Round 2: Apple Again

Another round of Apple Wine is in progress, this time it's 5 gallons, and there have been some changes to the recipe.

First, I began with 40 pounds of apples. Fuji, Gala, and some other apple that I don't remember, but it looked good. And they were cheap.

Using our handy dandy super slicer shredder thingamabob (I'm sure you've seen them) some places call them mandolines.

Not to the not-so-careful: These things are sharp. Ask my thumb.

So I sliced up about 30 pounds of the apples, and put them in a nylon bag, in the primary fermenter, which in my case is a white plastic garbage can. I added water, pectic enzyme, yeast nutrients, acid blend, and tannin. Unlike Chris my production uses a buncha chemicals. This isn't a bad thing, just a choice. The pectic enzyme stops the oxidification of the apple must, the yeast nutrient makes sure that the yeast has the proper mix of food - the do eat more than just sugar. The tannin balances the flavor, and the acid blend helps loads of things along the way.

I tied off the nylon bag, and dropped it in the container. It sat for a little more than 24 hours.

I added about 1/2 gallon of Jucy Juice White Grape Flavored Juice. It was the only brand that didn't have any preservatives in it, which would have killed the yeast. I'm sure you're thinking "It says Flavored, I bet it doesn't actually have juice in it." I thought that myself, but I concluded that it says flavored because it also contains apple juice, in addition to the primary ingedient of white grape juice.

So that was poured in, and the process of squeezing the juice out of the apple must began. If you've never squeezed the juice out of apples, let me tell you, it's hard. I could probably crush a diamond with my hands now. A potatoe masher came in handy in squeezing the last drops out.

I also used a funnel with a filter in it to filter the goop away from the juice. Turns out, the goop is applesauce. Quite good applesauce. I added some sugar, and canned it.

Back to the wine. After the juice was extracted, the SG was 1.036 -- far too low. I added 8 pounds of sugar to bring it up to 1.088, which will result in a wine with approximately 11.7% alcohol content, again a nice level for table wine.

I added some yeast (Premier Cuvee, a generic dry wine yeast), and now it sits, and ferments until it reaches 1.040 SG, at which point we will rack it into the 5 gallon glass carboy container. Tune in next time.

, and the rest