Strawberry Wine, Week 4

We moved the strawberry wine over into another glass carboy last week. It's a bit tangy, I'm assuming (hoping!) that will settle down over the next two months.

yay! Just two more months until we can bottle!

We bought the second glass carboy about 2 weeks ago. When we bought the first one, last August - they were 15 dollars. This second one cost us 30, and I was told that they will be going up another 300% in the next month or so. We'll probably invest in a third now. I guess there is only one company now making and distributing them? There used to be another company, but now they are coming in from Italy. So if you have any interest in wine making in the near future, I suggest at least getting the glass carboy now.


Kevin also is attempting another beer. He was a little disappointed in his results last summer - but gave it another shot this weekend while I was working on the wine.

my attempt at capturing the bubbling in the airlock

The beer makes so much more noise than the wine in the airlock!


We're really having a lot of fun learning how to brew at home. I'm already looking for another recipe for the next batch of wine!

How to Make Dandelion Wine

First, find some children to help you pick dandelions.








The recipe calls for 35 cups of dandelions, so spend as long as you can stand picking them.



Frolic home.







Recruit a couple of friends into drinking wine and peeling all the petals off of the dandelions. Apparently, there can be no green as this will make the wine bitter. Settle in for a good 5 hours until your thumbs are stained and your back is aching. Notice you have nowhere near 35 cups. But pretend like it doesn't matter.





Work your magic.



Cross your fingers and let the fermenting begin.

Sunshiney Weekend

This weekend flew by. And I did a whole lot of nothing.

No pictures.

No hiking.

I spent the weekend having a garage sale. It so wasn't worth it. A lot of sitting around for only 100 dollars. I mean, I got some stuff cleaned out of my house. But it was soooo gorgeous this weekend. I should have spent the days hiking, playing, planting.

It's gorgeous today too, but I'm at work 12 hours.

At least I had an excuse to do nothing but sit in the sunshine all weekend though, right?

It's been a month, no - over a month, since we planted our seeds and just this weekend we finally got a couple little itty bitty sprouts. I might replant some and see what happens. It's another 3 weeks here before I would feel good about putting anything in the ground, so I have some time before I go and buy seedlings. Though after this weekend, I want nothing more than to dig in the dirt.

We did make it to the market yesterday morning. Kev even came with me. We didn't get much. Some buffalo ribs, eggs, potatoes and asparagus. But then we hit the homebrew supply store and Kev got stuff to try beer again - and I got a few things to start our next batch of wine. We'll be moving what's in the carboy now over to another glass carboy on Thursday. So this week we can start a new batch. We're not doing a from-scratch recipe this time. We're doing a concentrate wine, only because it's quick - 6 weeks from start to bottling. We're out of the last of our bottled wine. So this will give us a fast 30 bottles, plus the 30 of strawberry wine that we can bottle at the end of June.

I'm in need of a vacation. I still have some time to use up before July, and I think I might take a few days soon. Sometimes I just need a little extra time to recenter myself, you know? Right now I'm just feeling a little out of sorts, and an extra day or two off would be soooo good.

Patience.

Spring.

It's spring, supposedly.





Apparently the snow didn't get the memo.



We're ready for Spring though, and a couple of weeks ago, we planted some seeds for the garden.







I usually start with seedlings, and this is our first try at starting seeds. I'm keeping my fingers crossed! After we got them going, the weather turned and the poor guys weren't getting much sun or warmth. They still aren't warm enough, I don't think. But we did move them and put them under a fluorescent light we installed. It's been about 3 weeks since we planted them and a week since we put them under the light. I hope I didn't kill them before they even sprouted!

We're hoping for some tomatoes - roma for canning and brandywine for eating. Being still semi-new to gardening, we'll get our heirlooms at the market. Um, peppers. Broccoli. Scallions. Lettuce. A whole mess of herbs.


We also have another batch of wine going! This is the first shot at a from scratch recipe.
The wine is slow moving too, and I think it's because it's a tad cold in the house. We should have been able to move it to the carboy between days 5 and 7 and we're on day 8 and it's still fermenting. I think we'll be good in a day or two though.

Day 1




Day 2 - Yuck!






Day 5 - Looking better!



If all goes well - the wine (did I mention it's strawberry?) should be ready for us to bottle by June.

Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be better, 50 or so - so we're planning on a little bit of hiking before the snow hits again!