Hello all! My name is paul and I just started last year with making wine and cider at home.
I have a good sized orchard (about two dozed trees) plus a dozen blueberry bushes, two 20ft rows of raspberries, and lots of wild blackberries at my disposal. I am adding another 26 trees this spring. The orchard has lots of apples, cherries, pears and plums. Also adding four hazelnut trees. I do not know if there is a good application for those with brewing(if anyone knows how to incorporate that I would love it).
First thing I made was a 3 gallon batch of blackberry plum wine. The process went smooth and It was bottled in October after three months in secondary. It actually tasted pretty good even then and I tried one bottle a couple weeks ago and love it.
I also made two 6 gallon batches of cider in the fall. One batch from my apples and one with apples from a friend who has a great crusher and press. He let me use his press which made the job fun instead of a pain in the ass. Those were racked into 32oz swing top bottles last week with some priming sugar. I noticed some stuff on top and posted a question and pic on here today about it.(please let me know if you have an answer). I opened one up and it already has some good bubbles forming. I hope in another week it will finish carbonating the rest of the bottles. Despite the little bit of stuff on top the color and aroma seemed good so I tried it. Very dry as expected and very potent (about 9%). I then used a small about of simple syrup to back sweeten and am very pleased with the cider!
I look forward to reading up and learning a lot from the group here.
I have a good sized orchard (about two dozed trees) plus a dozen blueberry bushes, two 20ft rows of raspberries, and lots of wild blackberries at my disposal. I am adding another 26 trees this spring. The orchard has lots of apples, cherries, pears and plums. Also adding four hazelnut trees. I do not know if there is a good application for those with brewing(if anyone knows how to incorporate that I would love it).
First thing I made was a 3 gallon batch of blackberry plum wine. The process went smooth and It was bottled in October after three months in secondary. It actually tasted pretty good even then and I tried one bottle a couple weeks ago and love it.
I also made two 6 gallon batches of cider in the fall. One batch from my apples and one with apples from a friend who has a great crusher and press. He let me use his press which made the job fun instead of a pain in the ass. Those were racked into 32oz swing top bottles last week with some priming sugar. I noticed some stuff on top and posted a question and pic on here today about it.(please let me know if you have an answer). I opened one up and it already has some good bubbles forming. I hope in another week it will finish carbonating the rest of the bottles. Despite the little bit of stuff on top the color and aroma seemed good so I tried it. Very dry as expected and very potent (about 9%). I then used a small about of simple syrup to back sweeten and am very pleased with the cider!
I look forward to reading up and learning a lot from the group here.
