Since people have asked how to make wine, here’s my neighbor’s wine recipe. She lives up the Hoko river on a cranberry and horse farm, where they’re restoring the ecosystem with the resources of the county.
Hi Donna: It’s time to make blackberry wine. I picked yesterday and today and will pick again in the morning. In the afternoon I’ll make four gallons of blackberry wine. I use one-gallon glass jugs: 4 lbs. blackberries
4 cups sugar
yeast (.6 tsp./gal.)
Dissolve sugar in about one quart of water for each gallon. Cool. First put sugar in one-gallon jug; then yeast; then juice. Add more water for the wine to be about three inches from the top.
I juice the blackberries with my Juiceman to remove the seeds. If you don’t have a juicer I’ve seen Wanda use a hanging cheesecloth bag—–drip, drip drip. Dissolve the yeast in a couple tbsp. of water and let stand 15 minutes without stirring. Then stir to suspend all the yeast.
Bottle the wine two weeks after the bubbling stops. (I use stoppers from the winemaking store.)
I made cranberry wine in May and June, and it’s still bubbling. The raspberry is about ready to bottle. Blackberry wine won’t take as long as cranberry either. Oooooh, I can’t wait!
I hope all is well. Love, Joanna”
I’ve done both wine & beermaking before (and a little mead too, which if you’ve got a beekeeper neighbor is well worth the trouble) and if you can get hold of a decent yeast that’s meant for wine, you’ll get a way better result than just by using bread-yeast. There are TONS of kinds of yeast; the little buggers are sex maniacs and crossbreed every chance they get, which is pretty frequent… some of the results work okay, some definitely do not; some can be killed off by the acidity of a batch of wine or can do the opposite, ferment it to the point that all the flavor gets subsumed in acrid dryness. So check out the yeasts; there’re tons of online sites to order from. Good luck, and may you have no more explosions!
I’m trying to coax the local pioneer bees — the Olympic Grey — into my homemade hive. It’s all very experimental. Yes, I know about the yeast problems, but I’m just experimenting right now. Maybe I should get some and just keep some mother on hand… and if idiot artists don’t screw the top down, they won’t get explosions.