By Ashleigh Heichelbech

As some of you may know, I am a complete wine-o. I have been to many a wineries, worked at wine bar and even had a wine theme at my wedding! I started drinking wine around 16 years old from the ol' box o' wine my mother kept in the refrigerator. (Mom, you knew...come on now..) From there I was always willing and eager to try any type of wine that came my way.

After I turned 21 and was able to purchase my own bottles of wine instead of gathering a weeks supply of boxed wine in my fridge, and with that, my whole world opened up. The wonderful world of wine...The choices are endless and every one is a delight in it's own way.

Now with that, the only next step to take in my little wine world is to

make my own wine!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

White Grape Raspberry

I have been very fortunate to have our friend Bobby, staying with us for a couple weeks who took out all the guesswork of wine making and who has been a wonderful teacher! He starting making his own wine while he was stationed over in Korea and created Fire Dog Winery.http://firedogwinery.blogspot.com/. His tasty wine was such an inspiration I couldn't resist making my own!

After much deliberation, I settled on making White Grape Raspberry Wine as my very first batch of wine
We started by getting all the right supplies-which was very hard to find here in Panama City..
After a lesson from Bobby of the Do's and Don't's it was showtime..
(Off topic)I did find out a disturbing fact which I hope you all take with a grain of salt-Wine is basically yeast excretion after it feasts on the sugar. Eeek..
Anyways, the next step was to sanitize all of our utensils we would be using, which is very very important because any type of bacteria that may come in contact with wine in the process will most likely lead to bacteria growth and wine "ruinage!"
And considering this is at least a four month waiting period, there is no room for error!
I chose White Grape Raspberry as my flavor and since this is my very first batch I used Welch's Juice Concentrate, which will be delicious!
I started our yeast by adding it to water to wake it up. I then mixed and stirred all of our ingredients together and ended up with about 6 gallons of "wine" I took some measurements of the sugar content which gives me an idea of the % of alcohol in my final product. My aim is to have a 12% alcohol wine!
 After about 24 hours I had very active 6 gallons of wine!-Bubbles mean the yeast is eating and secreting..which is a great sign!
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1 comment:

  1. Darcy SchellDecember 6, 2011 at 8:34 PM

    This looks like it will be amazing!!!!! Can't wait to sample, and I had my suspicions about the Corbet County:)

    ReplyDelete

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