Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Mulburied

Boy that looks delicious, doesn't it? Here is a picture of the first batch of mulberry wine I started. I read and/or heard somewhere that wine is often made using only the wild yeast that naturally exists on the outside of the fruit. After the first few days of collecting these berries I pressed all the juice out of them and put it into a pitcher. I put a lid on the pitcher and covered it with a towel to keep light out. That was one week ago, as of last night. Last night I racked it (in laymans terms, put it in a new container away from all the old yeast and settled debris.) This is a view of the pitcher when I first opened it. As you can see the yeast builds a protective layer on top of the vessel, keeping other undesirable microbes from taking over their delicious fruit juice buffet. The yeast eats the sugars in the juice, and discharges alcohol.
Here is the resulting containers of racked wine. Yes I tasted it and no it is not death poison. Wine made from straight mulberries has a taste much more like a lambic beer - mulberries are very mild flavored and the tartness found in other fruits just isn't there. The large bottle was salvaged from Dead Horse Bay in New York; the small bottle came from somewhere, it is a nice small size for sharing samples (in a few weeks.) The color is a deep, slightly purple red.

The third container, the sugar jar, is my first attempt at making vinegar. I added a dose of fluid from what I'll call 'forgotten produce' that had the distinct odor of vinegar to it. Only time will tell if I have a viable culture or not.
The mulberry tree continues to dump fruit on me at an alarming rate. Every day I go out and collect a large colander full of berries. I have taken to dumping them in the Crock Pot and cooking them for 4 hours, separating the cooked berries from the syrupy cooed juice. I HAVE 10 POUNDS OF FROZEN COOKED BERRIES. I expect the collecting to go on for another 2 weeks, until I have enough berries to mold into bricks and build a shed.
As for my next wine-experiment, the cooked juice has a higher specific gravity than the raw juice does (this means it has more sugar, and thus more alcohol potential.) In a few more days I plan to make a starter (yeast culture) from a day's worth of raw juice, and then mix it into all the cooked juice to make an even better wine!

2 comments:

  1. I would like to drink this wine as well; please save some for me. I will be at the beer engine august 12th

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