Day: November 3, 2008

Take six cans of off-brand frozen grape juice concentrate. Add about 2.5 gallons of clean water, a couple of cups of sugar and a package of just regular old bread yeast. Place in “kitty litter” fermenter for a couple of weeks and…

right at 2.5 gallons of juuuust this side of drinkable, rather dry “hobo” wine. Didn’t use a hydrometer to measure alcohol content, but it has the mouth/taste/feel of alcohol content roughly comparable to a typical commercial wine.

Going to purchase some airlocks and other equipment this week so I can have four r five batches of beers and/or wines and/or cider going at once through the winter. I made an airlock for my “kitty litter” fermenter last year from PVC plumbing parts, but I can buy them for about that premade, so 2 or 3 of them will allow me to make some more primary fermenters.

I “bottled” one gallon of this w(h)ine in a very, very clean (and sanitized) opaque milk jug. another half gallon went into a clean cranberry juice jug and immediately into the fridge, while another gallon went into Grolsch swingtop bottles with some priming sugar to make some sparkling “shampipple” for Thanksgiving fare (since I’ll not have any hard cider ready by then. “Age” the “bottled” (and bottled) w(h)ine for a couple of weeks, refrigerate the “shampipple” version and, drink up.

So far, I’m really happy with this lil experimental brew. Total cost for 2.5 gallons w(h)ine? About $5.

Next batch will cost a tad more, since I’ll be using a $0.90 package of real wine yeast for the mix. Call it about $5.75 or so. Whoop-de-do.

*heh*

I’m no big drinker–none of us here at twc central are–so of the 200 gallons a year the law allows me to make, I’ll probably make no more than 100 gallons for the whole family to consume.

At least we have a half gallon to play drinking games with on election night if we want to.

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