Okay its really 4 white water oak trees :>) While triming limbs and using my saw to cut aging chips for my five gallon carboys, I also polished down 14 sets of chopssticks with my dremel. :>)

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2003

Answers

Uhh, Jay, aren't you suppose to put the chips in BEFORE you drink the wine?

Wildman, (confused)

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2003

I've often wondered how long it would take me to cut down a large pine tree with a dremel? Hey this could be Guiness Book of World Record stuff here!!!! You can have this idea if you want it Jay!....Kirk

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2003

Wildman, I add boiled oak chips to the aging carboy and also put one small chip in each corked bottle so that my wine continually ages on oak. I have bottles of fortified wine that have been celler aging since 1982.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2003

Kirk, don't think we need to start putting ideas in Jays head! The boy's been in the wine! He started out making baseball bats and ended up with chopsticks! Hey, if he cut down a big pine, would he end up with a baseball bat.

Jay, I'm just going to make a simple grape wine for now. I hope I'm going to make a simple grape wine. Been a long time since I made wine or beer. I was given some elderberries this Summer but after reading up on the time it takes to make elderberry wine, I decided to make jelly and cordial out of it instead. The jelly didn't jell and the cordial wasn't! At least we don't think the cordial was good but then we don't drink cordial. Bourbon, wine and beer we know. What we made was good syrup for pancakes. We may do some elderberry wine next year after we get a good drink supply built up.

My brother in law was over in Saudi many years ago and he made wine. Not legal in that country but then you didn't tell anyone either. The thing is that they sold grape juice in a bottle with a pop up stopper in it. I know there's a name for the stoppers but I can't think of it right now. He brought all his bottles home and I now have about 50 of them puppies. They're 100 CL, whatever that is. They're just a little larger than our standard 750 ml wine bottles. Now, I've got to make enough wine to fill 50 bottles. Bummer! Hey, can't let all those bottles sit empty can I? Actually, I'm just going to be starting a gallon at a time and should have two or three or four gallons perking all the time. We'll have to start drinking wine for breakfast! There's not a town around that sells wine making supplies so I'll have to wait until I get to Little Rock or one of the other big cities. My sister did get me some yeast off of Ebay. As for aging, we let ours age for the amount of time it takes to pass through the body!

Wildman, (glug, glug)

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2003

Wildman , go to www.eckraus.com to mail order your wine supplies. I save 15 to 30 percent over our local specialty apothacary store for supplies.

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/ for all the recipes you need

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2003

Jay, you are just a wonder! Now, if you decide you can make a fork with your dremel, I might be in the market - never could get the hang of chopsticks - too darn hungry every time I've tried them!

Thanks for the wine links - I got Hubs beer and wine making kits for Christmas last year. He's on his second batch of beer and says it's pretty good. I don't know how good it is, since I don't drink (much); but Jessie tried one bottle and hasn't bothered to swipe any of it,sooo... He just bottled his first (grape) wine. We get water delivered to the house in 5 gallon jugs - have you ever used those for wine? They look like the carboy that came with the wine kit, but they are plastic instead of glass. If either of you fellows would like to post some recipes, I'm sure he'd be grateful!

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2003

Polly,

I prefer the plastic carboys now as they are lighter and using the chip float casking, notice no plastics bouquet.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2003

BTW I dont know about forks, but I am making a nice wooden cook spoon/1/3 cup ladle. Those spoons always were too shallow for my preferences :>)

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2003

Polly, have your husband stick in "making homemade wine making" or "homemade wine recipes" in any search engine and he'll have so many sites that he won't have time to research them. My recipes are simple ones right now. Just good old Welches Grape Juice concentrate. I think it's best to start out making a gallon at a time. Especially if you're going to experiment. That way if it doesn't come out, you haven't lost much. Later, when you get good, you can make 5, 10, 50 gallons at a time. Of course, you can make an excellent gallon of wine and have it taste different when you make 5 gallons. I've never made over 5 gallons at one time. That's a lot of wine. It doesn't last long though because you give a bottle to one of your friends and you'll find that you have a lot of friends suddenly.

Jay, I was just asked today to make a large spoon for the chili cook off. We make 5 gallons at the cook off and normal cooking spoons just aren't long enough. If I was still in the military, I'd get one from the chow hall. They have BIG spoons. Five gallons of chili, five gallons of wine. Wonder if there's a connection there?

Oh, thanks for the site for supplies. It's hard to find the site that has the cheapest supplies. Guess I'll just have to give up and start ordering.

Wildman, (thinking again)

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2003

Wildman , I use a stormpit as a wine work celler and can legally make 250 gallons of wine per adult resident in my home per year.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2003

Jay...when you sell your worms, do you give out free "nip" bottles of wine with each order?? If so, please put Harry and me on your worm list :-) :-)!!!!

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2003

No, but the worms do get the lees and we have killer punch at the holiday and birthday parties I have here :>)

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2003

Jay, wish I had a cellar but I'm going to have to take up some room in the house for the wine. I've built a cabinet so that I can stick it in the laundry room area and it'll have it's own space. Was thinking about cleaning out enough room in the junk room to put it, but that room's carpeted. Not a good place to be making wine.

At the chili cook off we were discussing winemaking and I heard we could make three hundred gallons a year. Then you say 250 gallons. And I didn't remember. I decided I'd do some checking. Not that I'm worried about exceeding the limit but because I just didn't know how much we could make (Legally). I went to the ATF Online site.

Sec. 24.75 Wine for personal or family use

(a) General. Any adult may, without payment of tax, produce wine for personal or family use and not for sale.

(b) Quantity. The aggregate amount of wine that may be produced exempt from tax with respect to any household may not exceed:

(1) 200 gallons per calendar year for a household in which two or more adults reside, or (2) 100 gallons per calendar year if there is only one adult residing in the household.

I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for making more than the legal limit. How would they ever know how much you made unless they came out and you were cooking three or four hundred gallons at a time? Not one of my biggest worries. A hundred gallons of wine would equate to something like three or four hundred bottles a year! Umm, come to think of it, that might not be enough! Might have to break the law.

Jay, does letting the worms have the lees make them taste better or does cooking them evaporate the alcohol?

Wildman, (going back to drinking, reality sucks)

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2003

Gosh Jay, you could probably make an entire Chinese restaurant out of the oak tree we had cut down in our yard! :)

My friend makes mead in a 5 gallon plastic carboy and it doesn't have a plastic taste to it. It tastes pretty good actually, which is amazing since his idea of cooking dinner is throwing a steak in a frying pan and then waiting for the smoke alarm to go off!

I think I may try some home brewing myself this winter. Any suggestions for a good beginners kit? I like the darker beers (love Guinness!), Keith's a sucker for a good pilsner (Pilsner Urquel is his favorite)

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2003

Jay, got a gallon of grape cooking now. Open fermentation. Been perking since Saturday. Fermentation is slowing down and am about ready to put it in the secondary. Made a mistake though. Didn't think about where I was placing my wine making cabinet and after the fermentation started, I couldn't figure out what the smell was. Been many years since I smelled a batch fermenting. At first I thought the cat box needed to be emptied! No, not that bad. This thing is located right next to the return air for my A/C and heater! Might have to move it to the spare bedroom.

Sherri, I don't know about the other people that make wine, but the kit, I think, is an expensive way to start. You usually get some things in there that you already have or things that you don't use. I would suggest getting a list of the necessary things that you need and you probably have most of them except for the yeast's, sterilizers, tubing and a few other ingredients but those can be purchased cheaply of the net. However, kits can make you more confident that you'll produce something drinkable and takes some of the mystery out of it.

If you follow instructions and only make a gallon at a time, then you can't screw up too much. Especially if you use juice concentrates, like Welches Grape Juice. If you make wine from fruits, it gets a little more involved but is fun.

Some sites make it way too complicated for the beginning wine maker. If you e-mail me, I'll find a simple site that's not confusing. Most try to get into adding enzymes, tannins, acids, etc., and are just confusing to the beginner. Making a drinkable wine is fairly simple. A wine aficionado probably wouldn't give you rave reviews on your first batch but it'll be something you can enjoy. And it'll probably only be three or four bottles so even if it's not great, it won't last long. Besides if it's bad tasting, give it to your friends, that way when you start making really good wine, they won't be hounding you for a bottle. Everything has a good side!

Wildman, (liking the grape)

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2003

Hubs spent this morning bottling up his beer - 50 bottles. He says it still needs to sit for a couple of weeks or so. There is a 5 gallon carboy of grape wine perking away in my storeroom as well. We've got a winery about an hour away from us that has winemaking supplies, but we've not managed to get down there yet. Uncle Ray used to make his wine in gallon glass jugs that had held vinegar; he'd mix up his juice and sugars, then pop a balloon over the top instead of an air-lock. The wine was considered ready to bottle after the balloon blew up and then went back down. He used to toss a handful of raisins in the bottom of some of his wine. I don't recall him using yeast, tho he may have.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2003

Fifty bottles makes it all worth while, doesn't it?

I've still got an old bottle capper sitting around somewhere. No bottle caps or bottles though.

I've got two 5 gallon glass carboys but haven't used them yet. I don't know if I want to spend the time sterilizing enough bottles to bottle 5 gallons of wine. Sandy would like to see that much sitting on the shelf though.

The balloon method has been around a long time and is still used.

Yep, some of the wines say to age for at least 6 months before drinking. I don't think so.

Hey, my wine making corner doesn't smell like the street gutters anymore that I remember when I was drinking heavily.

Wildman, (cutting back)

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2003

We got lucky - Uncle Ivan got a case of bottle caps somewhere - maybe when they cleaned out Great-Uncle Ray's shed? - and gave them to John. They have the cork lining; he likes them a lot better than the new ones with the plastic liner. We're getting picky about what kind of bottled beer John buys now - Michelob bottles are too flimsy to re- use for home brew! (Yeah, Hog Snout beer tastes lousy, but man, these are nice bottles...)

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2003