This June holiday

I've been slacking in my baking this Jun holiday. Ever since the exam break in May, I couldn't pick up the momentum to do baking. I still cook for the family, but nothing fanciful.

On the other hand, I'm still into my new hobby of gardening. Bought a few more AVs recently.




Added two racks in my balcony to reorganise the plants a little as they're getting untidy lying around.



These are my latest darlings, AVs and gloxinia.



My pumpkins have grown quite tall, but rather slow, compared to the pot I've placed at my mum's place. She obviously has got more greens than me.




Let's see, what else did I do this Jun holidays... I harvested my second batch of grape wine too. This batch was a total failure. I was experimenting with sweet wine and had used 15% sugar instead. There wasn't much bubbling during the whole process. The wine turned out to be super sweet grape juice! No presence of alcohol at all! I had to add tonnes of ice and water to mix with it before I can drink it. So that marks the last episode of sweet wine for me.


Mood: bored

White Rice Wine - What happened to it

Do you still remember my white rice wine which seemed to have frozen in space?

Well, after more than a month, nothing seems to be changing. The good thing is, I can once again smell the wine fragrance near the opening, which seemed to be a good sign.

Today I decided to harvest it, after 35 days of fermentation. The rice wine looks like diluted milk. I've placed it in the fridge for it to separate.


I was merrily sieving and throwing away the rice residue until I recall these can be used for cooking. By then, at least half of it had ended in the refuse bag. Arrgghh...what was I doing? I kept the rest into a glass jar and leave that in the fridge too. Shall give it to my aunt as she mentioned she likes to cook with it.


I tasted a little of the residue and a drop of the wine. Both tasted pleasantly sweet. The earlier sour taste seemed to be gone. Will test some more after the wine has separated.


Mood: excited

Strawberry Wine - The Final Lap

I've harvested my strawberry wine yesterday. It was the 9th day and the bubbling has stopped.



After one day in the fridge, the wine has settled well.



The color is beautiful! Orangy-red, just like the fruit. The aroma of the strawberry is also prominent in the wine.



But taste wise, I still prefer the grape wine. The grape wine has a sweet after taste, which is missing in this strawberry wine. Perhaps due to the sour nature of the fruit, the wine has a sour taste (even though I've added 10% sugar), especially prominent if you drink it at room temperature. So this is a wine I'll only drink chilled. I think it'll go well with something sweet.



At first sip, I felt that the alcohol content is not high (unlike the grape wine). But after I've finished half a glass (the amount shown in the photo), I'm feeling a little dizzy now as I'm typing this post. Am I that lousy? Or maybe it's just the stress factor kicking in. I think I better stop now or you'll be hearing more nonsense from me.


Mood: drunk

Strawberry Wine - Day 6

Everything is going great for my Strawberry wine. There is much more wine as at today.



The bubbling continues to be active. Probably need a few more days before the wine is ready for harvest. See how ugly and unappetising the strawberries look after they've oxidised.



A little residue is collecting at the bottom of the jar. Beautiful wine color, isn't it? I'm obsessed with beautiful wine!




Mood: cheerful

Strawberry Wine - Day 3

The fermentation of the strawberry wine seems much stronger than that of the grape wine. There were more bubbles and big ones too!



Don't you think they look a little like soap bubbles?

In fact, the fermentation was so strong that the bubbles actually "escaped" from the jar and trickled down the side of the jar (this particular jar is not air tight). So if you're thinking of making strawberry wine as well, perhaps it would be better to fill it up to less than 80%.


See next update here.


Mood: happy

Strawberry Wine - Day 2

The fermentation of the strawberry wine seems to be slower at first look as there isn't much change from the first day. I had to look back at the 2nd day of my grape wine before I realised this has indeed more bubbles than the grape wine.


The wine level had also increased pretty much. Perhaps it was because there were more strawberries this round compared to the grapes the last round.


See how pretty the wine is! I'm so happy with it. And I can smell the sweet strawberries when I sniffed at the cover...lol...

See next update here.


Mood: happy

To dump or not to dump?

What do you do with all the fruit residue after harvesting the wine? I find it rather wasteful to dump them into the bin though they looked pretty unappetising after they've oxidised.

I remember reading from 周老師 that you can either make them into jam or preserved fruits. I am not a fan of both, but I thought jam sounds like a better idea since I can at least eat it with my bread. It should be consumed faster than preserved fruits.

So I set my hands to work on my grape residue. After removing the seeds from the fruits, I added a little water and blend them into a puree. Then I poured everything into a small saucepan, added about 5-6 tbsp of sugar and simmer it over low-medium heat, stirring constantly as the jam/paste started to get drier.



It wasn't really like those store-bought jam. I must have cooked it a little too dry (I cooked it for about an hour), trying to get rid of the alcohol from the jam. But it tasted great, a little sweet and sour, not much alcohol detected. Should go well with bread. I decided the next strawberry jam I make, I will try to make it a little wetter.


After note (added on 2/5/08):
I learnt from a fellow forum mate that what I've made was actually fruit butter, a totally new term to me. Here's a little writeup on fruit butter, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A fruit butter is a sweet spread made of fruit cooked to a paste, then lightly sweetened. It falls into the same category as jelly and jam. Apple butter is a common example.

The fruit is cooked at first, but not too much, as the fruit will burn and soon lose its sugary taste. However, if done right, the newly made fruit butter, true to its name, has the same texture, but different flavor, than regular butter.

Not too sure whether mine really fits the bill. I guess we shouldn't really bother that much as long as it tastes good.


Mood: pleased

Grape Wine Making - The final verdict

The wine has settled much after leaving it for almost a day. I've taken 2 pictures to show you how the wine looks like.

Color of wine under a small white torch light


Color of wine under natural day light


Maybe because I did not remove the fruits well enough, a little fermentation seems to be still taking place, judging from the little bubbles gathered at the top of the wine.


I left the wine in the fridge to settle. Tonight I could finally pour out the clear wine (only a small glass) to celebrate the success of my first fruit wine.

CHEERS!


As the wine hasn't really aged, the colour is rather light. A very pretty color indeed! Can't help but took another picture of it before I bid it farewell.


The wine must have been quite strong. Just such a small glass and I'm already feeling the effect of it. Even hubby who is a better drinker felt a little dizzy/sleepy. It was quite smooth and have a little sweet after taste though it wasn't a sweet wine. The residue wine seemed to have a stronger taste than the clear wine.

In my hurry to savour the wine, I had forgotten to measure the amount yielded. An estimation would be slightly less than 300ml of wine from 672g of grapes.

Now I'm looking forward to the harvest of my strawberry wine. Hopefully it'll yield a little more to share around.


Mood: drunk

Grape Wine Making - Fruit of Labor

I harvested the grape wine today as the bubbling has reduced to a minimal.



Took out the fruits and seeds (I need to get a new sieve just for my wine). What was left was only the pink cloudy wine. Quite a pathetic amount though since I only used a small amount of grapes. Don't think I'll even bother to store it, will probably just finish it.



It looks like pink guava juice, don't you think?



I'm now waiting for the wine to settle and separate into its true colour. I've tested a little of the residue wine from the fruits. It was quite good, very fragrant.


See next update here.


Mood: satisfied

Strawberry Wine - The pretty one

Before I started my fruit wine journey, I told myself I will make Strawberry wine one day, coz it's just so beautiful! All women love beautiful things, don't they? :) I've seen the pretty red wine from the internet and am so enchanted by it.

Today I made a trip down to Carrefour to see if there's any discounted strawberries I could grab. I didn't waste my trip. Came back with 3 punnets of USA strawberries. They were so fresh and in excellent condition. I carefully washed them, dried them individually with kitchen towel and aired them a little.



Cut them up into small pieces before putting them into my big glass container. I was determined to make a bigger jar of wine this round so that I can have more to go round, unlike my grape wine. I didn't use up all the 3 punnets (still feeling a little heartache to use them all up) though I'll probably need all of them to fill up 80% of my container. So eventually it's roughly 1210g of strawberries with 130g of sugar. I used a higher percentage of sugar this round since strawberries are more sour than grapes. I had wanted to use about 15% sugar, but decided against it after considering the fact that hubby do not really like sweet wine.



Not too sure if it was the fruit or the sugar or both, bubbles appeared almost immediately after I gave the fruits a stir to mix with the sugar.



I shall be watching over it eagerly for the next couple of days.


See next progress here.


Mood: excited

Grape Wine Making - Day 8

I haven't been updating the progress of my grape wine because there isn't much difference except for much less bubbling. The bubbling had drastically slowed down these two days, marking the ending of the fermentation will be real soon. I had wanted to harvest the wine tonight, but can still see a little bubbling once in a while. So I decided to exercise my patience and wait for another day.

See next update here.


Mood: anticipating

White Rice Wine Making - Day 10

The white rice wine seems to be slowly separating (I hope it's not my illusion) from the mushy, cloudy mass. Everything seems to have frozen in space. I decided to do nothing and wait for another 2 weeks to see what will happen.


Mood: keeping fingers crossed