Alright, guys - this one was too German for me not to try - it also triggered a few memories that I hadn't thought about in quite a while, so I made it my mission last night to give this a go. My computer is dead as a door nail at the moment, so I tapped out a beautiful, well-detailed account last night on my iPod, and then managed to somehow lose the entire thing. I know that I won't be able to re-create well enough to compare to what I originally had, but I'll do my best.
Fair warning: I am absolutely incapable of brevity, so grab a cup of coffee, a homebrew...or perhaps a glass of
apfelwein...before proceeding!
As I said, this one became yet another labour of love for me, as it has some personally-significant family ties. My family is part of an "ethnic group" (for lack of a better term) known as "Germans from Russia," which means that they originated in Germany (usually in what is now Southwestern Germany and Alsace), then migrated to the Russian Empire at the invitation of Catherine the Great and her descendents in order to set up "colonies" and farm the rich Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean soil. Specifically, my family belonged to the sub-group called "Schwarzmeerdeutsche" (Black Sea Germans), settling in what is now Ukraine between Crimea and Bessarabia (modern Moldova). Later on, under the tyrannical rule successive Russian Emperors, conditions became untenable for these stubborn, freedom-loving Germans, and many of them took their agricultural talents to the American Midwest and to Argentina, where they still have close-knit, thriving communities today. The ones who stayed behind were to eventually suffer extremely brutal oppression that could be called "ethnic cleansing" at best, and "genocide" at worst, but that's another discussion.
In any case, to get back on track, my direct German ancestors emigrated from Sulz, on the Beresan River in Ukraine, to what is now Dunn County, North Dakota, where they took up a rural life and thrived. We know that they brewed beer there, because the hops are still growing wild there, and I intend to take a trip "back home" with my father this spring in order to bring back some cuttings/rhizomes from these hops.
Eventually, my grandfather came along, which of course led to me. My grandfather was an avid wood-worker and gardener, very close to the land - and as I get older, I find it more and more compelling for me to emulate his simple, self-sufficient lifestyle, hence my interests in things such as charcuterie, gardening - and lately, woodworking, brewing...and winemaking.
My grandfather made a lot of wine - I don't remember him actually making any, but my dad does, and together, we are working on re-creating some of the things that my grandfather made - chokecherry wine will most likely be our first "official" project, as we both recently got home wine-making kits and we each have a supply of chokecherries, carefully packaged and frozen since last fall.
What I do remember, with great clarity, is that my grandfather made this
apfelwein; although, since he grew up in the US, he simply called it "apple wine," which would have been a translation of the term that he would have heard as a child. I remember seeing many bottles and juice jars of it - in different shapes and sizes - lining the shelves of his basement. I also remember "borrowing" a couple of bottles of it during my teen years, and I to this day, I can still taste how good it was - nearly exactly as EdWort's descriptions say it is. It was a practical wine, without fuss or frivolity - very much like my grandfather, and before the day was over, I set out to re-create it. As I was reading the opening posts on this thread, especially EdWort's posts, I realised that this very stuff must the same as the "apple wine" that my grandfather would make.
As I said above, this is simple - very simple - perfectly suited for a rural lifestyle and "amateur" farmhouse winemakers who are not terribly concerned with additives, vintages and and so on. It is meant to be a way to make use of the abundance of fresh apples in the autumn, and will provide lasting refreshment throughout the year ahead. I managed to read through 71 pages of this thread last night, and I had to chuckle at many of the people who were excited at the idea of trying this traditional wine - and who then proceeded directly to modifying it, playing with the formulas and ratios, "twiddling with the knobs," and generally working very hard to create something else entirely. I am 100% certain that what these folks created was good stuff - but was it the traditional
apfelwein that EdWort tried so hard to teach us about? I'm not so sure.
My amusement was short-lived, however, when I saw that because I have no LHBS nearby (the closest one is 250 miles away), I would also have to make a couple of slight modifications of my own; I hope that they are indeed minor, and do not affect the characteristics of the traditional wine in an essential way.
Batch size: 1 gallon (hey, it works for me!)
Apple juice: Due to the limited inventory of my local grocery, I only had one variety of apple juice that would "fit the bill" - it was a store brand that was 100% apple juice (good) and pasteurised (also good), but with no preservatives (which would have been bad). In short, it was just right! The flavour of this particular apple juice seeme very well balanced between sweet and tart; it is not the TreeTop brand that EdWort uses, but the next time I have the chance, i will definitely get some of that and try it for comparison.
Sugar: The addition of sugar to this beverage kicks up the ABV from 6% to 8.5%, which puts it into the realm of wine. EdWort uses 2 pounds of corn sugar per 5 gallons and reports wonderful results; unfortunately, the closest corn sugar available to me that I am aware of is 250 miles away, so that option was out for me. I also suspect that my grandfather probably had none available to him, either, so this was no big deal. Reading the thread, it looked as though there are several "acceptable" alternatives, including brown sugar, which triggered some vivid memories from my childhood. I remember very clearly that my grandfather always eschewed white sugar in favour of brown sugar for everything that he sweetended; he had a little yellow TupperWare container of it on the table and would spoon or shake some of it out as needed. With that in mind, I decided to use dark brown sugar; I know that folks report a darker and slightly-sweeter end product with brown sugar, but this is not a problem for me, as I certainly remember his wine being darker-coloured and having a bit of sweetness to it, with a nice alcohol warmth (not heat) that would sneak up on you. So, brown sugar it would be - as mentioned above, EdWort uses 2 pounds of corn sugar per 5 gallons, so I scaled this amount down for a 1 gallon batch, and measured 4/10 of a pound to use for this attempt.
Yeast: EdWort uses Montrachet yeast, but this was also unavailable to me at the moment. What I did have was Premier Cuvée, which by all accounts (that I can find) is very similar to Montrachet, so I had no qualms about using it. EdWort uses a packet of yeast per 5 gallons of juice; I thought that my package had about a quarter of a packet in it, but when I poured it in, it looked closer to a third or half of a packet, and I am sure that this will work just fine.
That's all there is to it - everything needed to carry on a very old, German tradition in the 21st Century. Following EdWort's basic procedure, I sanitised my equipment, dropped about a quarter of the total apple juice (I had two half-gallon containers of it) into my fermenter, dissolved my sugar in the remaining half of the first container of juice, then poured it in. Next, I added my yeast and ran the remaiing half-gallon of apple juice through the funnel to rinse everything down into the fermenter. The result was a nice, clear (at first), dark(ish) mixture that already looked very much like my grandfather's old apple wine; this gave me some reassurance that I should be on the right track.
EdWort starts right off with an airlock, rather than a blow-off tube; but old habits die hard, so I have a blow-off tube on mine, for now, and will switch it to an airlock in a few days. I will then do my best to forget about it for at least 4 weeks, as it ferments.
I began this project last evening, and early this morning I was happy to see some very vigorous bubbling in the fermenter, letting me know that things are moving along very nicely. The apple juice had become quite cloudy over night, which is something to be expected; according to EdWort's schedule, it will clear off very nicely at the four-week mark, and my limited experience with apple cider agrees with this. After a total of perhaps six or eight weeks, I'll bottle it in the traditional way - without any carbonation/priming sugar - and will then do my best to forget about it until early fall. If I get the chacne, I will of course get a few more batches of
apfelwein going, because I have a feeling that a gallon of this will not be nearly enough!
That's where things are for now; more as it happens, etc. &c. From this point, I will post updates on this thread that I started:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=523499
My thanks to EdWort for taking the time to introduce this tradition to me, especially as it re-kindled a few very treasured family memories.
Ron
