What did you last do outside?

Phwoar!!!

 

Cleared the snow off of my car and pickup truck this morning.

 

Put washing out on the line

 

Had coffee

 

Strimming my olive grove, not a quick job but someone has to do it.

 

strimming my olive grove,.. not a quick job but someone has to do it.

 

Rerake the leaves that have blown into the yard the last month or so. This is a never ending job. The way that the terrain is . It seems to be a natural funnel for collecting extra leaves ( and snow during the winter months )

 

Mulched, planted flowers and took a walk with my kids

 

Sounds like a perfect day!

 

I am really appreciating days like this

 

Picked up food and booze

 

You kind of sound like my spirit animal right now lol I need to get on that!

 

Weeded the blueberry plant boxes. Takes 2 seasons to make a gallon of wine!

 

You are going to have to put it down sometime!

 

I'm making wine for the first time.. I don't have the highest hopes but it'll be a learning curve.. how long have you been making wine

 

I've been making wine since I was 14, back in the 70s. It was an on and off hobby that I started by accident when a bottle of Concord grape juice fermented after I forgot it was in my closet. A quick trip to the library and I was a winemaker.

The blueberry wine was also something I didn't originally plan, I was making cider. The cider turned out ok, but was richer than I cared for, as if it would have been better as jam. So I put it into a fermentation jug. I added a pound of sugar (plus 1 cup of turbinado that was dissolved into about 2 liters of water at about 120F). Mixed it and added the yeast (Montrachet) and put a fermentation lock on top. I let it ferment beside the water heater for a few weeks, racking twice. When the fermentation appeared to stop I added yeast nutrient to work the last bit of sugar into alcohol.

When it was finished it had almost no discernible blueberry flavor and tasted more like a Cabernet or Shiraz. It was a pleasant surprise that I hope to repeat after this season. We have remarkable blueberry bushes thanks to finding one that had been neglected behind the shed for years in a pot. Bugs totally ignore it. So we cloned it and have three 4X6 plant boxes going.

Before I attempted this I had already made a couple of gallons of wine using cheap grape juice from a grocery store (must be 100% juice, not a juice "drink" concoction). I always do this when I'm starting back up to get the technique down and get used to all the other stuff like racking the fermenting wine, filtering and decanting. It's a matter of practice.

I'll try to make the cheap juice taste as good as humanly possible when rendered to wine. Which takes weeks, even making a batch every week (a great idea on paper, but LOTS of work). Once I have a couple of consistent batches I'll either pedal down to the winemaking shop and buy cans of high quality vineyard concentrate to make the really good stuff. I'd hate to waste it, so I practice first.

I think we can make up to 200 gallons a year for personal consumption in the US without any permits. So it's a decent, legal hobby that can be SO worth the effort.

Also, if you make a batch of win that doesn't taste very good, it can be distilled into liquor. But that's a whole other discussion.

 

I had fun doing this first trial, just a one gallon batch. Sounds pretty awesome and you must enjoy it if you've been doing it that long! Very cool

 

Walked the hound outside before the rain cloud took over.

 

Feed the Mules and it was Pouring down Rain!

 

I, um...walked around the south end of Springfield, Massachusetts? Does that count here?