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Today we started working on Charles Papazian’s “Holiday Brew” (from the “The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing”). Making the beer was only slightly more difficult than making the wine - essentially just make a sweet tea from hops and what not (also has cinnamon and ginger). Then filter the junk out into a 5 gallon bucket.

I still don’t have a good sense for what each ingredient does and how it would taste different if I changed things, but I think that will come with time. Probably more important is that I just get the hang of the process.

PA is at 6.5%

26 Nov 2007 Update: Checked PA: .5%. Still bubbling slowly.

27 Nov 2007 Update: Racked into a 5 gallon carboy.

12 Dec 2007 Update: Bottled. Tastes pretty good when warm & flat… pretty excited to see the carbonated & chilled version.

I haven’t picked a name for our first batch of wine yet.  Given the more-than-moderate mess ups that went down it wouldn’t be a surprise if this one is a blunder.

OK - I made the recipe labeled “Sal’s Blueberry Wine” in Terry Garey’s “The Joy of Home Winemaking” (page 90).   We got frozen blueberries and went for three times what the recipe called for (so three gallons).

Everything went fine.  Boiled the sugar and water.  Mashed the berries in a nylon bag (in the primary fermenter - a 5 gal bucket).  Put the hot sugar water with the berry bag.  Then added remaining water.  Acid, tanin, yeast nutrient, and Campden (when the temp dropped)… and so on.

This all went according to plan except… after I added the Campden tablet I checked the PA which was around 11%.  My yeast is supposedly lively until 14% alcohol so I decided to kick things up a notch.  I made some more simple syrup and added it the the mix.  Still only around 11%.  So I decided to put in the rest of my sugar (total of ten pounds when the recipe called for 7.5).  At this point I checked the PA, but accidentally read the balling scale - which was around 24 Brix or 13.5% PA.  Having misread the scale, I decided I had to dilute the mixture… only after adding water did I realize that I had misread the hydrometer and that it was actually perfect before I screwed up.

Long story summarized: after adding all that sugar/water I have 5 gallons worth of wine fermenting but I only put in 3 gallons worth of blueberries (and chemicals).  We’ll see how this turn out… but I won’t be surprised if it is a blueberry blunder.

26 Nov 2007 Update: Took out the berries.  PA is to zero.  The fermentation never got violent… it is still just lightly bubbling.  I may have caused this by stirring the yeast in instead of just sprinkling it on the top.

28 Nov 2007 Update:  Racked the wine into a 3 gallon carboy and two one gallon jugs.  Had to add almost a quart of water to top off the last jug.

The Gainesville gang is getting together for New Years.  In our preparatory blog all the guys were asking all the other guys to make some sort of beer.  They all assumed that I didn’t have the capability to make wine too… their assumption was correct - until today!!  For my birthday Jenn got me the necessary goods to get to brewing.

I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, so I think I am going to start with a batch of wine this weekend and hope it can be palletable by New Years.