The Grapes

Just as I finished punching down my must and snapped on the lid I thought "I should have taken a picture." Well, the good news is that this one looks pretty good for being my first attempt at making wine from grapes, and not even good grapes. There's way more color than when I first put them in and there's bubbling and a nice smell. I figure a good 7-10 days in primary and then I'll check the SG and rack it.

Chela my official wine kitty has taken to laying in front of the fermenters like they are going to do something interesting but she doesn't bother them. I've blocked the cabinets in the kitchen that have bottles of wine in them, since she thinks hanging in cupboards is cool.

The latest bottled batch, teh IRC was a bit of a bust, it tastes really alcoholic and thin and turns out I run the risk of oxidation if I try to open them, add glycerine and rebottle. So these might just be sangria wine or wine spritzers for the summer. The advice I got on my wine forum was that fruit wines from purees are tempermental and that I need to use more than what they suggest because they often aren't sweet enough and the acid levels are high. I'm going to start reading up on acid levels to go along with trying to figure out how to read the dang ph test strips I have and how to adjust based on those readings.

I kind of wish I had paid more attention to highschool chemistry. Well there's an idea, maybe if students were making some thing interesting that they could apply their knowledge to, maybe they would pay more attention. Useful knowledge and all.