September - November 2008 Blog Archives

Banana Wine

Posted by: Greg on September 21st, 2008

In the past, I've made a lot of different fruit wines, but I've never tried my hand at making banana wine. I didn't know a whole lot about the process of extracting the juice from the fruit, so I visited a couple of online wine discussion forums to see if I could read up on the subject. According to everything I read on those boards, its really not that difficult to make the wine. After discussing it over with my better half, my wife picked up 25 pounds of bananas (5 gal batch) at Walmart while she was grocery shopping a couple of weeks ago. Bananas are relatively cheap in price, 63 cents a pound at Walmart, so I said to myself, what the heck! I found a recipe in Terry Garey's book, The Joy of Home Winemaking, modified the recipe a bit to our liking, extracted the juice from the bananas, put the rest of the ingredients together and fermented the wine. Below is the recipe that we followed (makes 1 gallon):

1 gallon water
5 lbs Ripe Bananas
1½ lbs sugar
4 ounces of Welch's White Grape Juice Concentrate
3 tsp Acid Blend
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
½ tsp Pectic Enzyme
¼ tsp Tannin
1 packet of Lalvin EC-1118 Yeast
1 Campden Tablet, crushed

According to the instructions, the sliced bananas, skins and all are to be simmered for ½ hour in order to extract the juice. Well I simmered the bananas in a large pot and I was a little alarmed at the color of the must, it look like dirty soapy dish water! I was also surprised that it only took 10 days to completely ferment dry. Normally, it takes a batch of wine about 3 weeks to ferment dry. I maintained a fermentation temperature between 68 - 70° degrees and my starting SG was 1.092. Well I guess we will have to wait a year before we see how this wine turns out.

Hurricane Gustav Claims Another Victim

Posted by: Greg on September 6th, 2008

Labor Day was suppose to be a day filled with relaxation, the smell of hamburgers and chicken cooking on an open grill, or just kicking back and enjoying a day off from work, but people in Southeastern Louisiana wasn't celebrating the holiday like the rest of the country, instead we was watching Hurricane Gustav take down trees, destroy property and damage power lines. I guess Gustav was jealous because Hurricane Katrina was grabbing all the publicity for the last three years, so he decided it was time for him to step out and grab some for himself.

Fortunately, my home didn't sustain any damage from the storm, it just blew down a lot of limbs from my oak trees making a mess of my yard. The power was out for a total of 3 days and by the time power was restored to my community, we lost the apple wine, because we was unable to maintain the proper fermentation temperature. When fermenting apple wine, the fermentation temperature shouldn't exceed 70°F (fermentation temperature commonly employed by the winemakers ranges between 50° to 70°F), if the temperature goes above 70°F for an extended period of time, there is a good chance the wine will develop off-flavors. This is because of the increased production of unwanted enzymes by the yeast and the possible growth of micro-organisms that thrive in warmer temperatures. Realizing that the taste of the wine might have been compromised, we didn't want to a chance or waste any more time on a wine that might not taste right, so we decided to pitch the wine and wait to a later date to ferment a new batch.

I think we could have saved the wine had we had enough time to do so, but I was working a lot of overtime for my employer (Utility company) and my wife had her hands full tending to our household and keeping our aging wines cool with the help of a 6,000 BTU Haier window air conditioner that we purchased from Walmart a couple of years ago. We had to conserve on the gas for our generator due to fuel shortages caused by power outages to gas stations in our area and we didn't know how long it was going to take for power to be restored. Three years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit our area and it took the power companies quite a bit of time to restore power to gas stations and when the power was finally restored, people had to wait in long lines for hours just to get fuel and there was a limit on how much fuel a person could get. I remember very well how my wife and I had to drive for an hour north of our area just to find a grocery store or gas stations that was open for business. Hurricane Gustav wasn't as powerful as Katrina, but he still caused a lot of trouble for everyone who was affected by the storm.

Adam's Apple

Posted by: Greg on October 6th, 2008

Last month, right after Hurricane Ike passed by my state's coast on his way to Texas, I fermented a 5 gallon batch of spiced apple wine. If you have been reading my blog, you should remember reading about what happened to my last batch of apple wine when Hurricane Gustav affected my area and knocked out the power for several days. This time I waited until I knew for certain that no hurricane was going to affect my area and when Hurricane Ike headed for Texas, I knew the coast was clear for winemaking. My wife and I named this batch of wine, "Adam's Apple".

I'm assuming that you have heard the story of Adam and Eve or read about the couple in the Bible. If not, a quick search using Google should provide many resources on the story. Many people assume that the forbidden fruit that Eve ate was an apple, but, the bible refers to it as "fruit". To be more specific, "fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". Anyway, Eve ate of the fruit and passed it to her henpecked partner, Adam and the moment he bite into the fruit, their fate was sealed! If I was in Adam's shoes (shoes wasn't invented yet, just a figure of speech), the outcome probably would have been the same, except I would have sampled the fruit for the sole purpose of making wine from it and if it was good, I would have harvested the rest of the fruit from the tree and made wine out of it! I can hear myself telling God, "give me just a minute to rack it to the secondary before you kick us out of the garden". At least, we would have a good batch of wine to enjoy in the months after our eviction.

For this batch of wine, we followed the recipe below (makes one gallon):

Enough water to make gallon
3 - 11.5 oz can of Apple Concentrate
1½ lbs sugar
1 tsp Acid Blend
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
1 tsp Pectic Enzyme
¼ tsp Tannin
2 Cinnamon Sticks
4 Whole Allspice
¼ tsp of Ginger Root in one chunk
1 packet of Lalvin EC-1118 Yeast
1 Campden Tablet (optional)

We made a 5 gallon batch of this wine, but we set aside 3 gallons of it just for this recipe. After the wine clears, add 2 cinnamon sticks, 4 whole allspice, ¼ tsp of Ginger Root in one chunk to a 3 gallon carboy and rack into the carboy. Let it sit for a month on the spices and rack the wine off the spices into another sanitized carboy. At this point we usually let the wine age on top of Stavin Hungarian Oak cubes for a month or two and rack again. The oak cubes give it a nice round flavor with a hint of oak. We let the wine bulk age in a carboy for 4 - 6 months before bottling.

Blueberry Wine

Posted by: Greg on October 14th, 2008

I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill
On Blueberry Hill where I found you
The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill
And lingered till my dreams came true

For reasons I can't explain, every time I think about blueberry wine, I hear Fats Domino singing that oldie but goody hit song, "Blueberry Hill". I'm not sure what inspired the songwriters (Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock) to write that song, but if I was to take a shot in the dark and guess, maybe one of them got buzzed off of blueberry wine with a date on Blueberry Hill and found his thrill, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, this batch of wine is probably our last batch for the 2008 season, because we are running out of space to store our wines. We really don't want to start giving away some of our bottled wines until they are probably aged. Below is the recipe that we followed for this batch of wine (Recipe makes one gallon of full-bodied wine):

Enough water to make gallon
3lbs frozen or fresh blueberries
2 lbs sugar
2 tsp Acid Blend
½ tsp Yeast Energizer
1 tsp Pectic Enzyme
¼ tsp Tannin
1 pack of Lalvin EC-1111
1 campden tablet

 

» Starting SG: 1.092

 

In large pot, bring a quart of water to a boil and disolve sugar. Set aside. Place blueberries in nylon straing bag, tie bag at top, place in primary and crush with clean hands or a sanitized potato masher. Pour hot sugar water over straining bag. Wait until the must is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit before you add the rest of the ingredients, except the yeast. Twelve hours after you add the pectic enzyme, add rehydrated yeast, cover primary and fit with airlock. When the must begins fermentation, the straining bag will rise to the surface of the must. Make sure you sink the bag twice daily into the must to keep it moist and prohibit any bad things from growing on the floating blueberries. When the must reaches an SG of 1.020, slightly squeeze the straining bag to extract as much juice from berries and discard. Rack off the sediment into a clean glass carboy and allow wine to ferment dry (about 3 weeks). Rack off of sediment into another clean carboy and allow wine clear completely. Rack again and top up. Bulk age for a year before bottling.

Blueberries lack the proper nutrients for the yeast to start fermentation, so that's why it is important to use a yeast energizer before you add yeast. You can also toss in crushed banana pulp to give the yeast something good to get them jump started.

Tea Wine

Posted by: Greg on November 24th, 2008

Last week, I was rummaging around in our pantry and found a large box of instant tea hiding behind some other stuff. My guess is that we bought the box of tea at Sam's and never used it or it got tangled in the clutter of our pantry and we forgot about it. As I stood there reading the instructions on the box, I thought to myself: I wonder if tea would make a decent wine. Well, it didn't take long for the creative juices to take control of my brain, so I jump on the internet with my trusty computer in search of some information on tea wine and a recipe.

I read a couple of blogs by people who have made tea wine and judging from the comments that was left behind by other people who have tried the wine, people seem to like it. I'm adventous, I'll give it a try and see how it turns out. Below is the recipe that we followed:

5 tbs Instant Tea
½ pt White Grape Concentrate
7 pts Water
2½ lbs Sugar
1 tsp Acid Blend
1 tsp Nutrient
1 Campden Tablet, crushed
Lalvin EC-1118 or other wine yeast

Pearl River Rebels playoff bound

Posted by: Greg on November 7th, 2008

This is our first year following Pearl River High School football mainly because of our oldest daughter who is a freshman at the school. It has definitely been a very rewarding experience for my entire family, going to the games, meeting new people and taking in the excitement of Friday night football. I'm so glad that we was apart of Pearl River football this season.

The Rebels was undefeated and tied for first place in District 9-4A with the Salmen Spartans up until two weeks ago when Pearl River played the Spartans in a key district showdown, but the Rebels couldn't hang on to the win the game and ended up losing 18-13 to the Spartans. Last night, the Rebels matched up against the Franklinton Demons for second place in the district and they put up a good fight but an interception on the Demons 10 yard line with 1:29 to go cost Pearl River the game (21-14) and dropped them to 3rd place in the district. Pearl River finishes the season with a record of 7-2 and 3-2 in district play and will advance to the playoffs.

Pearl River is a good team both offensively and defensely, but one thing I've noticed about the offense is that they are primarily a ground attack team led by their standout sophomore running back James Gillum, who carried the ball 120 times for a total of 1224 yards this season. The Rebels won the majority of their games on the ground against subpar teams, but when they went up against well coached teams like Franklinton (8-2) and Salmen (7-2 District Champs), their running game was more or less shut down and they lost, because they really don't have a passing attack. This season Pearl River threw only 13 of 41 attempts for 282 yards and 6 interceptions. I'll be the first one to admit, that I have no experience as a football coach or analyst, but I do know if an offense becomes one dimensional, opposing team coaches will know how to better prepare their defense to combat the run. I was in the stands for both of Pearl River's losses and everytime the Rebels offense took the field, Salmen and Franklinton's defense antisipated the run by bringing up the linebackers closer to the line of scrimmage. It is almost like those two defenses knew what plays Pearl River was going to run.

I don't know why Coach Joe Harris doesn't use Gillum's speed as a receiver out of the backfield. Opposing defenses are definitely keying up on Gillum when the ball is handed off to him, so why not spread out the defense by dumping some screen passes Gillum's way or use him in play action passes. Coach Harris needs to loosen up defenses by incorporating more passes in his game plan. Hopefully, Coach Harris will mix things up when Pearl River plays Archbishop Shaw in round 1 of the playoffs.

Pearl River 20 Archbishop Shaw 40

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Archbishop Shaw sent Pearl River home with their third consecutive loss and ended the Rebels hope for a win in the State Playoffs. Pearl River ended their season with a record of 7-3.

The Rebels jumped out to a 14-7 lead in the 1st quarter, but after the 1st quarter, the game belong to Shaw and they dominated the Rebels on both sides of the ball. If it wasn't for Will Reeds 34 yard touchdown run around right end and James Gillums 80-yard kickoff return, both in the 1st quarter, the Rebels would have gotten beaten worse than they did.

Once again, the Rebels didn't have a passing attack, relying solely upon their running game to win, but the Shaw Eagles wasn't having none of that and shut them down, limiting the Rebels to just 134 yards in total offense. I think the statistics say it all.

 

 

Better luck next year Rebels.

 

 

PAGE UPDATED 01.30.2010

 

 

Geaux Tigers