaving it to ferment. That’s all that I’ve done with this. I now need to leave it for 3 days then top the demijohn up with water. Anyone have any “fast” wine recipes that I can use to save buying these kits?

wine readings

Added yeast and citric acid to peach wine. SG peach: 1.200+ (off scale)

Rosehip day 4: SG  1.060 (actually frothing it’s bubbling so much!) Continue to stir daily. It smells fantastic. I wish you could capture a scent! It doesn’t taste half bad either.

Nothing to do with the marrow wine now. Lid is convex so need to adapt it to fit air lock.

Nettle has slowed down way too much but is still very sweet. Will check SG and consider adding more yeast (?)

RIce & raisin and elderflower are in the shed and fermenting way too slowly. The rice & raisin was very dry the last time I checked, I haven’t checked the elderflower.

marrow wine step 2 – plus the rest

It’s been 6 days today so I’m one day over the recipe recommendation – not bad for me. It’s taken all morning to strain the must using reducing sizes of filters. I’ve added the sugar and I estimate that about 1.5 gallon of must finally went in the bucket. I’m going to see if I have a grommet to fit an airlock and ferment it in the bucket. If not I’ll ask the lady on the market when I go later today to get the demijohns (used at £1 each). The SG is 1.110.

I’ve stirred the rosehip which smells gorgeous. I’ve just worked out how long they need to stay in the bucket for and I’ll need to transfer them the day after my birthday – my 40th (I’m dreading it. We have no cash so won’t be celebrating – commiserating – either).

I’ve finally boiled the dried peaches. They were supposed to be left for 12 hours and it’s been about 30. I gave a good mash too. The recipe didn’t say to do this but I thought I might get more flavour.  I left it to cool  bit while i went shopping. The lady on the market didn’t have any grommets or any used demijohns so I settled for a new lidded bucket, exchanged steves new boots (too small, wrong style) and came home. I then strained the peaches through a sterile old tea towel and left them to drip throught the towel while I cooked tea. Then the band holding the towel on the bucket snapped so I had to fish the lot out of the bucket and start again! It’s strained now so now it’s cooling overnight in readiness for the yeast tomorrow. I’ve found a bung I can use to adapt a bucket in the shed. It is the bung out of a plastic demijohn (which I can’t bring myself to use). I’ll drill a hole in the bucket lid and push it through.

more gardening

Today I spent more time in the garden. I am trying to get it all ready for next year so I cleared the beds and made a start emptying the compost bins.  I collected some more tomatoes for the seeds too. I also planted the Winter Gem lettuce which is sitting on the kitchen window. This afternoon I made a start on the peach wine. It said to soak 2kg of dried peaches in 1 gallon of water but as I didn’t have the bucket (2 full of marrow and rosehips!) I put 1kg and 2 litres of water in 2 bowls.  The recipe says to soak for 12 hours but they will be there longer than that. I need to strain the marrow must out of the bucket to use it! I also found dried plums for wine that are out of date. I need to get on and do that soon. I dug out the yoghurt maker tonight and started a batch off. I’m not that keen on it but the kids love yoghurt and it’s much cheaper to make it than buy it. I need to look at different ways of flavouring it now that all the fruit is out of season.

A little off topic but I’ve spent the last few days looking at smallholdings or houses with land again; preferablt south of us but Wales is an option especially as that is where my family originate. It’s just a dream I know but I’d love a little land and to live close but not right next to, the coast. I’ve spent years looking doing this and spend hours researching rearing our own animals and growing our own food. I know we’re never going to be able to do it but still, the dream is nice and I can occupy my evenings looking at how to provode food for our family and how to kill and dress various animals! Our only chance of it ever happening is a lottery win though – like that will ever happen.

more winter preparations

No cooking today – yet but I did get in the garden and plant the onions. The sets I bought did 6 rows across the 4 ft beds at 15cm apart each way and I covered them with fleece to stop the birds eating them I then dug up the few leeks that are growing and heeled them in in the foot or so space remaining in the onion bed.  I cleared the legume bed and started covering it with rotted manure but it was too dark to carry on. I had a little bit of a tidy but it is still a mess out there.

In the house I got around to making the Rosehip wine. It needs to sit for 14 days now with daily stirring. I want to use up the dried peaches out of the shed as they went out of date at the start of the month.

The marrow wine is turning to mush in the bucket and I continue to stir daily. It is breaking down now after 4 days of stirring and looks like this:

I’m trying to plan the garden to have chickens again. I miss the eggs. I was looking at the Down the Lane website and considering a 6×4 shed. This time I want to place it centrally so the birds can alternate ruining the grass instead of demolishing one area. I will try and get some pictures to demonstrate.