Lovely Greens - 'A is for Apple'

I am delighted that Tanya of Lovely Greens has asked me to do a second guest blog post on her wonderful website (which you can go to if you click here). Last year she ran a series of guest posts on a 'Homesteading' theme. I felt a bit of a fraud to be shoe-horned into that series, as what I do is hardly homesteading, but being the media tart that I am, jumped in with both feet. The article (which you can read here) proved popular, and the hits on my page jumped exponentially. So, therefore, when Tanya asked again at the end of April, I had no hesitation but to give her a firm 'Yes'.

My theme this year is 'an alphabet of wine'. Those of you who read regularly (a handful at most!) will know that I am trying to make a wine with its main ingredient being from every letter of the alphabet. Over the last 12 months I have ticked off the letters W, L and V. I mentioned this aim in my last Lovely Greens post, and that is what got most response, so I decided to do a follow-up. Once the article is published (Sunday 29 June) I will post a link to it here. Although it might be quite late - I'm playing in a concert in Ilkley that day. Nielsen's Fourth Symphony - The Inextinguishable - which to me sounds like a headache set to music. But then I'm a nineteenth century kind of guy, so far as musical tastes are concerned.

To any new readers - welcome. This blog is essentially my diary with a few instructions on how to make wine, and tasting notes thrown in. I live a fairly unextraordinary life in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and you will find that my main concerns tend to be food, family, friends, music and books. Roughly in that order. This blog is most useful for seeing how I made wine, and then finding out whether the flavours have worked or not. Click on the label 'making wine' to find my recipes and methods. Generally I will put a link at the bottom of a 'making wine' entry to the first bottle of that flavour - so you can see whether it was a success (step forward Rose Petal 2013) or a failure (yes, I'm looking at you, Redcurrant 2013). I started this blog in April 2011, and since then I must have made over 50 batches of wine, and probably about 30 different flavours. Basically, have a browse.

To any existing readers - thank you. It is a great pleasure to know that some people are interested in an unexceptional, though (I like to think) very human, person. And do check out Lovely Greens. Tanya writes on many topics, with beautiful photographs, always in an interesting manner.

Ben

Crab Apple Wine - Ninth Bottle (A6), 1st December 2013

This was our Sunday night bottle, drunk to a leftover-turkey chilli and rice. We now have leftover leftovers in the fridge, and this could go on ad finitum.

Sunday had two cultural aspects. In the afternoon, we went to see 'Gravity' in the cinema. My mother had raved about how breath-taking it was, and it was certainly a fantastic spectacle. Boiled down, though, it was no more sophisticated than watching a steam train approaching a heroine tied to the tracks. The thing that took my breath away was the price. £21.40 for two tickets. Blimey.

In the evening I lay on the chaiselong and finished A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, which I loved. The surface story is page-turning, but it is also a clever exploration of time, of now, of self.

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NB This is my 500th blog post since I started in April 2011 (which doesn't sound that long ago - what a lot of wine!). Thank you to those who have read intermittently over that period, and welcome to those who stop by just the once. My most popular post has been 'Blackcurrant Wine - The Making Of ...' (which overtook 'Quince Wine - The Making Of ...' earlier this year), and the blog has been at its most popular during this summer - mainly thanks to Lovely Greens. Here is to the next 500. Cheers.

Guest Post on Lovely Greens

I was honoured a few weeks ago to be asked by Tanya, who runs Lovely Greens, to write a guest post for her blog. She is running a series of articles written by other people on the theme DIY Homesteading. They have all been fascinating, and varied. From building chicken coops and using chicken tractors to running off solar power in South Africa, stopping by handy hints for growing a garden economically, all have embraced the theme. I'm not certain that 'Ben's witterings on how he makes and drinks wine' compares. But Tanya says it does, so she is probably right.

Anyway, if you are stopping by from Lovely Greens, welcome. Feel free to leave any comments or questions you want (he said, with large puppy dog eyes expressing "Love me, love me")  and certainly have a browse. The way I imagine this blog can be useful is to choose one of the tags (in the right hand column) which contains a flavour of country wine, and click on it. You will then (probably - assuming you choose a flavour that I have both made and drunk since I started this blog in April 2011) get verbal snapshots of a year or two of my life - in reverse order - describing the bottles of that flavour and ending with how I made it. I try to be honest in my reviews of the taste, but you will see that mostly I treat the wine as a secondary aspect and talk about events, people and (very occasionally) ideas.

The other way that the blog is useful is to click on the tag saying 'making wine', as this will bring up all my recipes. Indeed, if you want to avoid the padding and get to the facts, that is probably what you should do (but you won't avoid the padding entirely).

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then I encourage you to stop by Lovely Greens. Tanya is a talented and enthusiastic blogger, who deals with all that is lovely and green. She is an ex-pat American, living on the Isle of Man (somewhere I must go one day - it looks beautiful) and her blog is simply a joy.

Some Technical Stuff (for Lovely Greens)

I am honoured to have been asked to write a guest blog for the Lovely Greens website. If you haven't come across it, click on the words 'Lovely Greens', and you will be taken there. Where my blog is a one-trick pony, Tanya's is an amalgam of all sorts of useful and interesting information about simple living, making stuff, wildlife and beyond.

Anyway, my guest blog will appear at some point within the next five weeks, and I will let you know when. The purpose of this blog post is to cover some of the technical stuff which I refer to in that post, but didn't have the room to put it in. Call this a very long footnote.

Sterilising Equipment

The way I sterilise equipment is by getting a teaspoon of sodium metabisulphite, and dissolving it in a pint of cold water. I then use this solution to cover all the equipment that I plan to use for whatever wine making stage I am at. So, I will generally start by siphoning it from the measuring jug into a demijohn or bucket. This way, the inside of the plastic tubing gets sterilised. Then, once the solution is in the demijohn/bucket, I will swill it around to make sure all surfaces that may touch the wine/ingredients are covered. There is no need to soak it - just a simple covering seems to do the trick. I then pour the solution back into the measuring jug, and pour it over anything else I plan to use (spoons, sieves, mashers, lemon juicers, bottles). Once finished, don't discard the solution. Instead store it to one side so that in the event (which is frequent for me) you realise that you have forgotten something, you can then sterilise that too. Only throw out the solution as you are clearing up having finished that particular stage of the wine.


When I have finished with the sterilising solution, I then cover surfaces of all equipment with boiling water. I do not know whether this is necessary (I suspect not) but it is something I do. Twice I have had a demijohn crack from this - in both cases a brown glass demijohn, so beware.

I have been told in a home brew shop that what I am doing is not actually sterilising equipment, but killing any yeast that may be hanging around the surfaces of stuff. This is good enough for me, as proper sterilising seems to involve leaving things to soak in bleach - and I worry about what effect this would have on taste.

Yeast

Often people will click on the label 'yeast' on my blog, and I can't remember where that takes you. I tend to use yeast in sachets, and I am sure there are several varieties out there that will do the trick. I most frequently use a burgundy yeast for red wines and a champagne for whites, but I have no idea if this makes much difference - I suspect not. The only really important thing about yeast is that you make sure your liquid is not too hot when you put it in. I usually leave my wine overnight before putting the yeast in the next morning.


Racking

'Racking' is the process where you transfer the wine from one demijohn to the next, leaving the sediment in the first demijohn. This is also the stage where I get my first taste of the wine. What you need to do is put the full demijohn at a height (on a counter) and the empty demijohn below it (on the floor). Attach your flexible plastic tubing to a piece of stiff plastic tubing with a bund at the bottom. Lower this into the full demijohn, bund first, but not so far down as to touch the sediment. Suck the other end of the tube, so that the wine starts flowing, and put this end into the empty demijohn. As the wine in the first demijohn goes down, gradually lower the bund, so that it moves closer to the sediment. As it gets close, tip the demijohn so that the most liquid possible is siphoned up, but try not to disturb the sediment. The instant the sediment looks like it is going to get sucked in, tip the demijohn back, and withdraw the tubing. In fact, it doesn't matter if you get a bit of sediment - this is pretty much inevitable.

Once you have finished this stage of racking, tip the tiny amount of liquid in the bund into a glass and taste what you have made so far. This will give you some idea of whether you need any more sugar. Generally (but not always) you will. If the wine is sweet enough already fill the gap in the second demijohn with tap water. If you think it needs more sugar, fill the gap with a syrup solution made from a ratio of 1 pint of water:six ounces of sugar. This is not a hard and fast rule, but generally works.

Different wines will have different levels of sediment. For example, I find that elderflower has very little sediment, whereas blackcurrant has loads. Don't worry if up to a third of your demijohn is filled with sediment - this happens from time to time. Do make sure, though, that after you have racked the wine, you fill the second demijohn to its neck with the water or sugar syrup solution you have made.

Bottling

The technique for bottling is very similar to that for racking. Your demijohn goes on the counter and your bottles go on the floor. This time, though, you can rest the bund bit of plastic tubing on the bottom of the demijohn, leaving your hands free. Have a spare glass to hand, so that you can catch some wine when changing between bottles. Also make sure that you have a spare bit of counter, so that you can put the full bottles out of 'kicking over by mistake' range. As you fill one bottle, move the siphon out of it via your glass and then into a new bottle. Leave the siphon in the new bottle (you do not always need to hold it, provided it is securely inside the filling bottle) as you move the full bottle onto your counter. Keep the last bottle you intend to fill inside a measuring jug, so when there is any overspill, it runs down the sides of the bottle into the jug, rather than all over the floor. Not only is this less messy, it provides even more wine for you to drink. For the last bottle, you will need to tip the demijohn, so that you siphon as much liquid as possible.

Corking
When you have six full bottles of wine, you need to stopper them up somehow. DO NOT USE SCREW CAPS. This is really really important. If the wine starts to ferment again (and some of them do) then you have created a bomb that could cause severe harm - flying glass everywhere. Instead, use bottles with corks. You can stop them up with plastic corks (which are reusable) or real corks. The weak point of the bottle is then the cork, and any explosion will mean the cork shoots out and the wine fizzes over the top. This is annoying, but not fatal! It is the reason I store all my bottles upright.


If you use plastic corks, you can just press them into the bottle with your thumb. If you are using proper corks, you need a corking machine. When using this, dangle a piece of string in the bottle as the cork goes in, leaving enough length to be able to pull it out. This way, the pressure caused by compressing the air above the liquid is diffused, meaning less chance of the whole thing blowing its top. You may notice bubbles around the string immediately after the cork has gone in. When the bubbles stop (a matter of seconds, if that) pull the string out vertically.

I recognise that this is not my most interesting post - and apologies - but I hope it is of some help. If there is anything else technical that you want to know, just leave a comment anywhere on my blog and I will respond.