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!
The wine looks delicious! We only made wine once under the direction of our elderly Polish neighbor and it was very potent too. He's gone now, so we will never get his secret to good dandelion wine!
ReplyDeleteWe are getting ready to make some wild muscadine wine. I'd love to hear how you made yours, Magpie Quilts. Was it dandelion?
DeleteMagpie Quilts, my last comment was left unpublished for a while bc I was blocked out of my blog for a couple of years. I just found it in my emails and published it. :) (Barbara Wood)
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