Chocolate Raspberry Wine - started 7/6/2013

When to the farmers market today. Found there were a family selling raspberries. She told me they would only be getting them maybe another week at most. So I went ahead and got some so I can make a 2 gallon batch of raspberry wine. I am very excited about it.

7/6/2013 Chocolate Raspberry Wine

So I picked up the yeast and some coca nibs for the wine. I wanted to start putting together the recipe so here we go:

1 quart farm fresh organic raspberries
2.5 lbs of cane sugar
5 oz of coca nibs
1 pack of champagne yeast
2 gallons of purified water
2 gallon fermentation bucket, lid, and airlock
cleansing solution

Washed the raspberries. Crushed raspberries in a large mixing bowl, sprinkled with 1 cup of cane sugar, then let sit for several hours.

Boiled into 1 gallon of purified water with coca nibs. Melted sugar into water. Let it cool just a bit before moving over into the bucket. Add mesh bag with raspberries to the bucket and pour water over the mesh bag then let cool to room temperature before adding yeast.

Once at room temperature added yeast, sealed the bucket, and filled airlock.

7/9/2013
Added more yeast nutrients this morning. As I was doing so I realized that I added my yeast on this batch too early. I hope that this doesn't ruin the wine. I guess I will have to wait and see.

7/13/2013
Removed mesh bag from the fermentation bucket. Added last round of yeast nutrients.

8/7/2013
going to have to redo this wine as it got split.

Next Brew Experiment

          I have been thinking about many of the discussions I have been having with other brewers. I think my next experiment will be with doing another full batch of American Cream Ale but breaking it down into 5 one gallon batches which I will do experimental flavors with. A lot of berries are very fresh right now in our area so I want to give those a try to see what can be done with them. Here are the ones I am thinking of so far:

Blueberry
Blackberry
Raspberry
Strawberry

          These are all berries I can get right now so I figured I would give them all a try and see how they turn out. I am also thinking of doing one with coco nibs.

Use of teas and steeped ingredients

          I have been wondering about how to use things like herbs and spices in beers and wines. From everything I have read this can be an extremely difficult process since you can not add a dash of them here and there like cooking good. And I can see where this would be an issue since you are boiling all these things together and then they ferment so it will change. You will not know for sure how much of what items to use.

          I have been doing some research on doing a cinnamon spiced beer. From what I have read most of the experiments have turned out horrid because either too much or too little was used. One site I read talked about using teas or steeped ingredients, such as the cinnamon and spices, to add AFTER the fermentation process. This way it could be added to taste. The interesting thing about this is I had already used this technique in making my Chi Hazel Nut Mead.

          This really opens the door for some more ideas and experiments that I have been wanting to try. Stay tune... I will be sharing!