EASY HOMEMADE WINE RECIPE.
Making wine is simple––it happens naturally. When fruit falls to the ground and rots, that's what's happening, wine is happening. Making wine is simple because wine makes itself, you just need to give it a proper venue.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RPGQc1AMR4what you'll need:
-Makes 4 bottles-
- A 1 1/2 –– 2 gallon crock or glass jar
- A 1 gallon carboy or small-necked glass container
- An airlock or balloon
- Fruit, preferably unwashed berries or grapes, but you can use anything (really)
- A few cups of honey
- Filtered water, non-chlorinated water (spring water works best)
- Long, thin plastic tube to siphon wine from carboy to bottle
- Used, clean bottles with corks/screw caps
I recommend foraging or picking your berries if possible, but either way, make sure they are not sprayed with anything or washed if you can help it––they house your yeasts. Keep in mind throughout, ingredients in winemaking, as it is with cooking, are essential to making good wine. This includes the fruit obviously, but the water and honey if you use any.Try and fill the crock near full with the fruit and massage the juice out of it––squeeze it for 5 or so minutes.Leave at least 1 1/2 inches between the top of the liquid and the top of the jar. When it starts fermenting it will rise a bit, so heed the last sentence to avoid overflow. If you do not have enough fruit to get to the top of the jar, don’t sweat it. Add a little water to make up for it––and no, this will not ruin your wine. It might make it a little lighter, but you wont regret that in the summertime. The goal is to make a gallon of liquid to put in the carboy. Eye it as best you can.Once the liquid is in place, stir in 2-3 cups of honey.(This is indeed imprecise, but if we’re trying to keep things easy, you’re going to have to make some guesses and learn by trial and error unless you want to buy a refractometer. I don’t own one, I might never, and most of my wines turn out great. If you added a lot of fruit, especially grapes which have a high percentage of sugar, add less honey. If you didn’t have that much fruit and it wasn’t really sweet fruit to begin with, add more honey. It’s that easy. If you want to be safe, add more honey. Often, if the wine turns out too sweet, I just let it sit and it levels out. If it’s not sweet enough, put it in a decanter with some honey for a day or so. If you like a sweeter wine, go nuts, add 4 cups of honey. Whatever––I’m trying to keep it simple, and if you’re only making a gallon at a time it’s not going to be a huge, time-consuming loss if you don’t love it…but I digress.)
Next, cover the container with a t-shirt or cloth and tie a string around it to keep bugs out. Stir it hard for a few minutes every few hours. Keep in a warm place, 70 degrees or so. Top of the fridge usually works well.The next day, stir it every 4 hours or so, but don’t worry if you’re late or early, just stir it a few good times a day to keep mold spores submerged.It should, if you followed the steps as I wrote them, start bubbling on its own within 2 or 3 days. You don’t have to add yeast, I never have and it’s never failed––the yeasts should already be on the fruit and in the air. If not, we’re all in trouble. Keep stirring a few times a day and keep it covered. Once the bubbling slows down (about 3 days after it starts bubbling) strain the liquid gently (no worries if some solid mass comes through) and put it in your small-necked container or carboy. Put your airlock on, or just use a small balloon, and set it in a cool, dark place. If you use the balloon you will have to let the resulting gas (carbon dioxide) out occasionally by simply pulling the balloon off then replacing it frequently for the first week, less so after that.MAKE SURE NO BUGS GET IN, they want to spoil your wine and fun, keep it covered.Let the wine sit for as long as you want, but I recommend at least a month. If you made a sweeter wine I might recommend longer. Then? Bottle the wine and further age it or drink it immediately. Voila! That’s the basics, you can make it as complicated as you want, but I like it simple. For me, that’s often where the complexity comes from anyhow.GOOD LUCK –– and don't be afraid to experiment or ask questions!- Jesse.
FORAGED.
"Our brains developed under the pressure of natural selection to make us good foragers, which is how humans have spent 99% of their time on Earth." -Michael Pollan, Botany of DesireWhen we moved into our new house a few days ago, Hannah and I set about exploring the property in search of things to exploit––fruit trees, wildflowers, edible greens, etc.––anything we might be able to use or eat or turn into wine. Although there is quite a lot of property to explore yet, simply starting with our yard we were immediately able to find some lamb's quarters––a tender green whose flavor is often meaty and whose nutritional qualities often greater than anything we can plant (despite the fact that it's most commonly referred to as a weed!). So, having not been up to the garden yet that day, I picked some and scrambled it for our first hot meal in the new home. CSA members, do not be surprised if you get some of this treat in your first basket!A little more exploration revealed a healthy mulberry tree, and though they aren't the most flavorful or juiciest mulberries we've ever eaten, they'll probably make a decent wine. Along with honey suckle I found at the edge of the forest, I combined the two things with some water and honey and as we speak, our first ever mulberry/honey suckle wine is fermenting away.I truly enjoy foraging and want to do more of it––wandering around and exploring all the free food that's out there, realizing how little we actually utilize from nature. Yes, indeed, it's smart to research foraged plants before you eat them, but once you grow to recognize food in the wild, the possibilities are endless. Our pear tree is loaded. There are hundreds of blackberry briars around. Cherry trees, wild grape vines and, yes, plenty of "weeds," all soon to be ripe for the pickin'. I'd say look forward to a summer of many foraged posts.- Jesse.
FRIENDS & CORNBREAD.
Slowly but surely, we are starting to make friends! Going to the farmer’s market and visiting some local-food-type places around town has helped us to meet like-minded folks around Danville…even some young farmers! We were invited by these new friends to an AG LEGACY pot luck tomorrow….meeting with other farmers, young and old, to talk about what we do, sharing ideas and information, and connecting. Exciting! We are taking a bottle of Jesse’s wine and some cornbread muffins that I am currently baking. They are smelling prettydelicious, and so I thought I’d share the recipe. I know it is quick and easy to buy that Jiffy cornbread box, but it is truly SO simple to make it yourself….and way better for you. Promise.And as a BONUS, last year at Bugtussle, Jesse fermented garlic scapes and some habeneros early in the season. The result was a sort of spicy, garlicy, hot sauce wine that we have been using to flavor our food. I mixed some of that in with the cornbread and it is DELICIOUS – a very slight kick. Obviously, if you want to make some of the garlic scape stuff, it is going to take a couple weeks or so for it to get really good and fermented. But adding spice to cornbread is always a good idea in my book..
HANNAH’S SPICY CORNBREAD(makes about 25 corn muffins, or 2 pans of cornbread)ingredients:
- 2 ¼ cups corn meal
- 2 ¼ cups flour
- 5 tbsp honey (or sugar, if that floats your boat)
- 3 tbsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 ½ cups sour milk or yogurt (SOUR MILK MAKES AWESOME BAKED GOODS)
- 10 oz butter or lard (I used half butter and half lard), melted
- 2 eggs, slightly beaten
- 1 cup garlic scape hot stuff (optional, just add another cup of milk if you don’t want to use hot sauce)
Mix all your dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the butter, eggs and milk as you stir. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 400 degrees.
JESSE’S FERMENTED GARLIC SCAPE SALSA(makes half a gallon)ingredients:
- 1 lb garlic scapes, chopped
- ½ cup salt
- ½ gallon water (or enough to cover the scapes)
Stir the salt into the water. Put the scapes in a glass jar. Pour the water into the jar until they are completely covered, leaving a few inches of space between top of the jar.Let sit for three days in a cool, dark space, making sure the scapes stay submerged. Bubbling and ocassional foam is a GOOD thing! Put lid on jar losely and over the next few days, make sure and unscrew lid enough to relieve pressure in jar. Let sit for a couple weeks in fridge or cellar, until fresh hot peppers are available. Add several hot peppers—at least 5, but as many as you want––and let sit for additional week. Blend together and put in clean jar, still making sure solids are submerged. Serve and ENJOY!
DRY COUNTY WINE REVIEW: A WEEK IN PHOTOS (of wine).
Although not all of our beverages from the week are pictured, I assure you that lots of good tipple was consumed. You might notice the blackberry wine pictured below as I was thrilled to finally have a chance to open some of my fruit wines for wine friends. This was really the test. Besides myself, no wine professionals had tasted my homemade wines and I needed them to see promise. Also, the wines had to stand up to a wide range of complex food and flavors. In both challenges, the wines succeeded swimmingly. If wine professionals, wine drinkers, and myself can all enjoy them, and if they can amplify a meal adequately, then it gives me confidence to say I might be on to something with these natural fruit wines. Admittedly, this was a big reason I wanted to go to New York: encouragement or a reality check. For better or worse, I got the former.- Jesse.
