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Tasting Strawberry Wine
by DIG-IT
Strawberry Meade
4 quarts strawberries
˝ gallon tupelo honey
˝ bag sugar
active dry yeast dissolved in water
yeast nutrient (di-ammonium phosphate)
1 jar honey
Dandelion Fruit Wine
1 tablespoon sulfites mixed in water
light white grape wine
We uncover the strawberry meade that we put in a towel-covered bucket two weeks ago to ferment. “We'll taste the meade and see if it's fermented to dryness,"ť says Georgene Mortimer, winemaker. We dip with paper cups and taste the red brew. To our delight it tastes exactly like strawberry wine! Dry and fairly clear with sediment on the bottom of the bucket. The yeast did its work and turned the sugar into alcohol so the wine is done fermenting. It is 11% alcohol.
Georgene said she hand-squished the berries after two days in the bucket, so using whole berries is fine. She added no tartaric acid to the meade because strawberries have enough acid. It still needs to clear more, which will happen naturally over the next two months. If, by then, it hasn't settled out, we'll add bentonite to create a conglomerate for the sediments to adhere to and drop out.
Now for the dandelion wine! Georgene uncovers the bucket to reveal a thick slurry of floating dandelions and scoops them off.
The dandelion wine is a little sweet and still fermenting. The ladies like it and Georgene says if it's drinkable now, it will be a good wine and meade. “What hasn't developed yet is the nose ¬ the aroma. It is yeasty now but given time the dandelion will come up." In her experience in making many types of wine, she says the fermenting dandelion wine has a different smell, like hot cereal with fruit.
I wash out a carboy that looks like a glass water-cooler bottle with bleach, rinsing it well to kill all germs before I put the wine in it. Kathy and Joan rinse theirs with sulfites. The carboys are clean and it is time to siphon.
As the meade flows into the carboy, I take care to keep the hose under the surface to prevent any sloshing around. “When making wine, you want to keep the oxygen swishing and aeration down, especially when not using sulfites." The strawberry meade fills the carboy about 2/3 full. It needs to come to the top to keep the air out so Georgene will add honey and water.
Most wines take eight or nine months to settle out before they are racked and bottled but, because the meade has no sulfites or other additives to prevent bacterial contamination and because the sediments are already settling out, Georgene prefers to bottle it as soon as possible. “We don't want to let wine sit on the gross lees (sediments) We want to take it off the gross lees because there are no sulfites. We'll rack it in two months, in early August.
She puts a cork in the meade. She'll aerate it often because it won't have a “bubbler" with sulfites as a gas escape valve.
The dandelion brew doesn't come up to the top either. Georgene will add a light white grape wine to bring it to the top. Kathy and Joan may add orange wine for more body at bottling time.
Check back in mid-August to see how much we like our very own wine.
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published June 04, 2004
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