Posted in Strawberry, Tasting on April 30, 2008 | No Comments »
As we had some guests round on Tuesday, we opened one of the half bottles of Strawberry wine, os that the girls could have a glass each with their meal:
(Please forgive the quality of the last few images on here - my camera is still full of holiday pictures and I keep having to delete [...]
Posted in Bottling, Strawberry on April 26, 2008 | No Comments »
At last I finally had a free weekend, so I had lots of brew related stuff to do. I started by bottling the Strawberry wine which has been clearing for about a month. I had already knocked up some labels:
As it had been my girlfriend who had wanted me to brew this wine, I decided [...]
Posted in Clearing, Merlot, Strawberry on March 13, 2008 | No Comments »
24 hours after wracking the Strawberry, and a couple of days after wracking the Merlot, I was continuing to shake the wines as often as I remembered. This involved simply removing the airlocks and covering the hole with a cleaned thumb and shaking until it stopped fizzing when I removed my thumb (or until I [...]
Posted in Racking, Strawberry on March 13, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Having given the Strawberry another 11 days after it seemed to have got to the edge of its target gravity, I decided it was time to wrack it to the secondary demijohn. Like the Merlot, I decided to take a gravity reading anyway, which was again easiest from a picture:
The gravity was really hard to [...]
Posted in Fermenting, Strawberry on February 28, 2008 | No Comments »
After checking on the Merlot, I decided to see how the Strawberry was doing too. After leaving the hydrometer to soak in the sanitising solution for a couple of minutes I rinsed it and dropped it gently into the strawberry wine. Again, I photographed it so that I had a definitive record to compare against [...]
Posted in Fermenting, Strawberry on February 21, 2008 | No Comments »
After checking on the Merlot, I realised I hadn’t done a bubble count on the Strawberry in a while, so I sat down by the demijohn with a watch and timed how long it took, on average, between bubbles:
Day
Time per bubble (secs)
Gravity
0
infinite
1
8
3
4
1062
6
1.5
12
50
Comments:
The bubble rate has dropped massively, but I did forget to take any readings [...]
Posted in Fermenting, Strawberry on February 15, 2008 | No Comments »
While I was checking on the Merlot, I spotted that the Strawberry was bubbling away much faster than it was previously, so I decided to do another count for future information:
Day
Time per bubble (secs)
Gravity
0
infinite
1
8
3
4
1062
6
1.5
It really is bubbling fast now. The temperature in the brewery is around 17 degrees currently so I don’t think [...]
Posted in Fermenting, Strawberry on February 13, 2008 | No Comments »
Yesterday evening marked 3 days since I had set the Brewmaker Strawberry wine going, so according to the instructions it was time to top up the demijohn to the 4.5 litre level. Before doing this I measureed the bubble rate again:
Day
Time per bubble (secs)
Gravity
0
infinite
1
8
3
4
1062
Now onto the topping up. The instructions stated that “tepid” water should [...]
Posted in Fermenting, Strawberry on February 11, 2008 | No Comments »
Having started to Brewmaker’s Strawberry wine, I was keen to check whether it had started fermenting, so I did a bubble count yesterday:
Day
Time per bubble (secs)
0
infinite
1
8
Observations:
I was pleased to see it bubbling, though a little concerned its not as quick as I’d hoped.
My first Merlot reading was after 3 days, so it will be interesting [...]
Posted in Brewing, Strawberry on February 9, 2008 | No Comments »
Given that my lovely ladyfriend has not only been ok with my new hobby but she has actively encouraged me, I thought I should have a stab at Strawberry wine she was eyeing up on our first trip to the brew shop. I was already planning a trip back to Harvey’s (see 4u2brew in my [...]
