My Aim In Life


...first is to honor God, His Son and those whom He sends.

To love and cherish my dear husband, children and family.

And to use the talents God has given me to create beautiful things.




Sunday, October 31, 2010

Pear Wine

Our grape wine turned out so well I decided to make some pear wine. A lady in our area gave us some pears to make preserves with, but they weren't the right kind for preserves. No one in the family wanted to eat them and we don't like pear butter. Wine was the only other thing I could think of to make with them.

I have the pears in jars fermenting, along with the yeast and water. It will be ready on November 20th, just in time for Thanksgiving. It's a small batch and should yield about 1 gallon. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Have a great day!

Friday, October 22, 2010

Blogging Neglect and Making Homemade Wine

As I feared I would do, I have neglected this blog. I have had some problems with a big space between my header and the posts and didn't know how to fix it. I am very blog illerate. LOL I finally went to Blogger help and found an answer to my problem. Why didn't I think of that before?!

On a lighter note, my husband and I decided to try making wine with some grapes he was given at work. I'm not sure, but I think they may have been concorde grapes. Our wine turned out well and is really good!

The recipe he was given by a co-worker had a little too much sugar for our taste (we tried some made with the original amount, too sweet!) so we used a bit less in ours. Below you will see the"winery".  LOL

                                   

The grapes were put into a blender and then into jars. The jars each hold 2.5 qts. We then added the sugar, yeast and required amount of water. A rubber glove was placed on the jars to allow the mixture to ferment without letting any air enter the jars. We cracked quite a few jokes about our "winery" with the gloves waving at us! : D

The fermentation took 30 days. We ended up with about 1.5 gallons of beautiful red wine. The grapes we used were such a dark purple that they looked black. The wine has a beautiful magenta color....the picture below doesn't quite do justice to the color.

  

Recipe For
HomemadeWine

5c. crushed fruit
5 c. sugar
1 pkt of yeast

Place all ingredients in a gallon jar and finish filling with water. Place a rubber glove over the top of the jar to allow fermentation without letting air into the jar. You might want to duct tape the glove to the jar. Let mixture sit for 30 days. The fermentation should be finished by then and the gloves will no longer be standing at attention. : ) 

NOTE: If the glove goes flat before the 30 days is up, replace it with a new glove, it may have developed a leak or become too loose.

Strain thru several layers of cheese cloth or other cloth of your preference. We strained ours a couple of times. After straining out the fruit let it sit for a couple of days, then strain and pour it into jars or bottles. If you are careful you can pour it up without having to strain it again until the last of it where the sediment is at the bottom. We used a clean white pillow case which, of course, is no longer white. : )

Your wine can be bottled or put into canning jars like we did. Ours is not sealed since it won't be around for long. We have given some of it away and have the rest in the fridge.

This wine is VERY potent!! I found out for myself the other night when my husband poured us each a glass to drink while watching TV. I've never been drunk, tipsy or even had a buzz til that night.

I got up from the sofa to go and do some laundry and found that I had to walk slowly since I was a bit dizzy. It took a minute to realize that it was from the wine. I only drank about 8 oz, but then I'm not a drinker.

We buy a bottle of wine 2 or 3 times a year, usually Boone's Farm Fuzzy Navel. Some people laugh when Boone's Farm wine is mentioned, but we don't care, we like it. I guess that's because we don't know anything about fine wines. : )

Ok, I'm off to work on drapes, baby quilts and other such things. Have a great day!