So, what can one do with dozens of bottles of blackberry wine – well, one thing is to make some quick and delicious salad dressing:
Blackberry Vinaigrette
So we finally found time to rack and bottle one of our Blackberry Wine experiments from last year’s harvest, a 2012 Blackberry, that was slightly oaked. We were aiming for a full bodied wine, and used 90 pounds of blackberries for a 15 gallon batch – which gave us pretty intense flavors, colors and the full bodied taste we were after. The wine is slightly sweet, with just a light oak flavor, barely enough to tell, but blending nicely with the fruitiness that the blackberries contribute.
And some more bathroom progress – just in time for Thanksgiving visitors: we installed the corner shower unit and it is functional! Still need to pretty up the walls surrounding the shower and tub, i.e. more drywall mud, sanding and painting. But we have another shower – hurray!
Another three day Wine Chemistry & Microbiology lab weekend just ended. We had even more “hands-on” experiment time, using and comparing different methods to analyze various wine components. From conductivity tests to check for cold stabilization, to ripper titrations for measuring levels of SO2, we were busy the entire time.
This morning we worked with microscopes and learned how to identify different strains of yeasts as well as spoilage organisms. So now we have another item for our winery wish list: a decent microscope (which would be right after the ebulliometer)!
By the way, our chromatograms for checking on malolactic fermentation progress turned out a lot better than during our first attempts:
About two weeks we added yeast to our apple cider, which was fermenting in the barn. We checked the progress for the first few days and it seemed ok, but then we got sidetracked with the new baby, and sort of forgot about the fermenting apple cider.
We finally went out to check on it yesterday, thinking that fermentation should be completed. But the temperature in the barn had dropped enough during the last week to stop the yeast from growing further. Luckily, the cider was not spoiled, it had a slight alcohol taste – enough to keep it from spoiling – but it was still really, really sweet (at 19° Brix).
Jeff racked the cider into carboys and brought them into the kitchen. Once they warmed up – which took all night – the yeasts “went to town”. Each carboy looks like it is boiling from all the fermentation activity and the airlocks are just bubbling. It sounds like there is water running in the kitchen.
