FALL FERMENTS

Here are some wines and ciders I've been working on. First off I began a 5 gallon batch of blueberry melomel late in the summer, just when the blueberry season was wrapping up. I took 15lbs of Michigan blueberries, crushed them in a 8 gallon bucket, heated some water and mixed in 15lbs of pure Michigan clover honey. Then I poured the water honey mix onto the crushed blueberries and topped it off to just over 5 gallons with distilled water. I added some tannin, citric acid (juice of lemons), peptic enzyme, and some high tolerance champagne yeast. It was racked once so far, and it has a deep purple color. I plan on adding about 5 more pounds of crushed blueberries (which I froze) to the melomel during the second racking to give it more flavor.










Second is a 5 gallon cyser made from home pressed cider from my grandparents farm. They have a few hundred young apple trees on their farm, and this past summer they decided to buy a vintage fruit press and new hand grinder to make home pressed cider. We spent a day cleaning, crushing, and pressing apples. We ended up pressing around 40 gallons of fresh cider that day. 20 gallons was just for hard cider. My two uncles, dad and I each took a 5 gallon bucket of fresh fermenting cider. Three of those were cysers and the fourth was a traditional farm cider. One cyser has cinnamon sticks in it, one was mixed with honey crisp cider at first racking, and one is plain. The traditional farm cider will probably be carbonated to make it sparkling. We will end up bottling them around the first of the new year.













The third one is a berry cyser. A friend and I made a 10 gallon batch of cyser, and we each took 5 gallons. During the first racking I took approximately 10lbs of home grown raspberries from my grandparents and placed them in a nylon bag. I crushed them down to about 3/4 a gallon of raspberry juice. I then funneled the juice into a carboy, and racked the cyser onto it. It is a very rich red color. I shook the mixture up and capped it with an airlock.










The fourth batch is 5 gallons of Dark honey 2. Dark honey was the best batch last season, so I decided to do another. 4lbs dark brown sugar, 3lbs clover honey, 4 gallons of apple cider and one white labs cider yeast. Just mixed the brown sugar and honey in a large stainless pot with 2 gallons of cider in it. Cooled by removing from stove and adding a gallon of fresh cider to the hot mixture. Then I funneled it into the carboy and topped off with fresh cider.










Last is a one gallon batch of mulberry wine. In the back of my parents yard there is a huge mulberry tree, that drops thousands of berries every summer. I laid a sheet on the ground under the tree, and shook the branches until I got about 6lbs of fresh berries. I put them into a nylon bag and crushed them in a bucket. Then I heated 3lbs of honey with a liter of distilled water. mixed the honey water with the mulberry juice and topped off to a little over a gallon. I let it sit a little too long in the bucket and by the time I racked into a gallon jug the fermenting had stopped. I put an airlock on anyways and let it sit. It sat for at least two months. Today I checked on it and it tasted so good. So good in fact, tomorrow I'm going to bottle it and take it to thanksgiving.