The Backyard Homestead
Page 13
Bottling
You could store your wine in a jug, but regular wine bottles are much nicer and keep the wine better for longer.
1. Gather equipment and sanitizing materials:
• wine bottles
• siphon tube
• corks
• mallet or corker (alternatively, country wines can be capped as beer is)
Sanitize wine bottles and the siphon tube. Rinse three times in hot tap water.
2. Using the siphon tube, rack wine into bottles.
3. Insert corks one-quarter of the way into bottles. Allow to sit for one to two weeks. If the corks pop, the wine may not be completely fermented, and it may need to go back into an airlocked container for another period of fermentation.
4. If the corks have not popped after the first two weeks, cover them with thick cardboard to prevent chipping the bottles, and use a mallet to tap them firmly into the bottles.
5. Cellar in a cool, dark place, usually for at least six months, before sampling. Wine is best stored on its side, with the neck of the bottle slightly lower than the bottom; this keeps the cork moist and swollen, so that it prevents air from entering the bottle. Be sure to label each bottle before you store it.
Peach Wine
The peachy flavor of this wine makes it lovely for sipping or for making coolers. Use very ripe fruit; greener fruits have more pectin, making the wine more difficult to clear.
3–3½ pounds ripe peaches (about 10 peaches)
2 quarts water, boiled and cooled
3 pounds granulated sugar
1 teaspoon acid blend
½ teaspoon tannin or 1 tablespoon strong tea
1 Campden tablet (optional)
1 package (5–7 grams) wine yeast
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1½ cups tepid orange juice
1–2 teaspoons pectic enzyme
1. Wash the peaches and slice them into a 2-gallon plastic container; toss in the pits too. Add the cooled water, in which you’ve dissolved 1½ pounds of the sugar, the acid blend, the tannin, and the Campden tablet, if desired. Wait 24 hours before proceeding.
2. Make a yeast starter culture by combining the wine yeast and yeast nutrient with the orange juice. Cover, shake vigorously, and let stand until bubbly, about 1 to 3 hours. Add to the must.
3. Add the pectic enzyme; ferment for 3 days.
4. Rack or strain the wine into another container. Discard the solids.
5. Boil the remaining sugar in water to cover; let cool and add it to the other ingredients with enough water to make 1 gallon. Ferment for 10 days, or until the energetic bubbling slows down. Rack the wine into a 1-gallon, airlocked fermentation vessel; ferment to completion.
6. Bottle, cork, and cellar your wine. Wait at least three months before serving.
Yield: 1 gallon
Optimum Serving Temperatures
Grape Melomel
Known as “pyment,” this fine country wine was popular in ancient Egypt, where wild grapes and honey abounded.
3 pounds light honey
3 pounds Concord grapes
1 Campden tablet (optional)
1 packet (5–7 grams) champagne yeast
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1½ cups tepid orange juice
1 teaspoon pectic enzyme
1. Remove impurities from the honey by boiling 1 part honey with 2 parts water in a large, nonreactive pot and skimming off the foam. Cool.
2. In a 2-gallon plastic container, crush the grapes.
3. Add the honey-and-water mixture. Pour in water to top off to 1 gallon, if needed. Add a Camp-den tablet, if desired. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours, well covered, stirring two or three times in an up-and-down motion to introduce oxygen into the mixture.
4. Make a yeast starter culture by combining the champagne yeast and yeast nutrient with the orange juice. Cover, shake vigorously, and let stand until bubbly, 1 to 3 hours. Incorporate into the must. Add the pectic enzyme.
5. Ferment for five days and strain out the solids. Transfer the liquid to an airlocked vessel.
6. Rack after two weeks. When all fermentation has ceased, bottle, cork, and cellar the wine. Wait six months or more before opening.
Yield: About 1 gallon
Herb or Dried-Flower-Petal Wine
Many delicious wines are made from herbs or flower petals. When using fresh herbs or petals, increase the amount to 1 to 4 pints, depending on your taste and how strongly flavored the herb or flower is.
2 ounces dried herbs or flower petals
1 quart water
1 pound minced sultanas or other light raisins, or juice of 3½–4 pounds grapes
1 teaspoon citric acid or 2 teaspoons acid blend
1 teaspoon tannin
1 Campden tablet (optional)
1 package (5–7 grams) wine yeast
1½ cups tepid orange juice
2¾ pounds granulated sugar for dry wines, 2O for sweet
Wine Words
Body. The texture and fullness of a wine, the way it feels in your mouth.
Bouquet. The rich, complex aroma that develops in wines as they age.
Cap. The somewhat firm layer of grapes or other solids that rise to the surface during the first fermentation.
Cellar. To store wine while it ages, usually in a cool, dark place.
Lees. The sediment of solids and yeast cells in the fermentation vessel.
Mead. Any wine whose primary fermenting sugar is honey.
Melomel. A wine sweetened with honey but flavored with fruit.
Must. The first stage of wine, when there are large particles of fruit and yeast in the mixture.
Nose. The aroma or bouquet of wine when it is swirled in a wineglass.
Racking. The use of a siphon to transfer wine from a fermentation vessel to a clean container, leaving behind solids and sediments.
1. Place the herbs in an enamel or glass saucepan with the water. Bring the mixture to a boil; simmer for 20 minutes.
2. Transfer to a 2-gallon plastic container. Add the raisins, citric acid, and tannin. Allow the mixture to cool. Add a Campden tablet, if desired, and let the mixture sit, covered, for 24 hours.
3. Make a yeast starter culture by combining the wine yeast and yeast nutrient with the orange juice. Cover, shake vigorously, and let stand until bubbly (1 to 3 hours); add to the must.
4. Loosely cover the pulp and allow it to ferment for three days. Rack the liquid into a 1-gallon fermentation vessel that can be fitted with an airlock. Add the desired amount of sugar and water to make 1 gallon. Fit the airlock and let the wine ferment to completion, three to four weeks.
5. Bottle, cork, and cellar the wine.
Yield: 1 gallon
Note: Whenever you use flowers in wine or cooking, make sure they come from edible plants. The oleander bloom is toxic, as are the flowers of lily of the valley. If you aren’t sure that it’s edible, don’t use it.
Old-Timer Methods
A crock made airtight by a plate and a handful of dried beans to hold it down, and Great-Grandpa was in the winemaking business. He probably nicked a little of Great-Grandma’s bread yeast to get the fermentation process started, then waited patiently for nature to take its course. If his wine was cloudy after repeated siphoning and straining over several months’ time, he added a dried eggshell or two to clear the mixture. He siphoned the liquid into jugs or bottles a few days later, driving the cork home with a block of wood and a hammer.
Flavorings for Herb or Flower Wine
To get you started, here are some ingredients that may be used in the Herb or Dried-Flower-Petal Wine recipe on page 134:
• agrimony
• bramble tips
• burnet
• coltsfoot
• coltsfoot flowers
• cowslip flowers• dandelion
• elderflowers
• elecampane root
• rhubarb stalks
• lemon balm
• rose petals
Coltsfoot
Agrimony
Cidermaking
The heady fragrance of fresh sweet cider running from the press evokes mellow apples, fallen leaves, and the brisk country air cleared by early-morning frost. Make your cider outside, preferably on a cool, breezy day. Pour the washed apples into the hopper and grind them, cores, skin, and all. Catch the fresh cider in a clean container and you’re on your way to a taste treat of your own making.
Making Apple Cider
Apple cider is the fresh, untreated juice of pressed, ground apples. To prevent contamination or spoilage, all materials and equipment used must be sanitized.
1. Apple harvest and “sweating.” Harvest or buy mature, ripe, sound apples. Store the apples in a clean area for a few days to several weeks, sweating them until they yield slightly to the pressure of a firm squeeze. Keep different varieties of apples separate if you want to make a balanced blend after pressing.
2. Selecting apples for blending. You can make a good blended cider from the following amounts of fruit in each category (see chart below, which will help you blend cider with your local apple varieties):
• Neutral or low-acid base: 40 to 60 percent of the total apples. The bland, sweet juice will blend happily with sharper and more aromatic apples.
• Medium- to high-acid base: Tart apples can make up 10 to 20 percent of the total.
• Aromatic: 10 to 20 percent of fragrant apples will give your cider a nice bouquet.
• Astringent (tannin): 5 to 20 percent of the total juice. Go easy with tannin; too much will sour the cider.
3. Milling or grinding. Just before grinding, wash the apples in a large tub of clear, cool water. Squirt a garden hose directly on them; use a high-pressure setting. Place the washed apples into the hopper of a grinder and reduce them to a fine, mushy pomace. If this is your first cidermaking experience, keep the apple varieties, the pomace, and the juice separate and blend to taste later. Press the pomace immediately.
4. Pressing. Using a single-tub screw press or ratchet press, place the nylon press bag in the tub and fill it with apple pomace. Do not use galvanized or metal scoops, which react with the acid in the pomace. Tie or fold the bag closed. Slowly apply increasing pressure to the pulp. As the juice flows out, tighten the screw or pump the ratchet to bring the pressure up again.
Catch the fresh cider in a clean stainless-steel, plastic, or unchipped enamel container. Do not allow the cider to come into contact with other metals. If you are planning to blend the juices from different varieties, keep the pressed-out juices separate.
5. Blending the juices. Take quart samples of each kind of juice. Use a measuring cup to figure exact amounts, and try to achieve a good balance of flavors. Taste-test for tannin (acid) content first. Add small amounts of high-tannin cider to the neutral or low-acid cider base until the level of astringency pleases you. Add aromatic juice, and then cautiously blend in the high-acid juice until the cider is lively, fragrant, and well balanced. Repeat, using the same proportions to blend in greater quantities.
6. Filtering. To correct faintly hazy, natural sweet cider, pass the juice through a light layer of cheesecloth or nylon mesh. This step will remove impurities and flecks of pomace.
7. Storage. Refrigerate cider in clean glass or plastic jugs or in waxed cardboard containers. It will taste fresh for two to four weeks. After refrigeration, the preferred method of preserving cider is freezing. Allow 2 inches of headroom in containers for expansion during freezing. Defrost the cider for a day in the refrigerator before drinking it.
Common Apple Varieties for Cidermaking
High-Acid Apples
• Gravenstein
• Jonathan
• Northern Spy
• Pippin
• Rhode Island Greening
Low-Acid Apples
• Delicious
• Golden Delicious
• Rome Beauty
Medium-Acid
Apples
• Baldwin
• Cortland
• Empire
• Ida Red
• McIntosh
• Winesap
Aromatic Apples
• Delicious
• Golden Delicious
• McIntosh
• Pippin
• Russet
Astringent (Tannin) Apples
• Crab apple
• Most wild apples
Dump the washed apples into the hopper and grind them, cores, skin, and all.
Getting Started with Apple Cider
• Grinder. Usually an oak frame set with stainless-steel or aluminum cutters or rollers, with a hopper on top that can accommodate up to a bushel of fruit. Grinders are usually hand-powered.
• Cider press. A single-tub, hand-operated screw press or ratchet system.
• Pressing bags and cloths. Most are made of nylon.
• Filter cloth. A layer of cheesecloth or nylon filter cloth.
• Primary container. A bucket, bowl, or vat made of stainless steel, polyethylene plastic, glass, or unchipped enamel.
• Plastic siphon tubing (optional). A 4-foot section of ¼-inch plastic tubing will help you fill cider jugs and bottles.
• Storage containers. Clean plastic or glass jugs with screw tops.
Vinegars
Making flavored vinegars, whether spiced, herbal, or fruited, takes little effort and yields impressive results. Infused vinegars add nuances of flavor to your cooking, look great in pretty bottles, and make wonderful culinary gifts.
Making Flavored Vinegars
Many flavored vinegars can be made right in the bottles in which you will store them or give them away — as long as you have enough time at your disposal to allow the flavor to gradually build during the steeping process. Simply insert the flavoring ingredients into the bottle, add the vinegar — and wait for about a week.
If, however, you suddenly decide in mid-December that you want to give your friends some marvelous herb or spice vinegar for the holidays, you can speed up the process. To do this, first bruise your seasoning ingredients: Crush them with a garlic press, pepper mill, or mortar and pestle. (In the case of fresh herbs, just crumple them a bit.) Place them in a glass jar with a cover (a mayonnaise jar works well), heat the vinegar to the boiling point, and add it to the jar. Put on the lid and store at room temperature.
Start tasting the vinegar in a day or two. When the flavor is just right, strain out the flavoring ingredients. If the vinegar is cloudy, run it through coffee filters until it’s clear. Put some of the seasoning ingredients, this time left whole, into gift bottles, and pour in the vinegar.
Fruit vinegars, such as raspberry, are best made by cooking the main ingredients briefly in the vinegar, then steeping. No matter which method you use, there’s very little effort involved and the rewards are tremendous.
All vinegars will keep indefinitely. If you plan to keep them for a long time, though, it’s wise to sterilize the vinegar you use as a base.
Base Vinegars
Your choice of vinegar will affect the flavor and color of the final product. Red wine vinegar adds to the color of raspberry vinegar; white wine vinegar shows off herbs, lemon peel, and spices; and so forth. Distilled white vinegar is fine for such unsubtle uses as hot pepper and pungent garlic vinegars. Experiment according to your own preferences.
Making Vinegar
To make flavored vinegars from scratch, you start with the vinegar itself. This requires a large container, a “mother,” and liquid to process. The mother is a cloudy or filmy substance that is present in vinegars that have not been sterilized. You can buy a vinegar kit from specialty culinary stores or look for a cloudy deposit or a light film on the top of the vinegar that you have. Add leftover wine or cider to the mother and set aside at room temperature. It takes about two weeks for the mother to make vinegar of whatever you’ve added.
All vin
egars will keep indefinitely.
Raspberry Vinegar
Many people consider raspberry the best of all flavored vinegars. Don’t omit the sugar or honey; this vinegar needs a touch of sweetening to bring out its full flavor.
2–2½ cups fresh red raspberries, lightly mashed (frozen raspberries can be used, but if they’re presweetened, don’t add the sugar or honey)
2 cups red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
1. Combine all ingredients in the top of a nonreactive double boiler. Place over boiling water, reduce the heat, and cook over barely simmering water, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
2. Pour into a large screw-top jar. Store for three weeks, then strain to separate the vinegar from the berries, pressing gently on the berries to extract the juice. If your vinegar is cloudy, pour it through a coffee filter. Pour into bottles, adding a few fresh berries.
Yield: About 2 cups
Note: Paul Corcellet, maker of one of the finest commercial raspberry vinegars, also markets an excellent raspberry syrup that you can find in many gourmet stores. A little of it added to some red wine vinegar will give you an instant raspberry vinegar that may not be exactly like fresh-made but is still very good.
Variations
Blueberry Vinegar: This fabulous fruit vinegar is made in exactly the same way as the raspberry vinegar. Use your choice of red or white wine vinegar. The red will give a darker color, but it will have a purplish tinge. For an appealing presentation, bottle the finished vinegar with a few large fresh blueberries and a small cinnamon stick.