Friday, January 07, 2005
Finding My Way to Brewing (Part Four)
Anyway as my waiting time passed I would check the bottles periodically. By this time they were stored on their side in a shed outside. This area was in Northern Holland and it is very cool there most of the year and downright frigid in the winter. At this point in time I would imagine it was late winter/early spring.
This maturation period was not without incident. For example, I failed to infuse the wine with enough of the fermentation arresting compound and so a few of the corks pushed out when pressure built up from residual fermentation. In effect, the wine was bottle conditioning which is something you don’t want to happen with only corks to keep your bottle closed. As it turned out I lost about a third of the wine this way. Because of this, I got them off of their side and would push the cork back in when pressure would build hoping this would work. I didn’t help that much as the pressure continued to build. For some reason this was not uniform throughout the batch. So, as I mentioned I lost about a third of the batch.
Also, because of this, I started drinking the wine only after a few months as opposed to waiting the full three to six months. As it turned out the wine was not too bad. It was apple wine, mind you and I expected it to be a little more sweet than it was. It was in fact, quite dry. It also had a very high alcohol content. I would say at least ten per cent. This was a very subjective call because I had no tools to measure gravity. I was judging by how it made me feel as opposed to a bottle of commercial wine of about ten to twelve per cent. The flavor was that of fairly tart apple juice with little or no sweetness to it. The apples were from old trees and were of the quality used for cooking, pressing into juice and for other industrial purposes as opposed to the finer types for eating as fruit. I suppose this had something to do with the marginal quality.
On balance it was an interesting little diversion and I was particularly pleased with it because I had obtained the basic ingredient from my front yard and it would have just gone to waste if I hadn’t used them.
All of the final steps of this adventure was coming to a close as my tour in Holland was ending. As it turned out I lost about a third to corks popping out, drank about a third and gave the rest away.
This maturation period was not without incident. For example, I failed to infuse the wine with enough of the fermentation arresting compound and so a few of the corks pushed out when pressure built up from residual fermentation. In effect, the wine was bottle conditioning which is something you don’t want to happen with only corks to keep your bottle closed. As it turned out I lost about a third of the wine this way. Because of this, I got them off of their side and would push the cork back in when pressure would build hoping this would work. I didn’t help that much as the pressure continued to build. For some reason this was not uniform throughout the batch. So, as I mentioned I lost about a third of the batch.
Also, because of this, I started drinking the wine only after a few months as opposed to waiting the full three to six months. As it turned out the wine was not too bad. It was apple wine, mind you and I expected it to be a little more sweet than it was. It was in fact, quite dry. It also had a very high alcohol content. I would say at least ten per cent. This was a very subjective call because I had no tools to measure gravity. I was judging by how it made me feel as opposed to a bottle of commercial wine of about ten to twelve per cent. The flavor was that of fairly tart apple juice with little or no sweetness to it. The apples were from old trees and were of the quality used for cooking, pressing into juice and for other industrial purposes as opposed to the finer types for eating as fruit. I suppose this had something to do with the marginal quality.
On balance it was an interesting little diversion and I was particularly pleased with it because I had obtained the basic ingredient from my front yard and it would have just gone to waste if I hadn’t used them.
All of the final steps of this adventure was coming to a close as my tour in Holland was ending. As it turned out I lost about a third to corks popping out, drank about a third and gave the rest away.
# posted by CrankyFrankie @ 4:08 AM 
