So its been a while since I updated everyone on the strawberry wine project of mine. Its actually been a while since I went down stairs and checked on it to be truthful. So let’s get to it, last racking my must was showing an S.G. of .997 on Jan 29th 2010. This time when I racked it, March 29th 2010, and checked the S.G. It was .992. I racked from my 1 gallon carboy and my makeshift 1.5L carboy into one of my larger carboys so that I could easily degass and add the correct amount of Potassium Metabisulphite. Naturally being a curious wine maker I saved a sample portion before transferring it back into the freshly cleaned carboys. When I went to sample the wine for the first time I was immediately impressed at how much of a nose there was to it. It smelled so fragrantly of fresh strawberries very pleasant! The taste of it was surprising as well the strawberry taste is there but not as intense as the smell. There is still a lot of gas trapped in there so I did get the unpleasant mouth feel and taste of that but I think in time this wine is going to be very very good. I am defiantly looking forward to next racking that’s for sure. Thats all for now.

Well I finally decided to try this recipe. I don’t know why its taken me so long to do it. From what I’ve read it produces a fairly good wine for a very cheap price and that is right up my alley! Anyway yesterday I went to the store to gather the needed ingredients I did make a few substitutions to the recipe and I ramped it up for a 6 gallon batch. This is the recipe I used from Jack Kellers website.

• 2 cans (11.5 oz) Welches 100% frozen grape concentrate
• 1-1/4 lbs granulated sugar
• 2 tsp acid blend   
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• water to make 1 gallon
• wine yeast

I used 11 cans of Welches grape concentrate (because thats all they had), 1 can of Minute Maid cranberry cocktail, also a Minute Maid fruit cocktail for good measure. Also I substituted for the tsp’s of acid blend with the juice from 4 lemons. Then I added 2 tsp’s of Malic acid. (I didn’t have any tartaric acid or I would have added some of that as well) My last addition was 1 tsp of wine tannin. Oh and a small bag of medium toasted oak chips. The Yeast I used was Lalvin EC 1118. My S.G. came in at 1.100 so that should be good. This morning I checked the must and it is just beginning to start the fermentation process!! We have lift-off!! I don’t think the colour of the wine will be very dark but that is okay as long as it tastes good. I will try to keep this updated as best I can. Perhaps some photos will follow.

Okay since this is my first blog post I figure I’ll start this off with my a bit of an explanation. Up until this point I have always made wine at home from kits. I have had great success doing this and have noticed, like everyone else, that the more money and time you spend on your kit the better it will be. Now, with he help of this message board, I am beginning to try my hand at making a small batch of wine from scratch. Through this board I have been directed to many different resources on winemaking and have found them to be incredibly useful. Anyway enough of that yesterday January 23rd 2010 I started my first experiment in wine making. I went to Jack Kellers website and found a recipe I thought might work for a beginner. “Frozen Strawberry Wine” Now I did end up straying from the original recipe a bit because I didn’t have certain ingredients available to me. Like the citric acid which I substituted fresh lemon juice for. Also I could not find Welch’s 100% grape juice concentrate so I used an organic concord grape juice and upped the sugar. When all was said and done at the end of Day 1 I had an SG of 1.092 and I put in my yeast and called it a night. The next morning I woke up to find the must happily bubbling away!! So far so good! Now I realized this is just the first step in a very long process but I am very excited to see it going so well. I cannot wait to start another batch and as soon as my primary fermenter is empty I plan on finding another Jack Keller recipe. Thats all for now.