Fruit and Failure

That title is a bit misleading. Yes there was fruit and there has been a lot of failure, but in the end there has been success, of sorts.

The first build of my cider press did well for what it was; a somewhat poorly designed box frame with little structural support and a lack consideration of where the forces of a 4 ton bottle jack had to go. The lack of heavy lag bolts and strong supports led to cracking lumber and broken dreams.

The solution? Break it down and build it again.
Where is the failure in learning from your mistakes, what wrong is that?

The wrong in this case was not mine, at least not in the building or dismantling part.

Finn decided to help me as he often does when I venture outside to avoid schoolwork and house work. He was diligently picking up the discarded wood screws and placing them back into the screw box( often doing so quickly because the friction from removing them had caused them to glow with the heat of 2 suns). I paid him no mind when he started stacking lengths of lumber a few feet from me- just Finn being a kid and puttering about I thought.

Then  BAM! right in the brain box.
The sky grew brighter and pain welled up behind my eyes, I put my hand on my forehead to staunch what I thought was surely grey matter, set my jaw, and clenched my eyes tightly together to fend off the urge to tear up.

I want to say I was silent when this happened, stoic enough to take my punishment( for not wearing a helmet apparently), and simply walk it off. But I wasn't. I was weak, that or I hadn't been drinking enough to numb the pain. Bringing my hand down from my head I saw blood and the world heard my confused rage in the form of language that would make a sailor take notice.

Luckily I think Finn was shocked enough by what had happened that he didn't pick up anything,  or Willow would have keelhauled me.

After it was all over and I had an unnaturally blue icepack pushed against my forehead I could finally laugh about it, willow on the other hand had been laughing about it since I stumbled in to tell her what our little assault child had done to me. I guess I will be wearing my caving helmet whenever I work outside with Finn now.

so the failure here:
Finn cracked me in the head with a 2x4, there is a 1 inch gash in my forehead. I may have said something loudly that shouldn't be uttered in the presence of children and women.

Success:

Before the press gave up the ghost I managed to get 3 gallons of good grape juice out of it, I sulfited it and put it in a bucket and will be making wine from it today i hope. The skins also got some sulfite and will be used to make a table/cooking wine.

Finn and Willow helped me pick these earlier, it took only three hours to pick and destem 50 pounds of grapes- the picking i had help with( at times too much Finn help) - the destemming I had to do alone while I watched episodes of BrewingTV on my thinkpad.

Note: destemming grapes is a very boring and sticky business.

Success: The new press I build is one based heavily on things I found online. I should have just bought plans to build one, the videos i watched showed the press working great - mine required lots of tinkering and reinforcing as well as an entire day to complete. (the one I refer to is called a Whizbang Cider Press and is very well reviewed) I should have just bought the plans and saved myself lots of time and aggravation. In the end the press I ended up with( at least for now) seems to be able to take a lot of pressure and doesn't make too many unnerving creaking noises when I press stuff. I managed to do some apples from our trees last night and got a good 1/2 gallon of juice really quickly. I used an old pillowcase as a pressing bag- its a high thread count one from somewhere that we just didn't like. I worked really well - the juice was much clearer than the juice I made before, and despite the apples not being quite 100% ripe the juice was good and kid approved.

This might look like them getting home on the first day of school, but I assure you this is their "the cider meets our standards" dance celebration. really. Abrial is even so blinded by the deliciousness that she has to close her eyes.


Also: its painted the same color as our house - Thanks whoever left paint in our basement!

so to sum up:

It takes 80 pounds of grapes to get 5 gallons of juice - I had 50 and got 3.
A toddler armed with a 2x4 is bad news - wear a helmet.

Fruit Press Basket Complete

So I went out and bought a can of Watco Butcher block sealer for my wood press components. I put about 5 coats of this stuff on the basket and press plate. it looks great and now I can be assured the basket will last a long long time. The tin says to wait 72 hours before using the sealed wooden object so I can finally use it tomorrow.

Willow checked our grapes tonight during our pre dinner tennis excursion and they are sweet and so dark they look black. Tomorrow is the day to pick them. I think I am going to make a nice big red wine and maybe a second wine with the leftover skins to use as a table wine or a cooking wine. I have a lot of bottles to fill. Thank goodness I bought an Italian floor corker.

Unfortunately, like many of you, my lovely children are going to school tomorrow so I will lose my able but not always willing outdoor servants and child watchers. This will make picking fruit much more difficult. This means that they will get up early- 6 am, and come home around 2:30 pm. Over the summer their schedule was more like get up at 9 and go to bed at 10:30 or 11 with a possible nap in between- and these are 11 year olds. I finally got some better family photos last week after everything greened back up and before the Irene rain dumping from the last few days.

 In the photo above: Rylan in red, Finn, Abrial, Jalene holding Maelle

The obvious addition here is willow.

Grap-felwein experiment #1

So I bought a surplus of apple juice at a local bent and dent and set about making a prodigious amount of booze from it.

5 gallons of anything sounds like an awful lot but really that only fills about 2 cases of beer bottles plus a few more. So out of a 5 gallon batch of anything I get around 54 twelve ounce bottles of home made hooch.

Two cases of carbonated beverage - or one 5 gallon keg - doesn't necessarily last two adults very long. Especially if those adults happen to have 5 wonderful children. In that case 5 gallons isn't nearly enough.
Here is the link to the original recipe and a lot of discussion on it.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/man-i-love-apfelwein-14860/

This batch is an experiment. If you look for Apfelwein you will find a long series of posts dedicated to it on homebrewtalk.com, the recipe came from a guy calling himself EdWort. This stuff is great. Willow loves it because it sits happily around 10% alcohol and takes about 1 glass to give a healthy warming feeling. More than that and its a speedtrain to giggletown. I like it carbonated but I did cork 24 wine bottles worth of the stuff about three months ago. One bottle is left and that has been promised to a currently pregnant woman who wants to drink it when she becomes unpregnant in a few weeks.

My adulteration of EdWort's recipe is as follows:

2 pounds Dextrose
3.5 gallons Apple juice - only other additives allowed are Vitamin C as it doesn't interfere with fermentation
1.5 gallons Grape juice with only Vitamin C added - I used welches and juicy juice
Yeast: I used champagne yeast because its what I had on hand

The carboy on the right is the Grapfelwein, on the left is the straight laced apfelwein.

We tend to drink ours young, I shoot for waiting at least 3 months but I hear that waiting longer is better.