Thursday, July 21, 2016

Wine Season -- Garden Huckleberry Wine

We decided to use the garden huckleberries to make wine! 

About a week ago, I pulled all the stems off of the stash I had been accumulating in the fridge (5 pounds, 9 ounces), cooked them with about 1/4 cup of baking soda and water, then rinsed them and cooked again with lemon and sugar. 

The water turned a psychedelic green when cooking with the baking soda. Quite pretty!
Then I added the ingredients for the wine (boiling water, sugar, lemon juice, one large container of frozen concentrated grape juice, yeast) and stirred the whole thing up in my big red wine bucket. I had this covered with a cheesecloth and stirred daily for the past 4 days.  There was some foaming, and this was skimmed off once a day.
Then on Wednesday (or was it Tuesday?) I strained it and moved to the carboy. 
It's a beautiful color, smells like wine now, and has a sweet, fizzy taste. It's going to be sitting in a dark, cool corner, wrapped in a dark cloth for the next 3 weeks.
I've checked it and it's still bubbling....and I've had to clean out the airlock once because of bubbles. 
We'll see how this one goes!  Now, on to the elderberries! I have almost 14 pounds of elderberries in the fridge right now and a few more to pick in the next few days. That's gonna make a lot of wine!

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