It's cold out there, campers

-3 degrees F, -30 wind chill- I have no idea how much new snow we got (are still getting) because it's highly mobile.

Christmas Party and Valkyrie (not the Tom Cruise Movie)

My knitting group's Christmas party yesterday was wonderful, as always. In addition to our regular show-and-tell, we all bring a wrapped gift, and then draw numbers to select one for ourselves. I didn't wrap my gift because I brought a bottle of home made Apple Wine (bottled in 05), and I didn't want anyone who'd rather not have alcohol, getting it by accident. I drew the last gift, a lone package in a plain red bag that everyone overlooked in favor of the more brightly wrapped gifts, and I hit the jackpot- I got a fantastic wooden engraved and painted heart from Susie Ewinger. It's an Art Heart, and I love it unreservedly. I know it's sort of a Holiday decoration, but my kitchen happens to be red and green, so it's going to stay up all year. Susie is an artist and teacher- her pieces are always highly prized (luckily, none of the gifts had tags, or hers would have been snatched up early). I have another S.E. art piece- a wonderful felted and embellished Dove that she gave me in exchange for knitting her a pair of socks (I got the better end of that deal).

Susie does not have an Etsy shop to sell her one-of-a-kind pieces, but she should.

I always take a sock to work on at our knitting group, but the Monkey pattern is too complex for me to knit there (due to that whole chew gum and knit complex socks at the same time syndrome), so I cast on... wait for it... more Twisted yarn. This is Valkyrie (no eye patches needed)- it's the Playful base (heavy fingering weight, superwash merino), dyed in a mutating variegated pattern of black/purple/gold, with mottled gold for the ribbing and heels. Isn't it glorious? Makes me want to kill da wabbit (that's myValkyrie connection).

I started by working my usual plain-sock-variation of *YO, K 2 tog* every 6th rnd, but it didn't show well enough with this yarn. In the meantime, Laura Kessler passed around a scarf she made, using a pattern from her Aunt Helen. I looked at that pattern, and promptly tore out the sock and adapted Aunt Helen's pattern to these socks, and I love it.

Herewith The Aunt Helen Variation: K 4 rnds, next rnd: *YO, K 2, Pass the YO over the K 2*, rep around. (and do not K the 2 together, knit two stitches). It works with any even number of stitches, and it's perfect for making the colors pop on this yarn.

Wine updates: the Riesling SG was 1.08 this morning, very close to being finished with fermentation. The Hard Lemonade is bubbling merrily finally, and has dropped to SG 1.050. I think that perhaps there was a little preservative in the lemonade concentrate even though it wasn't listed on the label. That would account for the slow start to the fermentation.

Monkeys and Podcasts and Fermentation

Now, there's a combo.

It's rare that I knit the same pattern twice in the same month, but something about the Monkey pattern (search Knitty- it's there, free) calls to me. I'm tired of plain vanilla socks, and this pattern is so striking. It's faster than cables, but not as complex as really *open* lace. I still don't have the pattern memorized (in that I can't work it unless I have the chart with me), but it's pretty easy and it goes very quickly. This yummy yarn is from Beyond Basic Knits (link in Stash Enhancers), and it's the superwash. The colorway is called Fleshy, and it's a bit more peachy than the scan shows. It's lovely yarn, and it is knitting up beautifully. I'm almost to the heel on the first sock.

I don't know why it took me so long to discover Podcasts. I did one with Kelly Petkun of Knit Picks, after all. And I've had my MP3 player for 2 years. But I finally joined Royal Order of Podcast Listeners- they make the treadmill workout a lot easier to get through. I've subscribed to the Never Not Knitting podcast (blog with info here: http://nevernotknitting.blogspot.com/ ), and am working my way through their backlog. I subbed to The Best Week Ever podcasts too, but they're video and a little harder to watch as I jog. And then I found Librivox (http://librivox.org/ ), which has nearly 2,000 public domain books recorded and downloadable for free! I am currently listening to Pride and Prejudice (which is my favorite book in the entire world). The fact that I can quote huge portions of the book along with the reader makes my 30-45 minutes fly by (the volunteer reader definitely did a good enough job, though I am never entirely pleased with anything but my own mental voice on that book, Colin Firth notwithstanding). I also subbed to Old Time Mystery Radio through Zune. I don't have a link for their home page, but if you have a Zune or I-Pod, I'm sure you can find it. I've listened to part of one broadcast and it's a hoot (a dated, thoroughly sexist hoot, but a hoot nonetheless).

The Riesling has slowed its bubbling in the carboy, but has at least another week to go before we add clarifiers and rack it to another carboy for settling and clearing. The 3-gallon hard lemonade batch is fermenting slowly in the bucket (it has only dropped from SG 1.090 to 1.070 in 2 days. Good thing wine is not a race). I found enough frozen blackberries (tough to do here) to start a 6 gallon batch of Blackberry Melomel (a fruit mead- our favorite homemade wine), but then discovered that I don't have the right yeast, so I have to wait for that to arrive before I can begin. Mead is a honey based wine, and much slower at fermenting and clarifying- it can take 6-8 months (as opposed to 6 weeks with the Riesling). The Merlot and Muscat base concentrte did arrive (and why didn't I check to see if I had the proper mead yeast when I placed that order?). Amazing how much fun wine making is even though I maybe drink 2 glasses a month (except in December...)

And today is my knitting group's Christmas party. Yarn! Goodies! Friends! Presents! Laughter! Yay!

... now that you mention it....

from http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Socks and Fermentation

We have an odd range of interests in my house...

I finished the Miss Picky Socks, and I love them. Again, it's Twisted Fiber Arts Kabam (wool/bamboo), Minstrel colorway, worked on 2.75mm needles, shoe size 2. If she doesn't like these, I will just buy her socks until her feet toughen up.

The Riesling completed the aerobic fermentation stage this morning. The Specific Gravity was 1.025, so we racked (siphoned) the must from the bucket into a 5 gallon glass carboy. The wine needs to be in an air-tight container for the anaerobic fermentation, but the yeast is not only pooping alcohol (after eating the sugar in the must), it is also farting CO2, which needs to be released (or we'll have a big, messy BOOM). In order to keep the air out, but also allow the release of gasses, a fermentation lock is placed in the neck of the carboy. The liquid in the reservoir keeps air from seeping back into the carboy, while letting the gasses formed by fermentation escape. It's a handy little device- so much better than the balloons that college kids use while fermenting grape juice rotgut in their dorm room closets.

This phase will last until the specific gravity reaches 1.000. The longer the yeast works, the higher the alcohol content of the wine, and the drier the final product. If we were making a Chardonnay, we'd allow the fermentation to continue until the SG was .998, but since Riesling is a sweeter wine, "stopping" the wine, by killing the yeast, will keep the alcohol percentage a little lower but will also leave some residual sugar in the wine.

Wine yeast is engineered specifically to die when the alcohol content is about 12%(regardless of the residual sugar). Bread yeast (which we used on our very first wine making experiment about 20 years ago) will continue to ferment as long as there is sugar in the mix. We made some knock-your-socks-off Crabapple wine that year, lemee tellya.

So now, we just sit and watch the bazillion bubbles (I'm not kidding), and wait a week or two for the SG to drop. After that, we kill the yeast, add clarifiers, and rack the wine to a new carboy, and wait some more while the sediment settles out (remember how clear the Rhubarb wine was when we bottled it?). Lots of waiting in wine making.

Today, I think I'll start a 3 gallon batch of Hard Lemonade. This stuff is just for fun, and there is no clarifying or bottling- it goes directly into the freezer after fermentation and sweetening, to be scooped out later, and mixed with pop, and thoroughly enjoyed.

Winemaking- The Beginning of the Riesling

While we were bottling the ancient Rhubarb wine on Sunday, we started a 5 gallon batch of Riesling. I like crisp white wines like Mueller Thurgau, and dry Chardonnays, but Reisling is my favorite wine (I have a weakness for sweet stuff), and our homemade riesling comes out very well. We have no idea how it ages because we tend to drink it up, or give it away, pretty quickly. But living in Diabetesville means a much lower alcohol consumption, so this wine has an actual chance to age properly.

It's been a long time since we started a wine, and I had forgotten the steps. Luckily, I took obsessive notes back in the Wine Heyday, and with them, it all came back pretty quickly.

As always, any wine making enterprise begins with sparkling clean equipment, which is then sanitized with a food-grade no-rinse sanitizer (from a spritzer). We get our water from an artesian well, which has a heavy mineral content, so we used about 4 gallons of filtered water from the fridge, run directly into a 5 gallon brewing pail (food-grade plastic, purchased specifically for wine making, and used for no other purpose) through a tube, using a high-tech system involving a Fresca can to keep the lever pressed (necessity was the father of invention after my husband stood for 20 minutes, manually holding the lever).

While the water ran into the pail, I *started* the yeast by stirring a packet of wine yeast into a pint jar with a cup of warm no-preservative apple juice and 1tsp of Yeast Nutrient. That mixture was covered with a cloth and set aside, to let the yeast wake up and activate (wine is yeast poop- by the way. Alcohol is the by-product of the yeast's sugar consumption).

To the water bucket, we added: 2- 46oz cans of Alexander's Sun Country Emerald Riesling juice concentrate, 5 cups of sugar, 2 more tsps of Yeast Nutrient, and 10 tsps of Acid Blend (a specific blend of acids for wine making), and stirred vigorously to dissolve the sugar. We then tested the specific gravity of the mixture with a hydrometer. The SG was 1.080, which is exactly where it's supposed to be.

We warmed the bucket warm to room temp with the help of a blanket and a heating pad, and stirred in the yeast starter. Wine yeast is not bread yeast, but it's still yeast- it likes warmth.

After that, there was nothing to do but sit back and wait for fermentation to begin. By the next morning, the top of the must (the juice/sugar/yeast mixture) was covered with bubbles. All we do now is keep the bucket lightly covered (this is the aerobic portion of fermentation, it needs air), stir it once a day, and test the SG periodically.

This morning, it was foaming merrily away. The SG was 1.065. When the SG reaches 1.030 (tomorrow, or the day after, I suspect), we'll rack the must from the bucket, into a 5 gallon carboy, for the anaerobic fermentation phase.

It's an amazing process. Expense so far: 2 cans of Juice concentrate at $18@, about $3 in sugar, and maybe 50 cents in other ingredients. We'll get about 24 bottles of wine from this batch, at around $1.64 @.

And I am in the winemaking mood now, so after the riesling goes into the carboy, I am going to start a 5 gallon Merlot batch. I ordered a can of Muscat concentrate for a 3 gallon batch of sweet wine. And I am going to start a 3 gallon batch of hard lemonade (made college-dorm-room style, with frozen lemonade concentrate. This stuff isn't cleared or bottled, it's frozen as slush. Yummy!)

p.s. If you want to try winemaking, but are leery about assembling all of the ingredients yourself (or raiding the neighbor's rhubarb patch), you can buy winemaking kits, which have all of the ingredients and full instructions for fermentation. The kits, which come in every wine variety imaginable, can run from $80-$180, but you're still only paying $3-$9 per bottle, which is a bargain. Check out Northern Brewer for kits (link in yesterday's post).

Winemaking- The End of the Rhubarb

Well, not really the end- we now have 24 bottles of lovely, crystal clear, home-made Rhubarb Wine to drink or gift or just look at. But the creation cycle of this wine is over.

This batch was started on 01-30-06, using frozen rhubarb that we harvested from assorted patches (we didn't steal the rhubarb, though I might not have been above doing that if I needed some). The 5 gallons was put in the carboy (the big glass jug) for the last settling somewhere around 03-06, and there it sat. We sort of ran out of winemaking energy, and never got around to bottling it.

But we've been thinking about starting some wines again (and in fact, did start a Riesling yesterday, which I will detail in a separate post), and that reminded us that we had to bottle the ancient Rhubarb (which has mellowed very nicely, though it's still a bit tart for my taste- fruit wines are often sweetened, and we used to use simple syrup for the sweetener, but now we'll use Splenda, added to the glass, not the bottle, if need be). Rhubarb wine is a lovely base to mix with other wines for coolers.

Anyhoo- here's the process: Sterilize all equipment by washing with soap and hot water, and then spraying with a food-safe no-rinse sanitizer.

Place the carboy (this one is 5 gallons) of wine carefully on a table or other surface. Jostle as little as possible, so as not to stir up the sediment in the bottom of the carboy (there wasn't much, given that this wine is nearly 3 years old, but younger wines can have quite a lot).

Rack the wine into the bottling bucket with a very handy siphon (no sucking required... snort).

The bottles are washed and then sanitized with this extremely handy bottle sanitizer. It squirts the solution up into the bottle, which is then hung on a peg to drain. At the same time, corks are put in more sanitizing solution to soak.

The bottle is then filled from the spigot on the bottling bucket, put in the floor corker (of all the *extra* wine making equipment, this one is the best- corking bottles is He-Man stuff, even for my carpenter husband. The floor corker makes short work of an otherwise onerous task), and the cork is inserted.

The bottles are then washed, labeled (I found a cool sheep graphic somewhere online for this label and printed it on 2" x 4" stickers), and artfully arranged for a picture. And of course, we drank a glass. Yummy.

After 24 hours upright, to allow the cork to seat properly, the bottles will be stored upside down in cases (or tilted in our wine cabinet in the basement). Ready to serve whenever we want.

Time to make the wine: almost 3 years (though under ordinary circumstances, about 3 months). Expense: the rhubarb was free, the yeast was $1, the sugar was probably $5, the other ingredients (acid blend, yeast nutrient, sulfites) maybe .50 for the entire batch. The bottles are reusable, so I won't count that expense- so these 24 bottles of wine cost about $6.50 Total.

Can't beat that. Next up- the start of the Riesling.

Winemaking ingredients and equipment and kits available here: Northern Brewer http://www.northernbrewer.com/