Wine website and recipes

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Hi everyone!

(I'm inside today b/c it's raining and b/c I am more tired than I thought I would be from today's hike! Thus, posting a lot!)

Anyway, anyone visited this website? What did you think? Do you have other sites to recommend?

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp

We are going to make a new cherry wine... We, um, excuse me, Mr. S. is our resident winemaker! I just do the cheerleading. Wine is new for him, and we have experimented with a dry sparkling cherry wine, which turned out well. He is now considering a cherry dessert wine (Rainiers are currently in...cross between Van and Bing.)

Got any recipes you would like to share?

Also, I'll try to get him to share his beer recipes. He hadn't made homebrew for about 15 years and just started up again this year. So far, I think he's doing great!!! We have all these micro-breweries out here that make wonderful beer, and I think some of his have been just as good or even better.

So if you have beer recipes, or wine recipes, please consider sharing 'em! Thanks!

-- Anonymous, June 24, 2001

Answers

Hi all, I had a quick look at the site and it looks pretty comprehensive. In some ways this is helpful, in other ways I find that a simple approach is the best way to go. Coincidentally, cherry wine is the classic example of simplicity - my recipe calls for 5# cherries, 3# sugar and yeast to make a galon of wine. This is a dessert wine (2# sugar would make a dry wine). We made a batch 2 years ago and it was excellent. I think we also used 1/2# of raisins in ours to give it extra body. We made a similar batch with choke cherries which was just as good.

We now have a cherry pitter that we found at an antique store, after we made that batch! I think they are stll available at Lehmans. Glad to hear that there are other homebrewers here!

The directions: Wash, stalk and stone the cherries (I left Kim in charge of getting the cherries stoned). Heat to 85C (180F) for 15 min, then cool. Strain, add the sugar (and chopped raisins) and yeast. Ferment at about 20C (70F) until clearing, then rack into an airlocked fermantation jar (sterilized with a Campden tablet if you want) until clear. Rack again, store in bulk about a year then bottle.

-- Anonymous, June 24, 2001


I don't have any recipes but I will come for the wine tasting! Cherry wine sounds delicious! smile smile Tren

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2001

Thanks David! (And c'mon over Tren! In about a year!)

I had read your pea pod wine posting and knew you were making some wines. I'll show Mr. S. your recipe. I think the raisins might be a good addition, too.

Do you use wine bottles and cork them? We aren't quite that sophisticated yet. We have used quart beer bottles and capped them. Not a very elegant presentation, but I guess it works okay!

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2001


Anyone have any blackberry wine recipes? They grow wild around here and I'd like to do more with them than just make jam. Thanx!

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2001

Sheepish, we use regular 750 ml wine bottles with a variety of different corks. We re-use the sherry/port type corks and have some great ribbed plastic stoppers that are a similar shape. We also have a hand corker that does the real thing if all the others are in use. We like the clear glass bottles best - the colors of the different wines are sooo pretty.

Marcia, blackberry wine is one of the harder wines to make, because it needs to be well aged. Immature blackberry wine has a smell kind of like mild vomit (!) but is excellent after 1-2 years storage. Use 6# crushed blackberries, 3/4# chopped raisins, juice from 1 lemon, 1/2 tsp tannin (or a cup of old tea!) and 2-3# sugar. Directions are similar to the cherry wine, except add the sugar 1# at a time, at one week intervals, racking (siphoning into a clean jar) each time.

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2001



Thanks, David. I'm gonna give a try...but will definitely age it WELL! We're not too crazy 'bout the smell of vomit! :-)

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2001

I just found about 10 lb of yellow plums in the freezer (last summer's.) Looks like it might be wine material. Any ideas???

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

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