My First Batch

I started my first batch in early October, which I followed from The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry A Garey. Garey, who I think is a woman, starts her reader off with a simple apple wine where she doesn’t make the reader go buy all the equipment in the world, and the primary ingredients are apple juice concentrate, fresh lemons, sugar, and wine yeast. All that is need is a pot, a gallon jug, a funnel, and some sulfite for sanitizing.

Eventually, I did go buy potential alcohol testing equipment, acid supplements to use instead of lemons, a siphon and tubing, pH testers, yeast nutrients, tannin, and some pectic enzyme along with bottles, corks, and a corker, and many more gallon jugs. I’m now on my sixth batch.

How did my first batch turn out? Well, I thought I would open up one bottle around Christmas, which would be a little over three months since I started fermenting it. However, I am aware that it probably needs another three months or longer aging. It is kind of ironic that here I am, trying to figure out if I have a knack for doing this or not, and I can’t even test my “experiments” until months later. Good thing I am organized, so taking notes is not a problem.