Very successful dinner last night.. Had the in-laws over (Hey! I’ve got in-laws!) and served up a dinner of broiled chicken breast with wild rice and steamed broccoli, with assorted cheeses and smoked fish as an appetizer. We served up some of the apple wine too, and it was very tasty.
Rob came over before the whole dinner thing and helped me bottle the stuff… It should probably have been a three person job, but we managed. I was handling the siphon from the carboy into the bottles and Rob was rinsing off the corks that I’d soaked and popping them through the floor-standing corker that Dirge and Shar got us as a wedding present. We were tooling along with only minor spillage until one of the bottles exploded.
Actually, it was more of a collapse than an explosion… The bottle had a thin spot in the bottom and some combination of the force of the corker arm pressing down on the top and the extra pressure of the wine inside the bottle made a crack in the glass all the way around the bottom of the bottle. Then the wine just poured right out and all over the floor…
You remember how I was talking about how I don’t swear much? Well, Rob is one of the guys that I’ve known for most of forever. We both let out a single, paint blistering exclamation, in stereo, just as the in-laws were coming downstairs to see how things were going…
Anyway, we filled and corked 21 bottles worth of wine (not counting the exploded bottle) and it was so good that we’re planning on doing another batch soon… The cider mills are still open, and it’s an easy wine to make, so we may get things going this weekend at the same time we’re doing the cranberry wine.
You know, I don’t think I ever posted a recipe for apple wine, so here it is:
- Apple Wine
- 5 gallons Apple Cider
- 6 pounds sugar
- 5 teaspoons acid blend
- 1 1/4 teaspoons yeast nutrient
- 10 drops pectic enzyme liquid
- 1 1/4 teaspoons grape tannin
- 1 package champagne yeast
I could give really detailed instructions about cold stabilization, acid testing, hydrometer use and all that, but what it boils down to is putting all of this into a sanitized carboy and letting it percolate for a couple of months… I found it worked well to have all of the dry stuff in the carboy, so that it would dissolve as the cider was added. Leave some space at the top of the carboy and add the yeast last. You’ll have some cider left over too. Just keep it in the fridge to top off the carboy with once the “blow out” fermentation stops. I used finings to clear my wine after about 10 months, but your milage may vary…