Monthly Archives: June 2007

Leon Millot Blooms – Hoplia Beetles Feast

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First the good news. The Leon Millot are blooming!


Leon Millot blooming on 6/12/07


I took these photos on 6/12/07, though I first noticed that the Leons were blooming on 6/6/07. The next photo shows the bad news: Hoplia Beetles love to eat flowers, including grape flowers.


Leon Millot beset by Hoplia Beetle


At least I think they’re Hoplia Beetles. They fit the description in Jeff Cox’s From Vines to Wines, they’ve shown up at the right (from their point of view anyway) time, and they’re found mainly in the West.

I’ve been going out to the bonsai vineyard every day with a bucket of soapy water. By holding the bucket underneath the cluster they’re feeding on and giving it a tap, I drown the greedy little bugs. I’ll try to control them this way, but I’m looking into chemical controls in case it doesn’t work.

Fleshing Out A Beer-Like Mead Recipe

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I’ve done some thinking and some research on my beer-like mead recipe. I decided to use just one specialty grain, crystal malt. Since I’m counting on it to do a lot of heavy lifting, I wanted to use a high concentration – still within the range that you’d see in a beer, but at the high end of that range.

No bittering hops probably means I’ll need to add acid, and that bugs me a little. I’m afraid it might add some noticeable wine character.

I’m still thinking about sweetening too. I’d really like to carbonate, and that means fermenting to dryness, adding a little more sugar to get the yeast fermenting again, and capping the bottles to trap the resulting CO2. This process doesn’t allow for sweetening. If you tried, by adding more sugar than necessary to carbonate, then the yeast would ferment it all. This would put so much pressure on the bottles that they might fail. So it looks like I’ll have to choose between sweetening and carbonating.

As far as hops go, 0.25 oz for flavor and/or aroma is probably about right, but I haven’t decided whether or not use them.

Translating all of that into a recipe would result in something like this:

For six US gallons (23 L) of must …

11.5 lb (5.2 kg) honey
5 gallons (19 L) of water
1 lb (450 g) crystal malt
6 tsp (28 g) DAP

0.25 oz (7 g) flavoring hops (optional)
0.25 oz (7 g) aroma hops (optional)

Ale yeast – Nottingham?

I’m expecting an OG of 1.070 or so.

Surefire Cherry

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Surefire is one of four cherry trees growing in my bonsai orchard, and the only one that will produce fruit, if just a handful, this year. It’s a tart cherry with red skin, flesh, and juice; I can’t wait to make red cherry wine and liqueur from it.


Surefire cherry fruiting on 5/30/07. The young cherry is green with some dried flower petals still visible.

I bought the tree this year, so I wasn’t expecting fruit. That little tree gave me a terrific surprise though! I took the above photo at the end of May, and it shows the young cherries, still green, with some of the flower petals visible. By June 12, the fruit began to change color. I never imagined that I’d be so excited about five or six cherries!


Surefire cherry fruit changing color on 6/12/07


You can see the color change in the above photo, and that will get the birds just as excited as I am. I think I should have first crack at them, so I’ll be putting up bird netting soon.

Why I Picked The Surefire Cherry Tree

I wanted both sweet and tart cherries because wanted to see how different cherry wine, made from sweet cherries, is from tart cherry wine. Of the tart cherries, I wanted both morello (red flesh and red juice) and amorelle (yellow flesh and clear juice) types. I plan to make white cherry wine from the amorelles and red wine from the morellos. Surefire is a morello type of tart cherry that is productive and bears at a young age. It also has some resistance to cracking and bacterial canker, two of the three problems cherries face in western Washington. There’s only one solution for the third problem, birds, and that’s netting.

My Smallest Batch: A 500 ml Leon Millot – Pinot Noir blend

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500 ml Grolsch bottle in front of my hand, to show scale, contains my smallest batch, a blend of Pinot Noir and Leon MillotLast year, my bonsai vineyard offered up a disappointing 4 lb (1.8 kg) of grapes, 2 lb Pinot Noir and 2 lb Leon Millot. I was so looking forward to making wine from my own grapes, but what was I to do with 4 lb? Make wine anyway! I mashed up the grapes by hand, added pectic enzyme, cold soaked for eight hours, then pitched the yeast. I “pressed” seven days later in a cheesecloth lined colander. A month later, I decanted into this 500 ml Grolsch bottle. Today, seven months later, it’s still in the Grolsch bottle. With an ordinary batch of wine, I might start opening bottles every so often to see how it was coming along. Once I thought it was hitting it’s stride, I’d start serving it regularly. With this batch, I’m thinking about giving it two years. That means opening my Puget Sound grown “2006 Leon Pinot” in late fall 2008. I think I’ll keep the guest list short 🙂

Erics Projects

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A post about bottling cherry mead caught my eye, I had just bottled my own cherry mead, but when I stayed and read a while I discovered so much more. Where else can find you someone who can discuss raising chickens, making mead, growing hops, and optimizing Windows? Check it out at:

Erics Projects

Oregano Wine Recipe: Daily stirring

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Oregano wine in it's 2-gallon glass jar after stirring. It is translucent with a golden color and looks completely still. Here’s a photo of the oregano wine I started the other day. It was quite frothy just after I stirred it, but the bubbles subsided before I could capture the image. I stir for two reasons: During the first day, I want to incorporate oxygen into the fermenting wine to help the yeast grow. Later, I stir to keep the yeast in suspension. If I didn’t do this, the yeast might settle near the bottom, quickly consume the nearby sugar, then start to go dormant.

The Beginnings Of A Beer-Like Mead Recipe

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A quick list

Writing about the “beer mead” vs “wine mead” divide made me reconsider how I make my own mead. All my meads have been squarely in the wine-mead category, and it got me thinking about making my first beer-like mead. What would such a mead be like? How would I make it? To answer that, I made a list of all the things that came to mind when I thought about homebrewed beer:

malt
hops
specialty grains
low alcohol (compared to wine)
residual sweetness
boiling
irish moss
gypsum

A little more detail

Malt has got to be the number one defining ingredient for beer, but I’m not going to use it. There are fermented beverages made from malt and honey, called braggots, but that’s not really what I’m setting out to do. I want the approach to be reminiscent of beer, and the result to be “beer-esque.” Still, I’m making a 100% honey mead, so no malt.

Hops have become ubiquitous in beer, but this was not always so. A host of other herbs provided bitterness (heather, nettle, sage to name a few), flavoring (juniper, oregano, and more), and aroma (rosemary, lavender, …). I’m not sure I want a bitter mead, but I may use hops, sparingly, for flavor and aroma. I haven’t decided yet, and since hop flavor is usually extracted by boiling, it probably depends on my decision to boil.

I like the idea of using specialty grains like crystal malt, which is said to add sweetness, body, and aid in head retention. I want to avoid having to mash any grain, which is a seperate step that converts starches to sugars, so that limits my choices to: black patent malt, chocolate malt, crystal malt, and roasted barley.

A specific gravity of 1.075, 10% potential alcohol, would be low for wine and high for beer. I haven’t decided on a final target yet, but it’ll be around 1.075.

Maybe the crystal malt will add enough sweetness for my beer-like mead, or maybe I’ll have to stabilize and sweeten. I’ll probably wait until I know the final SG before I decide to sweeten the mead.

Boiling is necessary in homebrewing to extract bitterness and, to a lesser extent, flavor from hops. Since I don’t plan on making a bitter mead, the only reason I might need to boil is flavor extraction from hops. If I do boil, it’ll be for about ten minutes, not the hour or so that’s common in homebrewing. I’ve already made the case that such a short boil will not harm the mead, and it might lend a homebrewing feel to the process.

If I do boil, I’ll throw in some irish moss. It’s a clarifying agent, common in homebrewing, that’s added to the boil in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

I really don’t know what gypsum is supposed to do. It’s on the list because it’s in so many beer (and some mead) recipes. I’ll try to find out more about it before I finalize the recipe.

A recipe begins to take shape

So that narrows things down a little. I’ll be making a 100% honey mead with a starting SG around 1.075. I’ll use crystal malt, and maybe other specialty grains. I might boil, and I might use hops for flavor and/or aroma. If I do use hops, it’ll be at lower concentrations than with typical beers. If I boil, I’ll use irish moss. I haven’t decided on sweetening, and I’ll try to learn more about gypsum.

Update 6/15/2007 I’ve filled in this outline to make a beer-like mead recipe.

Update 10/28/2008 Some time after I made the case that a short boil does no harm, I concluded an experiment to test the effects of boiling on mead. After a carefully arranged double blind tasting, the results are in! Boiling does indeed weaken the aroma of mead, but may improve the body and smooth out the flavor.

Oregano Wine Recipe

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And you thought tomato wine sounded strange! Years ago I started an oregano bush from seed. Each year I harvest a little for cooking, but it’s huge and most of it goes to waste. What’s a winemaker to do? Use this recipe from Terry Garey’s Joy of Home Wine Making, my first winemaking book. It’s a great way to start – it’s how I got started – making your own wine.

Ingredients

4-6 cups (1-1.5 liters), packed lightly, of fresh herbs
1 gallon (3.785 liters) water
3 lb (1.4 kg) sugar or 3.5 lb (1.6 kg) honey
1 tsp (5 grams) yeast nutrient
0.125 tsp (0.3 grams) tannin
3 tsp (15 grams) acid blend
sulfite to 50 ppm (equivalent to 1 campden tablet)
wine yeast

Equipment

Initially, you will need a fermenter, hydrometer, thermometer, stirring spoon, measuring spoons, and a couple of pots. Later, we’ll use a gallon jug, a racking cane, some siphon hose, and pH papers.

Procedure

Simmering Oregano
Start by sanitizing the clean equipment by immersion in boiling water or sanitizing solution. Harvest about 6 cups (about 1.5 liters), lightly packed, of oregano. Then remove dead leaves and any other plants that have gotten mixed in. After a quick rinse in cold water, place the oregano in a 2 quart (2 liter) saucepan, add 1 quart (1 liter) water, and bring to a simmer. As soon as it started simmering, take it off the heat and let sit for 1-2 hours. In the meantime, I dissolve the sugar in boiling water.

Pouring the oregano infused water through a strainerStrain the oregano and add the sugar water. Next, I dissolve the tannin and nutrient in water and add to the fermenter. Wait until fermentation is complete before adding the acid because the pH could drop too much during fermentation and inhibit the yeast. Finally, I add 1 tsp of sulfite solution (equivalent to 1 campden tablet).

Always take a hydrometer reading before pitching the yeast. I recorded a specific gravity of 1.108 @ 82 Fahrenheit (about 28 Celsius) when I made this recipe. My hydrometer is calibrated to work at 60F (15.5C), and I adjusted for the higher temperature with a lookup table. The adjusted SG was 1.110, so the potential alcohol was 15%. I thought it might turn out to be high, but I like to follow recipes closely the first time. I’ll probably cut the sugar and aim for and SG of 1.090 (12% alcohol) the next time.

At this point, turn if over to the yeast. Once fermentation subsides, rack the wine to an airlocked glass jug. When fermentation is complete (check with a hydrometer), add the acid.

Mead Styles: Should mead taste like wine? or beer?

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Many meadmakers were first winemakers or homebrewers, and they have applied experience with wine or beer to the craft of making mead. From looking at the many mead recipes, in print and on the web, it seems they have formed cliques. What I call “beer-mead” recipes tend to call for boiling, gypsum, irish moss, and low (around 1.060) original gravities. These are all familiar to homebrewers, as is the occasional use of corn sugar to boost the OG. The use of sulfites, tannin, and maybe the no heat approach are more prevalent in “wine mead” recipes, and they usually have higher OGs. My simple mead recipe falls in the wine-mead category.

The extent of this beer-mead vs wine-mead divide became clear to me when I offered some of my own mead to a homebrewing friend. It was a three year old plain, still, sweet mead. He loved it and said the aroma made him want to “run outside and roll around in the grass,” but then he got a puzzled look and said, “I thought mead tasted more like beer.” It was the second time I got that reaction (the “like beer” reaction, not the “roll around in the grass” one), and it makes me think that these two cliques should mingle.

They can learn a lot more from each other than either of them realize because so much less is known about mead than beer or wine. Beer and wine have been important industries for some time, and there is extensive research about them. Though mead is an old beverage, there has been relatively little study of it. So while its perfectly natural for winemakers and homebrewers to bring their knowledge and experience with them when they start making mead, it’s easy for them to develop tunnel vision. When winemakers assert that mead is like wine and homebrewers insist that it is like beer, I think of the story about the blind men and the elephant.

I, for one, want to learn a lot more about mead before I start arguing over what it “should” be like.

Update 6/15/2007 I’ve thought about what a beer-like mead would be like, then I filled in some detail to make a recipe.