Blackberry Muscadine Blend 2018

This years harvest of muscadines from my Ison's black muscadines:

I harvested about 2 5gal buckets of  muscadines about 3/4" full.
Mostly fully ripe and black but also some purple ones. I froze these for about 1 week until I had the time to crush the grapes.

Day1:

Added water to cover frozen muscadines and added k-meta 1/4 tsp. Also added pectic but this was a bit early for pectic.

Day2:

Frozen grapes sat on k-meta over night and I crushed the following morning.

Poured crushed juice into nylon paint strainer bags to contain hulls and tied

Added 4 16 oz jars of backberry seedless jam to each bucket.

Added sugar for a specific gravity between 1.090-1.095. Liquid level with pulp is about 5.5 gal.

Blackberry-Elderberry Blend

• 8 oz of dried elderberry (Simmered for 20 min and cooled)
• 1 96 oz can Vinter's Harvest Blackberry fruit base
• 4 18oz jars of Great Value Blackberry seedless Jam
• 2 18oz jars of Great Value Raspberry Jam
• 9 tsp of Pectonise
• 3 tsp of acid blend
• Yeast Nutrient 1tsp per gallon
• 1 Pound of homegrown Frozen blackberries. (because that's what I had and added to hot elderberry)

Once Dried elderberry solution has cooled; mix with other ingredients and bring water to 5 gal. After 24 hours check specific gravity. For this wine I will be shooting for a starting gravity of 1.095.

Add Sugar as necessary and pitch activated yeast. Note that the jam adds quite a bit of sugar.
Approximately 5lb sugar.

Raspberry/Blackberry Blend

10 18oz jars of Blackberry Jam
  6 18oz jars of Raspberry Jam
15 tsp of Pectic Enzyme
  5 tsp of Yeast Nutrient
Started Yeast starter.

Placed 5 gal strainer bag into 6 gallon bucket to filter seeds. Added one jar of water per jar of jam (water to rinse jar) and then pectic enzyme and let sit for an hour for the pectic to take effect.

Added balance of water to 5.5 gal and checked gravity

Starting Gravity of 1.095 without any sugar addition.

Added (5) 1/2 tsp of Yeast Nutrient and the starter solution and loosely covered.

Raspberry Jam Wine

This 1 gallon batch of raspberry jam wine is intended to be a body strengthener for a previous batch that seemed a little flabby. My intent is to make this wine with extra body so that I can add it to the finished batch which is already aging.

1. 6 bottles of raspberry jam
2. 1 gallon of water
3. 1 tsp of pectic enzyme
4. 1 tsp of yeast nutrient
5. 1/2 tsp of yeast energizer
6. Yeast Lalvin K1-V1116


PH read 3.6 so I added 1 tsp of acid blend. SG reads 1.50; Not sure is this is reliable or not but it is possibly high because of the sugar used to make the jam or because of the pectin in the jam. At any rate I did not add sugar to avoid to high alcohol in finished wine. I don't usually add sugar in regular jam recipes because the SG test so high but because this batch has extra jam, the sugar content seems even higher than normal.

Raspberry/Blackberry Jam PORT

This is my first try at a port and I will attempt this port with all jam. I will use Jack Keller's blackberry Port recipe but will attempt to customize the recipe for jam rather than fresh blackberries.

1. 9 18oz. jars of Great Value seedless blackberry jam.
2. 1 18 oz. jar of Great Value Raspberry jam with seeds
3. 2 full tsp of Pectin to help break down the pectin in the jam
4. 1 full tsp per gallon of yeast nutrient (from experience jam tends to not ferment to complete dryness)
5. 1/2 cup of dry malt extract
6. Sugar to 1.100 OSG and will try to chaptalize at 1.040 and keep records of sugar additions(see below)
7. 1.5 tsp of acid blend

I added enough liquid to start for 1.5 gallons of wine. From experience I know that jam wine leaves a lot of sediment and heavy fluffy lees and so topping off maybe necessary at some point, although I am trying to make this wine as full bodied as possible with very little water added. I added no acid because I plan to keep the water content of this wine low and blackberry is high in acid but I will take a reading and adjust if necessary.

I added all jam and water to 1.5 gal to primary added pectin and yeast nutrient and stirred. Will wait for pectin to have some effect before taking SG and adding sugar and yeast. SG reads WOW 1.800 so no sugar was added. My jam wine usually has a high enough OSG reading that I don't add sugar but since I doubled the amount of jam the OSG readings doubled as well.

This week's wines

This week I started 3 new batches of wine: Raspberry jam, persimmon, and apple.

My wife was wanting some champagne and so I thought I would make half of the 5 gallons of apple as still and the other half sparkling.

We have two wild persimmon trees in our yard which still had some ripe persimmons above deer height and so I picked about 3lbs to try my first gallon of persimmon wine.

Lastly, I had been wanting to try a raspberry for some time and so decided to make a gallon of that as well. The jam prices are quite a bit higher than the blackberry jam prices but it may be worth it if it is as good or better than the blackberry wine.

Reverse Seared Burger

Grilling burgers the other night and decided to try a new method that I had been reading about..."reverse sear". The reverse sear method is exactly what it implies, searing at the end of the cook instead of the beginning. I have to say that this method produced the juiciest burger that I have ever cooked on my big green egg.

This method can be used for both burgers and steak and utilizes the "low and slow" method of cooking which tenderizes and holds in most of the juices during the cook and the sear at the end creates that beautiful caramelizing of flavors that everyone loves so much. From what I have read and contrary to popular thought, searing does nothing to seal the meat and hold in juices and in fact extracts juices from the meat.

1/4 tsp of fresh ground pepper

1/4 tsp of garlic powder

1/4 tsp of onion powder

1/4 tsp of basil

Mix all of the above into the burger and form patties. Cook burgers at 225 F for approximately 10 mins. per side or until the internal temperature is approximately 140 F. Remove burgers to rest and open all vents so that temp gets up to searing temperature of approximately 600 F. Brush with oil and then salt and place burgers back on grill to sear for approximately 3 minutes per side.

Credit to amazingribs.com and meathead for this recipe which I adapted to the Big Green Egg.