Currenty happening in the Nafiat "Winery"

It's snowed more than it oughta and it's been cold. Snowed in today, in fact and I would mind less if I weren't paid by the hour. Spring and gardening seem forever away and I am oh-so-antsy. Fussing with - or I should say obsessing about my various concoctions is the only thing keeping me from going nuts.

So because this is the only thing I want to think about whether or not anyone else cares, here's where things are:

Lemons

The Skeeter Pee lemon wine has been bottled. 18 were labeled but my labels were smudging. Spraying with claybord fixatif helped but I didn't get them sprayed evenly. Opened a bottle last night as no aging is required. The stuff grows on you. I'm working out a recipe for a kiwi-lime-grapefruit version.

Blackberries

The 3+ gallon batch of blackberry melomel has had the fruit removed and is now in a 3 gallon carboy plus a one gallon jug. The jug was short quite a bit and rather than dilute, or use a half gallon and scramble for some other small container, I added every one of my glass craft marbles. They're more like pellets so they settle tighter than round marbles. There must be 2 and a half inches of them in there. The brix measured at about 11 this morning so the alcohol is already over 10%. Taste wasn't bad - kind of sweet-tart with lots of berry flavor. It might end up better than the first batch I have going because I am now thinking sweeter balances the acid of the blackberries better. But we'll see.

Chiles 

The hot chile wine seems to have stalled at about 8.25 brix. I decided to splash rack it to a 1 gallon jug, removing the chiles and the swollen raisins and leaving behind whatever lees did not easily flow out. My high-tech method involved pouring it from the 4 liter to the gallon through a funnel with a mesh strainer sitting in it. The handle of the strainer had to sit on the above-countertop shelves to keep it all from tipping sideways. Very elegant.

Because of the very swollen raisins, I had to top off with over a cup of water. Good thing I didn't use the pound of raisins the jalapeno recipe called for. There would have been no room for wine!

So I realized I ought to give it a taste now. I was expecting gaggy sweet with a little heat. What I got was barely sweet at all and a LOT of heat. I think the heat was cutting the sweetness and it was actually sweeter than it seemed. If it decides to ferment no further, I'm OK with that. It's pretty good!

More Lemons

The Limoncello has been strained, blended and sweetened and it bulk-mellowing in 2 jugs. I probably have about one and a quarter gallons of it. It came in at about 35% alcohol which seems pretty good. My biggest problem is that it tastes very good right now AND there is no worry about too much headspace in the jugs. That makes it awfully easy to take a little taste. And another. I may have to give away the bottles I plan to very soon just to keep me out of it!

Stout

The first batch has been bottle conditioning for about 16 days. I knew it wouldn't be ready yet because that part of the room is staying in the low 60's. I warned John but he wanted to try a bottle anyway. I have to agree it's useful to check so we popped it. There was a slight bit of carbonation, but not much. I've been worried about how much priming sugar we used since I had to do a bunch of conversions from UK gallons. It also tastes a bit thin and I wish I had followed my first inclination to make it to 5 gallons instead of 6. Or at least 5.5. We're getting an American kit next time!

Anyway, the rest of the bottles will keep. We'll maybe try another on the weekend.

Grapes, even

I think we've opened 3 of the Malbec kit so far. It keeps improving, though it'll never be great. It was dang cheap, though and an excellent learning experience. I think I'll mostly be sticking with midrange or better kits in the future.

My first WinExpert Limited Edition kit is in transit. It should arrive Friday just in time for the weekend (if it isn't delayed by this snow - Yikes!). That's the Lake County CA Trio Blanco. I'm very excited!

I finally claimed my "buy one get one free" voucher that I won in WinExpert's Limited Edition contest. Midwest Supplies said they'd take the voucher so long as I mailed it to them so I sent it with an order. I'm getting the highly touted Viognier. I was going to get the Italian Amarone but I decided to go for the Luna Rossa because it was $20 cheaper and would not need as much aging before it was drinkable. I'll still get the Amarone later, though. If I didn't have such a young "cellar", I would have gotten it now.

I'd like to have all three started bam-bam-bam but I want to do Tim Vandergrift's extended plan for kits meaning that carboys will be tied up for a few months for each one. And how many empty 6 gallon carboys do I have? One! Yup. Pretty poor planning on my part.

I have to order at least one as this will not stand, man, but I think I'll also bottle the Prickly Pear wine and free up that one. It's been bulk aging for 5 months. I just don't have the space to leave it for a year. Yet.

The other meads

Blackberry, Joe's Ancient Orange and the chai tead are all still fermenting but starting to clear. Well, the tead is pretty murky but I'm saving that one for next solstice anyway. I can wait. I am pondering oaking the 3 gallon batch of mesquite/wildflower mead. I have chips. Not the best, I understand but it'll do if I'm cautious. I think I can make an infuser out of the plastic tube from a hydrometer. I can pull it out when it tastes right without racking - being that I just used my last 3 gallon carboy for the blackberry melomel. Geez. More carboy woes.

And I have yet to figure out what I'm going to do with all the full bottles. I'd like a nice rack. I'd even build one if I could figure out where to put it but my best space is full of gardening and home-improvement stuff so where do I put that? Oh, such problems to have!

Made up recipe Approx. 724 - Creamy Garlic Shrimp & Mushrooms

My favorite way to cook is to have a lot of random raw materials and then, 30 to 60 minutes before I want to eat, I look through the pantry, the fridge and the freezer and put something together. Occasionally they are flops but most of the time it’s good to fantastic. This one was on the high end of good for flavor and texture though a little low visually (very important!) so just as well I didn’t take a photo. I have to give some thought to the presentation next time, if there is one. Sun-dried tomatoes, maybe.

John was on the phone to his boy so I gave him a five-minute warning and told him I would be in the mood for a movie, if he had anything worth seeing. John’s movie addiction and his near cold-turkey quitting is another subject. Suffice it to say, it was a big deal to ask him to put in a movie.

Curiously, he happened to pick Julie/Julia. That's a movie that'll make you want to a) cook and b) blog! At some point, he asked if I could cook like that. I said “Sure!” but smartly negotiated an exchange of French cooking for a Le Creuset pot – pumpkin-shaped maybe. If I have to get one myself, at least I know he won’t object if filled with Boeuf Bourguignon!

Here’s what I made:

1 container fresh, whole mushrooms, washed and sliced

2 Tablespoons olive oil

3 Tablespoons butter

2 very large garlic cloves, sliced thinly

1 teaspoon of my home-roasted Spanish garlic

Fresh ground pepper and salt (unmeasured, of course)

Splash of very hot chile wine made by a friend (and later another splash – not quite ¼ cup)

All this was sautéed until the mushroom and garlic slices were soft. (Just found out last night I have been crowding my mushrooms! Never again!)

Meanwhile, a fistful of whole wheat angel hair pasta was put in a kettle of boiling salted water to cook until al dente.

12 ounces of cooked frozen shrimp (on sale!) were thawed and their tails pulled off. The shrimp were dumped into the mushroom mixture with 2 hefty dollops of Greek yogurt (more like sour cream), adding a fair amount of moisture. I lowered the heat a bit and cooked it down but it still looked soupy and smelled too much of my childhood beef stroganoff. More hot chile wine!

Plus a fistful of fresh parsley, chopped up and ¼ cup or better of grated parmesan.

Stirred it up a bit and dished it out over the pasta with a garnish of more parmesan. Yum!

Hot Chile Wine Experiment

Chile wine didn't sound good to me until someone on the WinePress forum mentioned using it to marinate mushrooms. Then another WinePress friend, Wade, surprised me with a couple little bottles of his chile wines. His Hot Spot was a little hard to drink straight up but a splash in the cheap jug wine was fantastic. Plus, it did lovely things to pork and mushrooms.

I was going to wait until I could get fresh, ripe chiles this summer but Wade suggested making some with dried chiles. I didn't locate a recipe for dried chiles but a couple recipes for fresh jalapeno provided the start.

I suspect my small, plastic primary once used for hot pepper wine would have to be forever used for hot pepper wine so good thing I drink those jug wines and save the jugs! Later I  might need a dedicated primary but 4 liters is enough for now.

So, here's what I did:

5 good sized, dark red HOT Hatch chiles - seeded and broken up to fit through the neck of the 4 liter jug. John would like to actually drink the stuff so I didn't want to go too hot.
2 lbs (5 cups) white sugar
5 ounces whole dark raisins - an arbitrary amount. I elected to not chop them this time. Also arbitrary.
1 teaspoon of ground coriander - just seemed like a good idea.
1 1/2 teaspoons acid blend.
1/4 teaspoon tannin.
3/4 teaspoon yeast nutrient.
No K-meta yet but I'll probably add some later.

I got all that in the jug and poured in a quart of hot water, screwed the cap on and shook it until the sugar was dissolved. Then I added cold tap water until it was about 3 inches from the neck. I am leaving some room for foaming but I'll top it off with water later.

I pitched in a dry packet of Pasteur Champagne yeast, swirled it in slightly and then remembered I hadn't checked specific gravity. Well, even though I snagged some with a turkey baster right away, avoiding solids, I suspect (hope) my reading wasn't accurate. It came in at 1.120. That 15.8% potential alcohol, according to a chart I have . I'm not sure that's really possible with only 2 pounds of sugar in just under a gallon of water. If it is right,  that's going to be one strong brew! Wonder if it's too late to use my schmancy refractometer? Nope. It says 33 brix. That's even worse! Oh well. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, the chiles are already tinting it a nice reddish color and I can smell the coriander. Whatever it ends up being, it's already fun.

Limoncello Redux

Well, I was unsatisfied with the quality of the ingredients for the batch I started a couple weeks ago. This is meant to be a birthday present for my Dad so it needs to be the best.

My friend Nicole sent me a facebook message the other day that a local grocery had gotten in some organic meyer lemons. I was there within an hour picking through the pile (and leaving no decent ones for Nicole!). I stopped by their liquor counter to see if they had the better 100 proof vodka and - lo and behold - 190 proof Everclear! Seems my info about not being able to get that in New Mexico was just plain wrong.

Yesterday, while waiting for my holiday carne adovada to cook, I started zesting the lemons. I didn't have another wide mouth jar big enough but it turned out to be fairly easy to poke the big pieces of zest through the mouth of a gallon jug.

Here's the thing, though. Meyer lemons, while quite nice, just don't smell as good to me as the regular lemons. I think I recall reading that they are a cross between a lemon and an orange. Sounds like a good thing but in practice, maybe not. I didn't like the juice as well either. I will say they were a lot easier to zest with the vegetable peeler. The skin isn't nearly as tough and the shape was also easier to handle.

Everclear is looking like it might just live up to it's rep for limoncello. After 24 hours, the color of the Everclear is as yellow as the vodka is after 2 weeks. Of course, it's twice as much volume of vodka so it may be illusion but I don't think so.

So the new plan is to eventually blend the two batches. Doing that, I can use the Everclear batch to boost the alcohol content of the vodka batch. I will keep them separate all the way through sweetening for comparison purposes. With a big disparity in alcohol content, I don't think a side-by-side taste test will work but a side-by-side aroma test ought to tell me something. Then, if I decide not to blend, I can just dilute the Everclear batch down to a more palatable level. I think I should shoot for an ABV of about 45%. That shouldn't go slushy in the freezer.

Boy, you'd think the only thing on my mind was alcoholic beverages. I'm sure my mind will turn to other things after I have a nip of this Bailey's a professor gave me.

Primitive Blackberry Melomel

The melomel may be in trouble and the Winepress forum is down. I could have a dozen good answers in an hour otherwise but I am just going to have to flail about on my own. I'm probably worrying too much but I thought I would document the process of worry, test, tinker, worry some more, tinker some more, etc. That's what makes wine making so dang fun!

I just got the first jug of Joe's Ancient Orange and Spice Mead bottled and it's really very good despite being quite sweet. Not enough spice, though. I decided to start two more jugs and up the spices, play with slightly reducing the honey.

After getting the first jug going, I recalled the pounds of Oregon blackberries in the freezer. Well, I know others have tinkered with Joe's recipe so I figured I'd try a blackberry melomel (mead with fruit) instead of the orange and spice. The forum was down then, too, but I figured I had a handle on things.

I thawed a pound of berries, put them in a nylon straining bag and mashed them up well in my small fermentor. I dissolved the honey in some warm water and poured it over the berries, adding a bit more than 3 pounds to get the specific gravity up to 1.114. That's a potential alcohol content of 16% but I'm using bread yeast and expecting it to finish lower than that and still sweet. That what makes it early-drinking. I left out Joe's raisins because I think they are meant as food for the yeast and the blackberries should fill that role. For some now unknown reason, I decide to wedge one quarter of a lemon and toss that in with the juice and zest of another quarter lemon. Well, lemon tastes nice. I think that's why. I don't think it'll need the acid because blackberries are acidic enough.

So I have this all in the fermentor. I whisk it up good to aerate, toss in a teaspoon of Fleishman's Rapid Rise and put the lid and airlock on. I left the bucket (that's the fermentor) in the kitchen next to the gas stove.

Next morning, the kitchen is maybe 60 degrees and of course, there's no activity. Too cold. I moved the bucket to the living room next to the electric heater where I can now get it up to 72 or even 75 degrees F. Pretty soon, we have bubbles through the airlock. Yay!

Next day - nothing. Well, that's not right! The jug of orange and spice right next to it is sputtering and gurgling constantly. I check the pH.: 3.67 - fine. I aerate some more and pitch in another teaspoon of yeast in the morning. 11 hours later - nothing.

Ok. Thinking. So maybe there isn't enough food for the yeast in the blackberries after all. I have yeast nutrient and yeast energizer. The little bottle of energizer specifically mentions stuck fermentations so I go for that one. Whisk it on in. This morning - nothing.

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't have put in that lemon. Maybe it doesn't like being in the bucket. Maybe my pH meter needed calibrating and it's really below 3.00. Maybe it's just being a slow starter. Maybe any number of things, really.

I checked the SG this morning and it was at 1.099 but that doesn't tell me anything as it was fermenting for a little while. I'll check it again tonight. PH, too. If we still have nothing, I'll consider hydrating some Lalvin D47 and pitch it in. Most likely, that'll take it to full dry and I'll be looking at more than a year of aging time instead of three or four months but that's better than losing the batch. Rather not do it though. That takes it out of the realm of primitive.

It's such a pretty color and smells nice, too. One way or another, it's going to happen.

Update 6:30pm: The SG has dropped to 1.092. Though I thought the addition of fruit would cause vigorous foaming, this doesn't seem to be the case for me. It's fermenting just fine. I'm going to leave the fruit in there for a few days, then move everything else to a jug. The photo may not look pretty to some, but it's sure pretty to me!

Update 12/19: I just transferred everything but the fruit to a 4 liter jug and it's fizzing away with heavy bubble traffic through the airlock. My tentative conclusion is that the large headspace in the primary bucket combined with the quieter activity of bread yeast just made it hard to tell it was fermenting without the aid of my trusty hydrometer.

The berries had broken down to a mushy pulp. There's a lot of berry suspended in the mead so I imagine it'll take a while to fall clear. Or not. The experiment continues...

Making Limoncello

The one and only time I had Limoncello (an Italian lemon liqueur) was a year and a half ago at a friend's house. About 3 months ago, though, my Dad starts raving about some he had. I'd seen several posts about it on the Winepress forum but it's not wine, so I wasn't overly interested.

But, if Dad wants Limoncello, I am by God going to make him some! Dad's 80-something now and complains he no longer can have anything but he admits to an occasional careful nip of this or that. I wish I'd started it right then; it'd almost be ready now but at least it'll be ready when the warmer weather comes.

2 evenings ago I find myself at the liquor store looking for 100 proof vodka. Almost all the vodka was 80 proof including (and especially!) the cheap huge bottles. I left with 1.75 liters of what I believe to the same stuff I often find empty in the alley behind my house. Might be prudent to use better quality vodka next time!

What is recommended is Everclear - pure grain alcohol (ethanol) at 151 or 190 proof. I know you can't buy the 190 proof here without a license. The school has one because they use ethanol in the labs but I'm pretty sure they'd frown on me ordering a couple liters for personal use. Too bad. If I ever see any anywhere, I'm getting it.

The reason for the high proof is that it is best kept in and served straight from the freezer. The lemon peel that is steeped in alcohol will get sweetened by using a sugar syrup which dilutes it. If the alcohol goes too low, the limoncello will freeze. Not as nice. Rock bottom final alcohol content is 30 percent and I'm only starting at 40 so I'll need to dissolve the sugar in as little water as possible. 50 percent would really be better. They (them that knows) say the color and flavor extraction is better with ethanol, too.

I think the nectar I made for the hummingbird feeder was 4 parts sugar, 1 part water. That's what I intend to try.

Yesterday I got 4 pounds of nice looking lemons. More than I needed but the loose lemons didn't look as nice so I ended up with two 2 pound bags. Lemon juice in and on everything for a while! I used a brand-new sharp vegetable peeler to remove the zest of 14 lemons without cutting into the pith. It took almost 2 hours plus I had to finish up the last 2 this morning. I have a blister but I also have nice big pieces of zest, not fine little grindings. Zest and vodka are in a sun tea jar and will be there for about 40 days before I strain it and sweeten it. Then another 40 days until I can bottle. That gives me plenty of time to locate a nice stoppered bottle for Dad.

Umm. I'm keeping some of it.

The more things change...

...well, the more they change! I can't think of a time when things ever stayed the same for long and that's just fine. That's interesting. Sure, also "challenging" but so what?

So the little ole Mountain Mail newspaper went down, then rose back up again. Still locally owned and operated - a rare and beautiful thing. The new owners have brought back color pages - I've missed that! New editor, new salesperson - both trying to learn the town but getting better all the time.

And the two out of state subscriptions I bought are being honored. Yay! And my husband has a job he loves. Double yay!

I just decided for sure that I am not going back to real estate and told my Broker yesterday to send my license back to the Commission. I suspect she was not too surprised. There's just no arguing with the relief I felt when I drove by a newly listed house in the area and knew I did NOT have to deal with it. Now I'm just into giving out free advice which is always worth exactly what you pay for it. (Bear that in mind.)


Although I am not done, the NMT Biology department website is shaping up nicely and I'm pretty proud of it. Do go see it here! (that's one end of my building in the photo.)

I've been very lucky in the places I've been in that, even if I wasn't thrilled about the actual job, I have have really liked and respected the people I worked with. Of course, I did seem to have a flair for working at places that were about to go bankrupt, sell out, get hostilely taken over or relocate out of state. I'm pretty sure none of those thing will happen to New Mexico Tech. Pretty sure. But I absolutely love it here and the only guarantee is that things will change.

So that's enough for the review. This week we go to Albuquerque where I finally get to visit the closest thing I have to a Local Home Brew Shop (LHBS) - Victor's Grape Arbor. Got my little list ready and we may come home with additional equipment and supplies to make our first batch of stout. I am crazy-excited!