Female's Choice

Yesterday I had the great fortune of cracking a bottle of the Engagement Blackberry with some friends. An anomaly, perhaps: This wine is now bubbly. It tickles the tongue. I think it's delicious. Yesterday was hot and this wine is light, dry, but still has the taste of blackberries. 

It is possible that fermentation renewed when it was bottled and then stopped when it ran out of oxygen. I decided to pull out the racked wines, take gravity readings, and bottle what I could logically bottle based on outcomes.

Volume.

Step one was to establish which bottles would be good enough to use if I needed to bottle something today. Since I've decided to avoid corking for a while, I depended on donations from friends and relatives. My mother-in-law works a bar some nights, so she provided eleven 1.5 liter bottles. Most of those were in good shape. Matuz threw a few liquor bottles my way. Der Brauer generously donated two bags of liquor bottles.

Yeah, that's probably plenty.

Step two: The unbottled portion of Engagement Blackberry has NOT moved from its prior gravity reading of 0.996. This means it remains at 8.7% alcohol. Still tastes the same, too. Good. I bottled what was there. (Pictures of everything I bottled at the end.)

Step three: Examine the Pear Wine and taste. Gravity reading: 1.013. The alcohol by volume is now approximately 9.9%. Tastes great- still sweet. If I had to approximate its taste, it's like an apple-flavored Riesling.

I hereby name it "Female's Choice Pear Wine". Since this is still active after a few re-racks, I placed in three crushed tablets of Potassium Metabisulfite. I'll keep checking it to see if that chokes it out. We have just over 10 liters of this stuff right now. We'll see what settles out of it.

Background left two carboys: Remaining sludge from Pear Wine.
Background far right: The Cyser. See bottom of carboy for what will be racked out.
Foreground: The re-racked Pear Wine that goes to the wine cellar. 

Step four: Check the Cyser. Gravity reading: 1.038. This one has settled a lot. There are a few inches of sludge; makes sense when you consider this contained apples, honey, and spices galore.

Told ya.

Since the Cyser reading isn't moving (and bottling relatively quickly worked well last time), I went ahead and bottled it. The Cyser gets the boring official title of "Cyser Batch #2".

Left side: Engagement Blackberry.
Right side: Cyser Batch #2.

If you check, you can see all of today's changes reflected on the "What's On Tap" column on the right side.

I've found my 2013 Pear Wine (which came from a base) kinda won't go away, so here's a nice recipe to get you drunk use up some of that stuff that tastes ok, but isn't your favorite.

Staycation

4 oz Orange Juice

3 oz Pear Wine

1 oz Spiced Rum

(serve on ice)

Drink your wine from a stein,
-Antonio