How to Make Fruit Wine... or Hooch

If you are from my church, please note that someone hacked my blog and ghost-wrote this post.

I used to love baking. But since my family is now gluten and sugar free I haven't done much in the kitchen. So Last year, in need of yet another hobby, I started spending time with Mr. Beer. Since I don't do anything by the books I didn't pony up the cash to get the cheap Mr. Beer plastic bottling kegs with "vented" lid. Instead I used a four gallon food-grade bucket and drilled a hole that would accept both an air-lock and a tap. Then, at the advise of a hard core beer maker, I purchased real yeast from the local wine making store instead of using the cheap junk they include with the wort (that's the can of goo that magically turns into beer). In about three months I have sixteen bottles of pretty descent beer! Yep, three months of waiting for sixteen bottles... I'M A RAGING ALCOHOLIC!!!!

But I ain't a-talkin' about Mr. Beer except to say that it was a gateway drug into harder things. Like homemade wine.

A couple of years ago I tried to make strawberry wine by following a recipe where you smash the fruit and let it sit uncovered for a bit and then blah blah blah and then a year later you uncork the bottle to find that you have "effective", but not especially delicious, wine. Too much work and too much time!

So now I'm trying a new method:

I take a 48 oz bottle of 100% juice (Juicy Juice or Aldi) or reconstitute a container of frozen juice and dissolve 1.5 cups of sugar into the juice. The big thing here it to make sure there aren't any preservatives 'cause that'll kill the yeasties. I pour this mess into a clean, sterilized 2-liter. I suggest using Sprite or some fruit flavored 2-liter just in case any flavors leech in from the plastic. Then I take some wine yeast and sprinkle a bit into about 1/4 cup of warm water (just like baking) and let it wake up the yeast for five minutes. Then this goes into the 2-liter. On goes the cap and I give it a really good shake to infuse oxygen into the juice. Take off the cap and put in an airlock. It cost me $2.50, with tax, for an airlock and a bung... size #3, I think. Some recipes say to use balloons or latex birth control devices I won't type for fear of invoking the wrong kind of ads but some people say it adds an off taste. Plus the whole she-bang costs a mere $2.50! How cheap are you??!?!

Then you wait. You can watch the airlock bubble if you really need to pass the time. For these two I used fancy blueberry and pomegranite juice in 32 oz jars so the 2-liter isn't as full as it normally is. Also I used less sugar. You can buy a hygrometer but since I'm working in such small batches it would be waste. Instead I'm taking how many sugars and carbs are in the juice and tinkering the amount of sugar I add.

After the airlock stops bubbling, between 2 and 4 weeks, I pour the stuff into sterilized bottles. I'm fortunate enough to have some grolsch bottles from when we made kiefer. But that's another blog post. You could use empty wine bottles and reuse corks if you want. One container of juice makes about two bottles of wine.

Then you wait some more. I suppose you could drink it right away but the waiting seems to soften the flavors. Kind of like having a soup the next day where the flavors have had time to mingle.

Then you drink, er, sample! My first batch turned out to be extremely carbonated (enlarge the image to see the tiny bubbles), almost like champagne! My wifey said it tasted yeasty so perhaps I have more tinkering to do. Either I left it in too long or not long enough for the yeast to do their work. Not as good as store wine but worlds better than the infamous strawberry wine. The nice thing is that I could really taste the juice so that now the world is my oyster! If I sees me some tasty apple-raspberry-kiwi juice at the store in about two months I can have apple-raspberry-wiki wine. Not to mention that cider will be available soon!

As for cost, juice runs from $1.50 to $3.00, unless you go in for organic stuff. The airlock was $2.50 and the yeast was about $3, which makes between six and ten batches depending on if you sprinkle it or use a scale to measure out exactly 1/10 of an envelope for each batch. So the first batch costs $4.25 per bottle and the next 5-9 batches cost a whopping $0.75 to $1.50 each. Plus you don't have sulfates, which they add merely to make the wine clear and to prop up the sulfate industry.

Speaking of clear, I've bottled three batches so far. Two of the three cleared up in the bottle within weeks but the second, the one made from frozen concentrate, took over a month for to clear and all the itty bitty yeast sediments to float down.

And speaking of yeast, you'll hear people say that you can't save the yeast. FOOEY! And DOUBLE FOOEY! After I extract my .5 oz for a batch I roll it up tight with a rubber band and put it in a capped mason jar and pop it in the freezer.

(Hopeful) Conclusion of the American Community Survey

After receiving a number of phone calls and letting them go to voicemail, I finally started picking them up. Yes, I replied, I have received the survey. No, I don't have time to fill it out or complete it over the phone with you. We just had a baby so we're pretty busy and I don't have time to complete your survey. Thanks. I had to repeat this twice and now we don't get any more calls. That was a couple of weeks ago. So far no one has visited our house. My fingers are crossed!

Review - The Choir - The Loudest Sound Ever Heard

Yeah, a new album from The Choir is here! In fact, it’s been here quite a while. I’ve listened to The Loudest Sound Ever Heard many, many times, hoping it would catch my fancy. I even listened to the band commentary CD in the hopes that it would illuminate what I perceive to be flat and uncharacteristically unpicturesque lyrics. Nope. Since I had the Stems mix I listened to the unadulterated bass part for each song. Better (more of the fuzz comes through) but not enough. Over one weekend I had two song snippets in my head. I had hoped that it was the beginning of an earworm and that I would grow to love the album but it only lasted an hour and then the songs disappeared from my head. And so, after writing this, I’ll probably shelve the album for a few years.

I could write more detail on how this album fails to live up lyrically, melodically and song-writingly but I have too much respect and love for this band. Some fans are really diggin’ it but it just isn’t digging into me. My personal favorites include Oh, How The Mighty Have Fallen, Circle Slide, Free Flying Soul and Chase The Kangaroo, all albums that rate 10 or even 11, if that gives you an idea of my musical inclinations. However this album, at least lyrically, at times reminds me of Diamonds And Rain. Okay, I’ll stop now. Except to say that the band has slipped from “Pre-Order and Buy Everything The Put Out Including Extras” to “Maybe I Should Listen To It First.” At least they didn’t slip as far as They Might Be Giants who have now become “Get It From The Library”.

Classic Album Review - Self - Subliminal Plastic Motives

It was a very rough time in my life. I was a year or two into a new marriage that wasn’t going well and there seemed be very little exciting or colorful in my life. One day I was headed over to my grandfather’s to do some woodworking and happened to have the radio on the hot new alternative station. Instead of hearing the usual pabulum a song caught me ear, I mean REALLY caught me ear to the point that I realized that it had been a long time since I had purchased any CDs and even longer since music had made me excited. That song was “Cannon” by Self. I later learned that Matt Mahaffey, the brain behind the one-man band, disses this song because of its simplicity, saying that any number of bands from his hometown of Boston could have written it but I disagree. The song is an explosion of energy, starting with quietly strummed guitars in the verse before feedback and distortion in the chorus disrupt the carefully laid plans. However the thing that sets the song apart, and which I think makes it uniquely Self, is the bridge, a quirky, jumpy, detuned passage that segues into a watery kazoo-like version of the bridge. It was completely different than anything else I had heard on that station and fortunately they either said the name of the song and band or else I was excited enough to call the station upon my arrival.

Of course my local record store didn’t have this in stock (and since this was 1995 I think I just started using e-mail… Amazon.com or instant downloads were a long ways away) so I had to order it and wait. You kids these days and your instant gratification… When it arrived I was delightfully not disappointed to own a one-hit wonder. In fact, most of the album was even better than “Cannon!” Subliminal Plastic Motives was a superb mish-mash of power-pop, metal, prog, alternative, funk, and hip-hop. Hip-hop? I would have never guessed that I would be listening to anything even remotely hip-hoppish but there I was, listening and loving it. As a disclaimer may I add that I’ve yet to moved by anything else in that genre, though my love of funky rock predates this album and continues to thrive.

Back to the review, eh? Each song is intelligently written, often with tongue-in-cheek lyrics, and a sly wink at rhythm. The “progressive” aspect is a playful use of non-traditional meter that adds greater interest, at least to my ears. Heavy guitars abound as do layers of vocal harmonies, betraying Self’s love of the band Queen. Jellyfish and 10cc are also worshipped. Truly a studio-rat album, there are layers underneath each lovingly crafted layer. I suppose I could write about each song but that would be boring. Listening to the album with my magic headphones I’m impressed again at the fuzzed out bass, sudden and unorthodox instrument choices (walls of guitars give way to pianos and strings), and how Mahaffey manages to stuff so much into each song while retaining clarity and vitality.

Matt Mahaffey’s follow-up album was much more hip-hop, less progressive and less ingenius, meaning that it didn’t do as much for me but it’s still a fairly good album. He also made songs each of the Shrek movies and an album recorded completely with toy instruments (including the awesome earwig Trunk Fulla Amps in which the edited version is much more enjoyable than the explicit naughty-word version. Then he did an album with the guy from God Lives Underwater (to be reviewed later) and has otherwise not put out CDs for me to buy. SHAME!

Census Harrassment

Calls received so far: 5/13 3:47 PM 5/14 11:23 AM 5/15 3:18 PM 5/15 3:34 PM 5/16 6:36 PM 5/18 11:15 AM 5/18 7:05 PM 5/18 8:31 PM 5/19 9:56 AM 5/19 11:54 AM Our phone log only goes back to 5/10 so I'm sure I'm missing some from 5/6 to 5/9. Oh joy! Oh rapture!

Call #2

Just got another call - Sunday 5/6 at 6:03 PM. Turned off the answering machine. We'll be having that baby some time in the next 24 hours and durnit, we'll be having the phone turned off quite a bit so the baby can sleep.

Going To Jail - American Community Survey Part 2 & 3

I thought I wrote up a part 2 but it's not here. Stupid new Blogger interface!!! We received a second American Community Survey in the mail late last week and yesterday received our first phone call, asking us to call D.C. with some case number. Let the harassment begin!