Archive | September 2014
September 23, 2014  

Video of Norton and Muscadine wine fermenting

This is from my daily punch down.  The CO2 from the yeast makes the skins float to the top.  You need to push them down under the must (juice before its wine) at least twice a day.  Keeps bacteria from setting in and ruining the wine (vinegar), it also helps to form the dark red wine color as this deep red/purple color comes from the skins.  If you didn’t ferment on the skins, you would get a light colored Rose’ instead.

September 22, 2014  

Norton and Muscadine wine making

I found a local vineyard that sells Norton and Muscadine grapes.  Had planned to pick 200-400lbs of Norton, but after several hours of picking and having to pick out the bad grapes from 90% of the bunches, decided to pick muscadines instead.

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Here is a good bunch, not many were like this.

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Here are the Muscadines.

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Ended up with 40 lbs of Norton grape and 60 lbs of muscadine.  It takes about 100 lbs of fruit to make 6 gallons, soooooo that’s right I got lazy and just decided to crush them together.  I know you shouldn’t mix, but dude I was wiped out after picking most of the day.  By the way you pick muscadine, one grape at a time.

So here is what it looks like after yeast and the fermentation working well.

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September 21, 2014  

Time to make Asian Pear wine

Picked what I could.  Check out how tall that pear tree is.  Really need to figure out a way to get the pears at the top of the tree.  Should have enough to make 6 gallons.  Crushed and then pressed.  Got about 7 gallons of juice.

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September 14, 2014  

Lasterday corks arrive just in time

Its official, we have a cork with our name on them!  Just in time for bottling of watermelon wine.

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The watermelon wine is really clear after filtering.

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