sweasel.com

Her Stoatliness only does this so she can wear a white coat and be referred to as ‘Doktor Weasel’.

On the bright side, I get to do my hunchback routine and every now and then croak ‘Master! The Creature! It moved!’

And one of these days I rather fear it might….

Ummm, is there a reason, besides money, that when I click on the pic I get Zazzle’s Farmhouse and Daisies?

Malolactic Fermentation, is all the rage.

That’s where the maltose is converted to lactose and subsequently to alcohol.

I completely made that up once and passed it off on some wine snobs. Larfed meself silly I did. But then again it doesn’t take much to crack me up.

Do you need a better reason than money? It’s a stealthy way of getting my links into Google without pestering you people about my shit all the time.

I had a feeling I’d see you on this thread, Allen. I’m embarrassed at the amount of sludge visible there. I’m kind of new at this racking thing.

Actually, I had a completely different thought about the “sludge.” It went like this: “hmmm, good, she’s getting some nice precipitant out, and the wine has a ‘crisp’ look to it.”

If the lees are as compact as they look you can bottle directly. But, it never hurts to rack again. Sometimes the lees can give some off flavors to the wine. One of my rules of thumb: rack and wait.

As an aside I blended some of my older vintages and made a never to be seen again wine. I done got hitched on 9/25. We had over 200 people that got quite toasted at a barbecue at the house afterwards.

Many congratulations, Allen! I love to watch other people repeat my mistakes…

Hmrmph! Snurfle!

Hmm.

I’ve seen water-pipes like that somewheres before…

Husband and I used to buy bottom shelf vodka by the gallons, mix with local fruit (cherry was the best), several pounds of sugar and let sit for at least 6 months. Strain, filter, filter, drink. The cherry was like cherry pie in a glass.

I love blackberries but I can’t figure out how they haven’t taken over the world yet.

Allen beat me to it. If you get malolactic fermentation two things will happen: most of your bottles will burst; the contents of those surviving will transport you to the Fields of Elysium. Forget from champagne.

We uncorked a couple of bottles of blackberry wine while feeling rather glum at lunch after my Mum had been hauled off to the coronary ward with a heart murmur lo these twenty years ago (she’s still kicking). They were so good we polished off the rest of the batch. Mmm, mmm. Never repeated (which is the joy and heartbreak of DIY booze.)

The tendency to over-indulge in one’s supplies is something any longtime self-brewer will recognise.

My Dad’s winemaking bible was by a a guy called C. W. Berry, who looked a most genial cove, although judging by the quasi-industrial quantities of domestic wine he was usually pictured with it was a wonder he could stand up straight.

Went on a jaunt with Pop to buy an apple press off some bloke to process the pickings from our trees. Arrgh. Must stop. Will start sniffling.

“In the Olde Countree, we sold out of milk, bread and eggs whenever a snowstorm was coming. When a financial shitstorm is predicted, looks like people buy laying hens and make wine out of junk from the hedges.”

In the Olde Countree, when a financial/legal/governmental shitstorm is brewing, we buy more ammo. Nice to still have that option, at least for the moment.

I’m finding this guy helpful. He gives a lot of good hedge wine recipes, but he also tells you what all the things do and when you should make adjustments.

The demijohn on the right — the one with the plain cork — is elderberries soaking in vodka. In at least one double-blind test, they found elderberries reduced the length and severity of flu. Just being prepared here.

…make wine out of junk from the hedges.

Or the lawn.

Specifically, dandelions.

The neighbor-with-the-pool-behind-the-fence makes dandelion wine so potent that you’re risking self-immolation if you carry a glass of it within three feet of an open flame.

Oh my, *salivates profusely* looks good Stoaty. Nice fermentation locks, mine don’t have the cooly bubbles. Yeah Bill, I’ve had dandelion wine meself, good stuff. Been a bit of a teetotaler of late. Over indulgence is often a good behavior modifier.

Weasel: The demijohn on the right — the one with the plain cork — is elderberries soaking in vodka. In at least one double-blind test, they found elderberries reduced the length and severity of flu. Just being prepared here.

Well if you drink yourself comatose at the start of a 24 hour flu, I suppose you will wake up with about 6 hours of it left.

It was the Bishop of somewhere-or-other whose sovereign cold cure was a bottle of whisky and a sock. He would hang the sock on the end of the bed and drink the whisky. When he could see two socks, he was cured. Always worked for me.

Miss Stoaty,

What do you press the juice with?

The elderberry recipe I followed said not to press too much or you’ll end up with a heavy-bodied, syrupy wine. I pretty much followed suit with the other fruit, though I did take a drinking glass I’d sterilized and gave the fruit a light crush in the fermenting bin.

I am utterly and completely new to this, though. My dad made wine, but I’ve only ever fermented…erm…experiments.

Great looking wines, Sweasel! What’s the Sloe Situation? I know they’re ready to pick “in the autumn” and I’ve even found a reference to October, but I can’t seem to find any current reference to this year’s crop or anybody pickin’ em yet. They’re difficult to spot here in urban London, haha. You got sloes?

I have six gallons of what will be a chocolate mead five days into primary fermentation…once it is done with primary, I’ll rack it over the cocoa nibs for secondary. The honey was sinfully expensive, so it’d better be good.

Nope, we don’t have any sloes. I was chatting with someone in a shop the other day who said he made gin with plums.

Which I kind of don’t get, but…shrug. Gin is vodka and herbs, ain’t it?

Since I’ll obviously be getting my new demijohns after the blackberry season, I’ll have to grab some random stuff and make random stuff wine.

Anybody make cucumber wine? I have a SHITload of cukes.

At least it looks like they’ve figured out what’s killing the honeybees, Nina. If not how to stop it.

For some reason, when I read Allen’s comments, it comes across in my head, in a Terry Thomas “voice”.

No disrespect intended, if you are prone to take it as such…I just find it funny. 🙂

And I’ve had elderberry syrup on ice cream..mmmmmmmmm…delicious.

I was chatting with someone in a shop the other day who said he made gin with plums.

Plums are close enough to sloes to make a decent sloe gin, even if some sloe gin is made with vodka.

Ooog. I just flashed on that old Three Stooges “Niagara Falls” routine…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yJBhzMWJCc&feature=related

“Sloe-ly I turned…”

Yeah, I saw that, Stoaty…I hope they can nip that in the bud sooner than later.

And for the record, I hate that particular style of airlock–they’re a bitch to clean and generally just toss ’em. Unfortunately I have so many batches going at the moment that’s all I had left to use for my current batch. I need to bottle some. Wish I could send some to you, but given that you’re all ex-patriate and all, that ain’t gonna happen, alas!