Suprise, Suprise

The issuer of challenge no. 9 (make my own wine) sent me an incredible gift in honor of Plot Notes being finished and bottled. The gorgeous decanter is exactly what my bar cart needed, and the monogrammed stopper matches our apartment's rustic-ish decor perfectly.

Thank you, Beverly, for such a wonderful surprise:

Finished Product

Here is my homemade blackberry wine for challenge no. 9 (drinkable!) with the labels now on it, perched confidently on my bar cart like a good bottle of wine should. If you are ever a guest at my house, I will force a glass upon you, and I predict it will go something like this:

Guest swirls wine in glass and takes a sip. Guest makes mildly unpleasant face, but quickly covers it up with an enthusiastic smile.

Guest:  "Mmmmm...SO good. I can really taste the blueberries."
Me:  "Blackberries."
Guest:  "Blackberries."
Me:  "So glad you like it! You can just take that whole bottle home if you'd like."
Guest:  "I would LOVE to, but you worked so hard to make it, I think you should keep it. Plus I can't feel my tongue anymore."

And The Winner Is

I have ordered the wine labels for my blackberry wine (challenge no. 9) and patiently await the end of fermentation. Thank you to Abby for naming my wine (she took the letters of my name and rearranged them to form something that hints at both writing and wine sipping, which I thought was genius). As long as it's drinkable, you'll be receiving a bottle. If the whole batch goes bust, I will try again.

The runner up was TIPSY CHIGGER (thank you Uncle Richard; I had a difficult time choosing). When I attempt to make blueberry wine, this name will have its day.

Whine, No Wine

May this be a lesson in reading the directions all the way through before you do something. 

I thought the third step in making blackberry wine (challenge no. 9) would be to bottle it and do an achievement jig. But I have to wait a bit longer until it stops fermenting for a second time.

Here is what I did last night:

1. Siphon out the wine from the jug into a spare pot or jar. Clean out the sediment from the jug and sanitize it. Put the wine back in the jug.

2. Add 1 3/4 cups of sugar to a pint of boiling water and let it dissolve. Let it cool to room temperature.

3. Add the cooled simple syrup to the jar, reattach the airlock and wait until it stops bubbling.

It was still bubbling this morning, but hopefully we are just days away from this:

 

In the meantime, I'm still hunting for a name for my wine. Feel free to submit your suggestions. Whoever comes up with the winning name will receive a bottle of my first batch, whether it tastes like s**t or not.

Making Blackberry Wine: Part 2, Featuring Science!

I have (successfully, I hope) completed step two in making blackberry wine (challenge no. 9). This is the fun step, when the fermenting begins.

When we last left off, I had combined my crushed berries, simple syrup and yeast in a bucket and let it sit for seven days.

Last night I strained that mixture through some cheesecloth into my carboy (a gallon glass jug) using a funnel. Then I added some more simple syrup (I dissolved 1 3/4 cups of sugar in 2 cups of boiling water and then LET IT COOL before adding it to the jug). Lastly, I attached the airlock to the top of the jug. It looked something like this:

    

 And THEN this started happening:

It is the carbon dioxide being sucked out that is creating the bubbling effect. 

Things will stay just like this for ten days. I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes smoothly and that I have some delicious blackberry wine by next Thursday night. 

Wine Making Haul

I recently purchased everything I will need to make blackberry wine (challenge no. 9). I'm waiting until July to go blackberry picking, when they are fully ripe. There are quite a few pick-your-own farms within reasonable driving distance of NYC. After I acquire my berries, it's about a 17-day process. Let's hope my winemaking skills aren't as bad as my art skills.

 Great brewing shop in Gowanus.

 Equipment: Bucket, glass jug, tubing for siphoning, siphon starter, hand corker, sanitizer, red wine yeast, and airlock.

Blackberry Wine

Challenge no. 9 is to make and bottle my own wine. After doing a lot of research on making my own wine at a winery vs. making my own wine at home, I've decided to go with the latter. Making your own wine at a winery STARTS in the thousands of dollars. It would probably be fantastic, but I can't take that expensive chance.

So, homemade wine. Since obtaining the type of grapes required to make a traditional wine would mean waiting until late summer and then having them delivered, I am going to attempt to make blackberry wine.

The ingredients are more readily available, and if I really wanted to, I could pick my own berries. This decision is partly influenced by some incredible blackberry wine I tasted at Applewood Orchards and Winery in the fall (it's available for purchase here if you're interested).

 
In terms of ingredients, it's simple: blackberries, sugar, water and yeast. The equipment will be the biggest purchase, but it seems that any brewing store will have exactly what I need.

I found instructions here, but this is one of the many set of instructions I found. There are books I could buy on the subject, but I'm going to just give this one a go and see what happens. If it's an epic fail, then I'll just try again. If it turns out delicious, I won't have to do any Christmas shopping this year.

Cheers!