Showing posts with label vanilla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vanilla. Show all posts

Friday, November 15, 2013

Inexpensive Peach Vanilla Experiment Part 2 + Bottling Day

As some of you may recall I decided to do an experimental tossed together peach wine. TL:DR I made blended 3lbs of peaches with some sugar and tossed into a jug. Well after a while as wines do it started to clear. I added about a tablespoon of vanilla extract to it. It made the entire jug turn a darker color with a brown tint. As seen below. I almost went ahead and sorbated and sulfited it to kill off the yeast so I could backsweeten it later on.
 After I let it sit for another 2 weeks, I added enough sugar to it to sweeten it but not make it cloying sweet. No gravity readings as I still don't have a hydrometer due to an unfortunate tasting/measuring incident.

After The Wife and I moved to the new place and got settled in I figured I'd check on this and found it had cleared quite nicely. Faster than I expected honestly. I almost realized I have waaaaay too much head space and I risk oxidation if I tried to bulk age so I decided to bottle it.



See how clear she is?
 I could read the coffee pot numbers no problem. My phone would not focus on the numbers though. 
 Here is a sample in a glass
 I let The Wife's brother in law taste it and he said while it still had an alcohol bite to it, you could clearly taste the peach that was coming through. Sadly no vanilla though. I am hoping it comes out later as it ages. I will definitely make this one again, though next time it will be a proper mead with some good quality honey and secondary will have some vanilla sticks in it.

Those brown bottles are the wrap up to my quick cider. Honestly I don't know what to think of it. The taste has changed again though not for the better or worst, it just changed. The mouthfeel is still weird, like liquid glass. I decided to bottle it and forget about it for the next couple of years as I have heard that apple can take year to taste good. Hopefully so. If not, oh well its all in the game of brewing.

Comment, tell me what you think. Laters people!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Inexpensive Peach Vanilla Experiment

Sup yall! I'm back with another brew. This time it is not a mead, but still a wine. The local food dept had peaches on sale. I think it was like 93 cents a pound so I figured eh why not? I picked up three pounds of peaches along with a 4lb bag of sugar (more on that later) and figured I'd give it a go.

After I got home my bro, who was staying with us for a week, helped me de-pit the peaches. I think it was around 15 or 16. We cut them up and threw them into a bowl. Once they were all in there I got out the hand blender and turn them into peach soup.

Meanwhile I put the water on boil to get the sugar in there. Now you may wonder why I am using sugar instead of honey. The answer? I was broke and sugar is cheap. After I dumped almost a gallon into a pot I just poured the entire bag in there. Once it all dissolved I mixed it my bucket along with the peach soup and frappe'ed it again till it was nice and frothy.

I put the usual stuff in there, yeast energizer, nutrient, Lavlin k1v, pectic enzyme. From prior experience  I knew this would go off like a rocket so I setup a blow tube. I was not to be disappointed as when I came home from work the next day I found the blow off bottle which was 16oz had been filled with peach stuff. I dumped it out, cleaned it up and set it up again. I left it like that for three days and thankfully there were no more incidents. It looked like this on day 4. Total price on this is less than 10 bucks so far, so it it is good, it will be a good way to get smashed for cheap make a good wine that people can enjoy.



You can see the evidence of blow off up top. Currently it is in secondary.

"But wait, you didn't mention anything about vanilla"

Quite right my impatient friend. I will get to that............on part 2.

Laters!