Wine journal

Batch 008 – Cabernet wine kit 2019
My first wine kit. The kit was a box of juice and some ingredients shipped from Canada via Amazon for $42. It tastes good! But pretty aggressive flavor at the moment. I put tape on the two cases it made, and will let it age for a few months before cracking another bottle, maybe until September 2019, six months in bottles. The kit itself wasn’t difficult, you do need a few items to make it work if you’re just going to do it yourself. My only complaint about the kit is that the labels suck! So boring. “Private Reserve” really? meh.

Batch 009 – Skeeter Pee 2018
The first 5 gallon batch I did of Skeeter Pee was easy, fun and delicious. And this year I’m going bigger, 16 gallons type bigger. 81 bottles of Skeeter Pee goodness.

batch A
Filtered water from the Safeway filter machine. Lees/slurry from 2018 Prospect Lalvin 71B yeast. It took one day longer to fully ferment than the batch B.

batch B
Tap water from my basement sink. Lees/slurry from 2018 Prospect standard wine yeast Lalvin EC1118. I had ran out of powdered wine tannin to add, so I added 4 bags of long sitting black tea. I read somewhere the tannins in tea will do the trick for that flavor. Four bottles of B are marked “NS” for no sugar back sweetening.

Batch 003 – Caledonia 2017
These grapes are from Matt and Hannah, and named for their daughter Caledonia. There are two grape vines, apparently with one providing lots of flavor, and the other providing lots of juice per grape. The juice itself tasted awesome, so we’ll see how it turns out. The grapes were frozen for some amount of time, so I’m not sure of their pick date. I guessed 2017. I remember that I pressed these in my make-shift 5 gallon bucket press before primary fermentation: they were fermented without the skins. 10/26/18 got it all bottled up today with Matt’s help, and a sweet new floor wine corker: very nice! Sad, I forgot the last step of wine: potassium sorbate to kill all that yeast left over in there. Of course, we back sweetened, and may get exploding wine bottles in a few days! Fingers crossed. pics

Batch 002 – Prospect 2017
Made from same grapes as batch 001, but I’d learned a little more. Did some blind taste testing, did a better job balancing flavors with back sweetening. 15% ABV. pics

Batch 001 – Prospect 2017
Started this first batch without doing much research into wtf I was doing. It tasted real tart, and perhaps vinegar-y at first. I still have hope that it will chill out over a few years. No idea of the ABV – alcohol by volume. pics