2010 Cherry Rhubarb Wine

Since the house has warmed to a point that is friendly to microbes, I've been on a wine making kick. This weekend I put together a Cherry Rhubarb wine that is currently fermenting. With this years rhubarb plant threatening to take over the yard I figured it was time to use up the rhubarb from last fall that I had in the freezer, this cleared out quite a lot of space. I also had a decent amount of frozen and jarred cherries to use up, not enough for a whole batch of wine on their own but enough to add a touch of flavor. Additionally I had a very small amount of frozen mulberries that we harvested from a tree in the seminary (that has since been cut down :( ) and a few champagne grapes that I don't remember why we had but we did. So here is the break down of what I did:

Ingredients:

• Frozen Rhubarb: 26Lbs 10oz
• Frozen Cherries: 1Lb 14oz
• Jarred Cherries: 1Lb
• Frozen Mullberries: .75Lbs
• Frozen Grapes: .25 Lbs
• Calcium Carbonate: 4 Tbsp
• Sugar: 12 Cups
• Red Star Pasteur Champagne Yeast

Friday evening I placed all of the frozen fruit (and veggies) in the fermenter along with the calcium carbonate and 8 cups of sugar to thaw. The calcium carbonate is a mild base that neutralizes some of the acid in the rhubarb. Rhubarb is very high in acid and this is recommended when making wine from it. The sugar helps to leach the water/juice out as it thaws.

The next afternoon, things had mostly thawed pretty nicely and I gave the stuff a good stir, it was very thick as not a whole lot of liquid had been extracted, though it was still semi frozen. I added enough water to make 6 gallons and the remaining sugar. I stirred further to dissolve the sugar and checked the gravity which was 1.079. This seemed good to me as it would yield a wine with alcohol of around 10-11% if fermented dry, which is quite likely.

At this point I pitched the yeast and covered the fermenter. About a day later it was fermenting vigorously. I'll update with further events as they happen.

Update (6/6/2010): I pressed the wine and ended up with exactly five gallons of wine, funny how that worked out.