Batch 21: Maple Wine

Batch Timeline

Batch #	Batch Type	Date in Primary	Date in Secondary	Date Racked	Date Racked	Date Filled
21	Maple Wine	3/25/13	4/10/13	7/8/13	9/30/13	Bottled

Yeast Type:  White labs Sweet Mead Yeast WLP20 (captured from batch 20)

Ingredients:  Rinsate from all the maple equipment and dregs of quart jars from intermittent concentrated maple syrup prior to finishing the syrup.  All told I'm guessing 1lb maple syrup in 2 quarts of water.  It tasted about as sweet as a mead must.  I added no other nutrient or enzyme or anything.
Comments:  My dad asked me if people make Maple Wine.  I told him I didn't know, and that it probably isn't very good.  Now we'll see.  It would have all gone down the drain after cleaning the maple equipment and jars, anyway.  No data gathered.  If I add honey I can call it acerglyn.  Carl says he's had maple wines and acerglyns and they are both tasty.

Update 3/27/13:   Bubbling away.  I sanitized a cap and shook the jug vigorously, venting it periodically and letting foam dissipate to drive off dissolved CO2 and oxygenate the must to support the growth phase.

Update 3/29/13: I shook once/day for three days, starting 1 day after pitching yeast once it was vigorously bubbling.

Update 4/10/13: Very cloudy, racked by decanting and left almost no cake at the bottom.  Tastes like it has a nice balance of residual sugar!  I'm sure it will ferment more, but should be able to either leave it as is or add some maple or honey without sorbate.  I'll have to get a %ABV reading on a vinometer later.

Update 5/13/13:  I peeked in on this and, without disturbing it, I could see a steady stream of tiny bubbles rising along the sides.   Wondering how dry it  has become and how to rack without disturbing sediment in the 1 gallon container.

7/8/13:
Racked by decanting (tried the autosiphon in the 1 gallon jug and failed), lots of murky sediment that is a mix of maple solids and yeast.  Saved a small cup of murky mess to clear in the fridge.  Tastes delicious as a dessert wine, very sweet, strong maple character without overpowering.  This could probably be diluted to ferment some sugars and scale down sweetness or blended with batch 20 (used same yeast) to make an acerglyn.  I guess it depends on if I want to wait for batch 20 to mature.  This is only 4 months old but tastes good.

9/30/13:  "Bottled" to 1/2 gal, 1/2 pint and 1pint containers.  Thick, rich, mapley.  Could stand to be a bit more subtle.  Still think blending with 20 would be good if that does not need to age too much.

1/3/14:  Drank the 1/2 pint.  Very good as a sweet dessert wine.  =)  Batch 20 needs to age a lot more, so I'll not be blending it with that unless I hang on to it for a long time.  Wondering if I can blend with something else as a mazer cup submission as Acerglyn.  Batch 5?

4/10/14:  Rebottled the 1/2 gallon container in 5 each 375ml screw cap bottles and racked the 1 pint.  Very clear now.

Throwback: Prehistoric Cider

Batch Timeline

Batch #	Batch Type	Date in Primary	Date in Secondary	Date Racked	Date Racked	Date Filled
N/A	Cider (Cyser Hydromel)	2010?	2011?	???	3/9/13, 6/25/13	12/7/13

Yeast Type:  Unknown

Ingredients:  Some kind of apple cider (wolffe farms?  Styx cider mill?)
Other ingredients are unknown.  Probably some yeast nutrient and pectic enzyme

Comments:

This is an old old batch of cider.  We don't know when we made it or with what.  We have no data on it at all.  This is a batch we made that developed a beautiful amber color in the carboy and was so beautiful we did not want to risk ruining it by messing up the bottling.  And so it sat.  And sat.  And sat.  We took it with us on the field trip to Carl's and got some tips on adjustment, but didn't adjust until...

On 3/9/13 we finally racked, adjusted, stabilized and sweetened.  To approx 4.5 gallons we added 2.5 campden tablets, 1.25 tsp potassium sorbate, 2 oz of glycerin (for improved mouthfeel), 0.5g wine tanin (for flabbyness) and 2 12oz cans of apple concentrate (for sweetness).

We tasted this after all additions to judge balance of sweet and acid and a somewhat strong chemical taste was present, presumably from the campden.  We said we'd taste again after dissipation.

There was approx. 1 gallon of extra cider that did not fit in the carboy.  That 1 gallon went into sub-batch 10B.

6/25/13 Racked again and tasted.  Currently dry and a bit weak.  Could benefit from additional sweetening and maybe some bourbon to create a "bourbon barrel" style cider.   Not too cloudy, settling nicely.  Not over acid like batch 10A and 10B turned out.

12/5/13:
Added 2.5 lbs Jimbo's spring honey and 2 cups boiled water (to thin honey for easy mixing) and placed in cold garage for chilling.  This makes it technically a cyser hydromel.

12/7/13:
Racked into corny keg containing a chunk of dry ice to prevent oxidation.  Pressure transferred from one sanitized corny keg through a whole house sediment filter into another sanitized corny keg.  That was held for 2 hours under 85 psi CO2 and on ice.  Filled at 20psi with beer gun into dry-ice chilled bottles.  The end result was unfortunately not very carbonated.  One can tasted a bit of dissolved CO2, but it does not fizz when opened or poured.  Cam placed some small chunks of dry ice into several of his at filling and these were marked CO2, we'll see how those fared.  Yield was 12 22oz and 23 12 oz.