I finally got around to kegging the Philly sour wine. I was going to bottle and cork it as usual.. but after having a quick taste on rack day, I decided this would be great carbonated.
I’d say moderately sour with good body. The Concord really played with the Blackberry nicely. 1.096 OG to 0.996 FG is what.. 13%?
Gonna give it a week or so of the gas and see how it feels. But right now is friggin great. Better tasting notes coming up soon.
I won a bottle of wine base at one of our meetings a ways back. And I’m looking to do more “experiments” so I grabbed a packet of Philly Sour yeast to use with it.
I guess my plan is to let the Philly yeast do it’s souring, then pitch the 1118 to chew it down.
Doing the full 5 gallons. So thats the gallon of base plus 4 gallons of water. But I subbed out 3/4 gallons of the water for 3/4 gallons of grape juice. Just for another layer of flavor..plus it might help the souring part of the Philly.
I did do some nutrient at pitch. But there is usually some decent lag time with the Philly because it does two phases. Phase one is the souring, then after that the yeast part takes over and starts the fermenting. And that might take a day…. Or two. So I won’t start the rest of the nutrient program until the ferment actually starts.
My water out of the tap is 50F right now, so I warmed it up to 75F where I will be fermenting at. After getting everything mixed I had an OG of 23 Brix or 1.096. So if everything goes as planned we should be looking at a 12%ish wine.
Now, mead is not one of my favorite things for some reason. I mean, I should like them, right? Who don’t like honey?
Oh I have had a few that were phenomenal, and also some that were the worst homebrewed things I ever had. (one was so bad it turned me off of an entire genre of beers)
I have made a couple of meads in the past. They ranged from ok, to maybe not. Mostly because of ingredient choices. Somethings just aint cut out for mead.
But I’m not a quitter. I’m going to find a combination that I like sooner or later. And this past version may be just that. Cranberry mead.
Now I put a little thought into it this time, I was looking at a 3 gallon batch. Lower alcohol so it can be drinkable relatively sooner than normal. A sweeter version. And,, well… cheap. Meads can quickly deplete the wallet quickly.
So what I came up with is: Cranberry Mead
5lbs Costco Wildflower Honey
3 lbs can Vinters Harvest Cranberry Puree
3.25 gallons filtered water
Nutrient
Nottingham Yeast
Using honey and puree is just a matter of dumping and stirring. And while yes I did figure on a bit of displacement, I didn’t figure on quite as much as we got. After getting everything mixed in as measured, it appears we have about 4-4.5 gallons of must.
Am going to assume we will lose atleast a .25 gallon on first rack then maybe another .25 between the next rack and bottling.
The last wine was the same volume and we just racked to my 3 gallon carboy and a separate 1 gallon fermenter. (its nice to have odd ball sizes of jugs laying around) But in the future I will have to adjust for this.
We had an OG at pitch of 1.052,, and I would expect the Notty to stop around 1.010. That would be around 5.5%, and perfect for what I’m looking for.
Will be doing staggered nutrient additions, which for mead, especially cranberry, is really needed because the honey has nearly nothing. So I’m going to put in ½ teaspoon today. Stirring every day for 5 days but adding nutrient only every other day. This helps the yeast by releasing some C02 and getting that nutrient in.
This right now is some tasty stuff. Would be a good mixer for some vodka. I hope it holds some of this character when its finished. I guess we will see.
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