Tag: wine

February 28, 2023 – A History of the World in 6 Glasses

February 28, 2023 /

Sometimes I get lazy and put up books that I have read because it is convenient not necessarily because I thought that it was interesting. This is not one of those times, I was fascinated with the concept from the title through the end.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage proposes a world view of history through six different drinks. I don’t think I am giving away too much by listing them as beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola. It isn’t a long or difficult read by any means. The book is 250 pages and takes the position of reader as a novice.

If you were looking for an anti-racist approach, you will be sorely disappointed. This really takes the approach of history through the drink. For instance, I think that tea gets a little short shrift. The book is the western perspective about the tea trade and proliferation of tea through the British Empire with only a handful of pages before that. So, it is not totally ignored but what a fascinating perspective that the British Empire was fueled on tea.

I think part of the fascination of this book for me is the transition of one drink to another. This is the explanation of how one drink overtook the other. A lot of it had to do with rise and fall of empires but what a unique take to frame them through drink. I thought that it was particularly interesting about how the political decisions drove economic activity and made or broke empires.

Another wildcard for me was how a brand came to represent an empire. I don’t know if I totally buy the premise however I certainly understand how the brand represented a philosophy and the philosophy symbolized a way of thinking and a way of doing. It was that thinking and doing that was novel and therefore the empire grew as a result of a better idea.

Since the book is short and the it is all about history which of course is already known, I don’t want to spoil the remaining secrets that are within. I definitely had no problems keeping up and reading the book. I didn’t find it dry in the least. For that, I would say that if you run across a copy, it is definitely worth reading.

End Your Programming Routine: It isn’t that often that someone gives you a book that they haven’t read that actually turns out to be good. From that standpoint, I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t think that it looked interesting from reading the jacket. For me, the programming is looking at things the same way, over and over. This is not that. This is looking at history by aggregating events through the perspective of a drink. What a novel concept.

November 15, 2022 – Plum Wine… Liquid Fire or Liquid Gold?

November 15, 2022 /

It is finally bottling day. The wine has been in the secondary over a year. I think that it has been ready to bottle for six months or so but I have been consumed with other activities.

My first challenge was bottles. I hate dealing with bottle preparation. To top it off, I really didn’t have enough wine bottles as five gallons need two cases of bottles. I had 2/3 of a case (or eight) bottles open. Instead of spending $50 on bottles, I decided to put them in 22oz beer bottles. So this meant cleaning them.

This is a task that I don’t mind doing as much in the summer time, but now the temperature is near freezing. Soaking these bottles in sanitizer and scrubbing them with a bottle brush is drag and it is pretty cold too. I found three bottles that needed some extra attention, so much so that I actually abandoned them and found other bottles to use. They took days of soaking, scrubbing, pouring boiling water and other cleaning chemicals to try and get these clean.

I have two bottle brushes. One does not fit into my bottles and the other does not fan out properly at the bottom. I need to be in the market for a third brush so that this task is not so difficult. The real, real lesson is to not leave bottles dirty. I could have avoided all of this by rinsing them properly before putting them away.

The bottling process is not too bad. It involves a spring-loaded plunger and a gravity syphon. Essentially, while there is pressure on the tip of the plunger, liquid will feed from above until you release the pressure. I try to fill the bottle as full as I can get it because once the bottle dispenser is removed, that volume is replace with air (or headspace). Beer will utilize that oxygen to do it’s bottle carbonation. Wine really doesn’t benefit from any extra oxygen and should be avoided.

Once all the bottles are filled, they can be corked or capped. I write the page number of my brew log on the cap for identification. You can see the color, kind of a reddish-orangish color. Very nice.

When I was originally brewing this, I was planning that this recipe would make three gallons. It turned out to make five. I suspect that because I froze the fruit, most of it remained in the brew, adding volume. Had this actually been three gallons, I think it would have been way out of proportion. I didn’t actually weigh the fruit, I estimated it. To do this again, I would make some modifications, likely less added sugar.

I brewed this on a whim. A mysterious box of plums showed up on my deck one day. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a starting sugar, so I don’t know what the actual alcohol content is. But it is kind of rocket fuel. It has a distinctly plum taste to it but it is not sweet like the Asian wines. I probably need to cold crash it so it stays a little sweet and is not quite so strong. Otherwise, this is an Altf4.co success; found fruit brewed into future enjoyment. This is exactly what I wanted to do with this site.

End Your Programming Routine: Now that this is done, it is time to start turning into brewing beer again. I have four kits and two empty kegs sitting and waiting. I also want to make a decision on apple cider. I am strongly thinking that I will brew that as well. I guess now that the weather has changed, it is a good time to be working in the kitchen.

October 11, 2021 – Making Plum Wine

October 11, 2021 /

This is something that I should have done a long time ago. I have had these plums prepped and improperly stored in the freezer for over six weeks now. The truth is, I thought that I would talk about brewing much more than I have. This may be the first time I have written about it other than saying that this was one of the things that I was going to write about.

About mid August, a box of plums showed up on the deck. I don’t really know where they came from. I think I do, but nothing has ever been confirmed. Now, I don’t really care for them and would much prefer them dried, then called a prune. I also thought about trying to give them away, ultimately I decided to try and make wine.

Never having done this before, I did some research. Plums are a stone fruit. It seems like they are related to the peach and the almond. So, there is some risk of cyanide that is contained within the pit. It was generally regarded as minimal risk with a whole pit, (not being ground or broken) and in some cases it was preferred to have some pits with the brew. I decided to just pit them all for several reasons. Since I don’t know the source, I don’t know the condition of the fruit. Could they be rotten or green or contain bugs?

I didn’t have plans to immediately brew which is why these went into the freezer for a later date. This has several advantages beside managing schedules, freezes will kill undesirables. It will also rupture cell walls making the essence of the fruit easier to access when I decide to get started. From a (home) brewing perspective, freezing fruit is a helpful technique to to making the best batches.

I’ve done quite a bit of reading and learning about beer. However, the same is not true with wine. I guess what surprises me is that most fruit wines use sugar as an additive. In this case, I had 15lbs of fruit but also 15lbs of added sugar. At least this is the case in the homebrew world. I am aware that in the wine world, nearly anything can be done to make adjustments, from acid to flavor. I guess we will see how it comes out.

What kind of yeast do you use? I chose a freeze dried pastor blanc yeast from Red Star. In my beer research, I know that the liquid yeast strains seem to be the premium choice. However, I have not found it to make that much difference in taste. I have pretty much switched over to dry yeast for the cost and storability. I have both and could have used either red or white yeast.

Along with 3 gallons of water and a few adjuncts (that are not strictly necessary), I got my wine started. I added one teaspoon of acid blend (citric and maleic), 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient for getting the yeast going, it is some kind of urea (or nitrogen compound) and one teaspoon of pectic clarifier. I dont think that is necessary either.

Finally, I added three Campden (Sodium metabisulfite) tablets. As strange as it sounds, these are added to retard the fermentation. Traditionally, the primary fermentation is done in open vessels and the skins of grapes contain enough yeast to ferment by themselves. The brewer wants to make sure that his added yeast takes off first to have the most controlled outcome. These tablets also contain free radical scavengers to consume oxygen and reduce the oxidation of the juice.

End Your Programming Routine: So far, my experiments with wine have been not great. I have found the best place to use them is cooking or mulled. But that is OK, It is the place where my science training still gets exercised a little bit. I will keep you updated on how the process progresses.