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!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

I've got 99 problems and my wine is one!

So the last couple weeks in my wine making world I have endured many obstacles...so..

"If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. Then quit. No sense being a damn fool about it."

Ok, no just kidding I am not quitting but I will give you all an update on what has happened.
I have only encountered a few problems and only one of them was my carelessness, plain and simple.
I am and have been making 5 gallons of wine. All day every day in my head I have repeated 5 gallons, 5 gallons, 5 gallons. So of course when it came time to purchase another carboy, which is the big glass container that hold the wine,I purchased a 6 gallon. Idiot me.
 AND not even that, I didn't realize that I had too big of a container until I started transferring the previous wine into the new carboy.
After all was said and done I had to siphon the FIVE gallons of wine back into the FIVE gallon carboy. And return the SIX gallon one for a FIVE gallon one. Waste of time...
-Look at the difference!!-
OK, now that I have gotten over that my other issue I was and currently am still having is that my wine seems to be stuck in fermentation. It's mind boggling because it does not happen very often. I have taken all the appropriate steps to kick its ass into gear so hopefully I can get the process back on track.
After taking my readings I noticed it must be stuck because I was only getting about a 7% alcohol content in my wine and it was much too sweet for my taste.
Now I need to restart the yeast fermentation process over and cross my fingers that all goes as planned!
 -Cheers!