Self-taught farmers confidently raising chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs. Our focus is on practices that are environmentally harmonious and respectful to our livestock. We appreciate the beauty around us, clean eating, fermenting, and responsibly utilizing the bounty of the land. If you like thinking for yourself, continuous learning, and connecting with the homesteader lifestyle, check us out.
We love grapefruit: the flavor, the fragrance, the nutritional benefits. It’s simply sublime. I make a lot of fresh grapefruit-flavored cultured beverages, like water kefir and kombucha, so when I spotted a recipe in my go-to winemaking book (Raymond Massaccesi’s “Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook”) for fresh grapefruit wine, I knew I’d be making some. And I did. Continue reading “Wine Chronicles: Now Making Grapefruit”
In an earlier post, I introduced Makgeolli (막걸리), a Korean rice-based fermented beverage. It’s easy to make and very pleasant to drink (as long as you ensure that too much pressure doesn’t build in the bottle – if not, you may end up wearing it rather than drinking it!). This is a rice liquor: I’ve seen ABV ranges online from 3%-6%, possibly based on how diluted it is; regardless, there is more alcohol in this beverage than in probiotic drinks like kombucha or water kefir, but it’s not rocket fuel. Continue reading “Farm Ferments: Makgeolli (Korean Rice Wine) Recipe”
So I had a few cans of fruit cocktail that I purchased with the idea that I’d make “rum pot”, yeast-fermented fruit cocktail that is a little like Amish friendship bread: once you get it up and running, you can give some away to your friends. I specifically purchased a tropical fruit cocktail because it didn’t include the unnaturally red cherries with their beetle-derived color (carmine), and it had no added corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup. Realizing, though, that I needed to keep feeding the living rum pot with more fruit cocktail to keep it going, I decided to go in another direction…what kind of wine could I make? Continue reading “Wine Chronicles: Why Not Apple-Fruit Cocktail?”
A couple of months ago, we found ourselves with 3 glass bottles of lemon juice in the fridge: several of the rabbit tractor water bottles had frozen overnight due to unseasonably cold temperatures and had split along seams, rendering them leaky and useless. The bottles that the lemon juice came in were the right size for replacements, and the metal spouts from the original water bottles were a perfect fit. Leaky bottle problem solved…but what to do with the lemon juice that the bottles formerly contained? Continue reading “Wine Chronicles: Skeeter Pee (Lemon Juice Wine)”
So this was my first foray into the world of wild-fermented mead, and despite using raw honey and adding fruit to try to facilitate the ferment, after four days, there was no detectable activity. Puzzling. Not to worry, though…as a winemaker, I have plenty of yeast on hand, so I added a little slurry from a previously-made berry wine’s lees. I keep the slurry in the refrigerator to extend its life, so it took a while to come up to room temperature in the primary fermentor; when it did, though, it looked the way I expected: bubbly.
Continue reading “Bilbemel Update: Blueberry Mead (Melomel)”
So are you saying to yourself “what, pray tell, is a melomel”? Melomel is mead (a type of wine made from honey) plus fruit – and, more specifically, blueberry mead is a “bilbemel”. We’re big mead fans: Sky River Meadery (https://skyrivermead.com/) in Washington state produces some exceptionally fine mead that tastes like bright, fresh honey – with a delicious fruity note, similar to the fragrance of a juicy concord grape – in a glass. It’s crisp, slightly sweet, and it captures the essence of perfect summer days and industrious bees collecting wild pollen. In short, it’s spectacular. We have yet to find a comparable mead available locally, so we’re taking mead-making into our own hands. Continue reading “Wine Chronicles: Blueberry Mead (Melomel)”