Rhubarb Wine - An Inauspicious Beginning

The forced rhubarb thing actually works! As you can see in the picture below, the stalks are pale looking, and the leaves have very little green pigment. The forced rhubarb stalks themselves are very tender, and have none of that celery-like fiber that makes rhubarb so tough.  This is all good, but my  forced rhubarb was not a 100% success.  In places where the rhubarb had received a bit of light before I covered them up, or from imperfectly dark conditions, the rhubarb grew to an intermediate state.  It wasn't quite like the forced rhubarb in the picture below, but it wasn't like normal rhubarb either.

 

(1) Me and my forced rhubarb.

So, having collected all the rhubarb I could, I chopped it all into thin slices.  The result was 17 cups of chopped rhubarb.  I placed it in a big white plastic bucket and added 6 L of water and two crushed Campden tablets.  The Campden tablets are added to keep the bacteria at bay.

(2) Chopped rhubarb in water.

The next morning, I scurried off to the store to get some pectic enzyme.  Pectin is a carbohydrate in cell walls.  Pectic enzyme helps break it down and that, in turn, releases more of the sugars and flavors.  When I returned, and opened the lid on the bucket, I was very surprised.  Overnight, the red colour of the rhubarb had been bleached!

This was initially a mystery to me.  The bucket was rinsed well before use (i.e. perish the thought that there was any bleach leftover from sterilizing).  Campden tablets, however, contain potassium metabisulfite, which is a reducing bleach - something I just learned.  That means it bleaches colours by removing oxygen as opposed to adding oxygen (which is how household bleach and peroxide work).  So, for now, I'm going with the idea that the culprit was the small amount of metabisulfite in the Campden tablets.  It's going to be a "white rhubarb" wine.  At least it still smells like rhubarb!

(3) Bleached rhubarb

I added 1/2 tsp. of pectic enzyme and stirred the mixture occasionally for the next 36 hours.  At 48 hours, I removed the rhubarb from the water by straining.  Then, I added 1 L of white grape juice concentrate, and 14 cups of white sugar.  This was not some magic recipe: I simply kept adding sugar cup by cup until the specific gravity was between 1.095 and 1.100.  The final value was 1.097.

I added 3 tsp. of yeast nutrient and a packet of activated yeast.  And then I went to bed.  The fermentation is now underway in the bucket.  It smells good!

Mead at 6 weeks

For the last two weeks, the fermentation rate has been falling slowly.  Two days ago, I made the decision to stop the fermentation.  There was a nice layer of lees at the bottom of the carboy.  The bubble rate was down to 2 per minute.  I reckon that the fermentation probably would have continued for a week longer.  It was the specific gravity that tilted the decision to stop.  The initial specific gravity was 1.120, and it had fallen to 1.019.  Yes, with that final specific gravity, there is probably a small amount of fermentable sugars remaining.  However, from the hydrometer scale, the difference between starting and final specific gravities corresponds to an alcohol content of approximately 15%.  I felt that this was more than strong enough.  If there's a little sugar left, so be it.  It will taste sweeter.

So, I siphoned the mead into a sterilized secondary fermenter, and then added 1 tsp. of potassium metabisulfite and 3/4 tsp. of potassium sorbate, with lots of stirring in between.  Two days later, I haven't noticed any activity, and there is a nice layer of lees that has already settled out.

(1) Mead immediately after racking to the secondary.

After racking the mead, there was a small volume remaining in the primary and in the siphon hose.  So, I sampled it.  It was better than the junk I was served at that barbecue many years ago.  However, the unprocessed mead I tasted had some carbon dioxide in it, which made the taste sharp.  That will hopefully disappear with time.

 (2) Sediment two days after racking.

My plan is to let this sit for the next week or so, and then add the finings to make this beverage crystal clear, and ready for bottling!

Mead at 4 Weeks

In typical OCD fashion, I have taken daily measurements of fermentation rate (bubbles per minute) of the mead sitting in the corner of my home office.  Today is exactly 4 weeks since the start.  The rate this morning was 3.2 bubbles per minute.  So, the fermentation is still chugging along.  I thought it would have finished by now!  (Could this be a case of "a watched pot never boils"?)

Mead primary fermentation at 4 weeks
(It doesn't look any different to the Day 16 pic.)

Forced Rhubarb

A couple of weeks ago, my dear wife attended a local talk on perennial gardening.  She came home and reported on "forced rhubarb", which involves covering a head a rhubarb in the spring, just as the ground begins to thaw.  Apparently, this forces the rhubarb to grow sweet, tender shoots that can be used to make very good rhubarb wine.  This got my attention, as I have been musing about making rhubarb wine since last summer.

From a cursory internet search on forced rhubarb, I learned that this cultivation method goes back to 19th century England.  Rhubarb farmers took heads of rhubarb and placed them in dark, coal-heated sheds. The rhubarb plant would then grow stunted, pale shoots.  Under these conditions, carbohydrates from the roots are converted to glucose, which makes the rhubarb very sweet.  There must be some very interesting plant physiology behind this!

We have a very healthy rhubarb plant in our backyard.  (In Alberta, has anyone ever seen an unhealthy rhubarb plant?)  Typically, I harvest the rhubarb three times every summer.  Sometimes, I dice it up and freeze it.  Most of the time, I can it.  Canned rhubarb is great for making desserts throughout the long prairie winters.  Rhubarb-apple crisp is delicious.  It's a bonus that our oldest son likes to make it for the family.

So, I am attempting to "force" the rhubarb this year.  The rhubarb is just starting to poke up from the ground.  It may be a week too late to "force" the rhubarb properly, as the plant has already made leaves, and they have been exposed to sunlight.  I really don't know for sure, but it's worth the attempt!

(1) Rhubarb head, with new shoots.

In any case, I covered two rhubarb heads with black PVC pots.  These are just cheap garden-centre pots for larger plants.  With black duct tape, I sealed up the drainage holes in the bottom of the pots.  This is meant to keep all of the light out.

(2) Black plastic pot/bucket to cover a rhubarb head.

My plan is to keep the plants covered for the next 4-6 weeks and see if I get any "forced rhubarb".  After that, I will harvest it and make wine.  There are a number of recipes for rhubarb wine.  I like the fairly simple one posted on "Rhubarb-Central.com":

http://www.rhubarb-central.com/wines-rhubarb-wine-recipe.html

Mead v.1

Confession:  I don't know much about mead.  The first and only time I tried it was 9 years ago at a barbecue at a colleague's home.  This colleague does not drink alcohol.  A year or two previously, somebody had given him a gallon jug of homemade mead, and it had sat at the back of a cupboard since then.  This particular evening, he decided to coerce his guests into consuming it so he could then dispose of it with a clean conscience.  I sampled it.  It was sweet and had a lot of alcohol in it, and I didn't really care for it.  I did not ask for seconds.  From what I recall, he still had a very full jug of mead when the evening was over.

So, why mead?  What's the appeal?  For me, the most interesting thing about mead is just how ancient it is.  From archaeological evidence, it is the oldest fermented beverage.  According to Wikipedia, forms of it date back as far as 7000 BCE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead

How can that sort of history fail to stimulate one's imagination?  Just imagine how the discovery of fermentation took place.  Did proto-civilization humans drink mixtures of honey and water?  Perhaps a container of this honey drink was sealed in a pottery vessel, forgotten for a time at the back of a primitive cupboard, and then consumed by some unwitting soul?  Imagine the first time somebody drank a fermented beverage!

Over this last winter, I started thinking about making a batch of mead, just to test it out.  Why not?  There are many mead recipes online, and there seem to be a lot of people out there who really like making and consuming homemade mead.  One of the problems to overcome was where to obtain several kilograms of honey without having to drive all over the country to find a beekeeper (or purchase a large number of smaller containers of honey at Safeway).  We recently took out a Costco membership, and that is where I discovered 3 kg jugs of honey.  I bought two.

For this first run, I adapted the following recipe for basic mead:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Basic-Mead-201058

Following the standard sterilization procedures, I used a funnel to transfer approximately 4.5 kg of unpasteurized honey (i.e. one and a half jugs of honey) into one of my 3 gallon carboys, already one quarter full of distilled water.  I added honey gradually, stirring in between additions to mix it into the water.  When it was well mixed, I added water to fill it to 3 gallons, and gave it a final stir.  (I did not heat any of the water because I read somewhere that heat can alter some of the natural honey flavours.)  Then, I simply sprinkled a packet of sparkling wine yeast onto the surface, closed the carboy with an airlock, and waited.  The specific gravity of the honey/water mixture was 1.120.  According to the scale on my hydrometer, this is in the starting range for dessert wines (strong and sweet).

(1) Honey and water...

Initially, the fermentation seemed to start okay.  I monitored bubble rates closely over the first day, and was alarmed when the fermentation rate started to slow down at 22 hours.  My initial thought was that the problem had to do with not activating the yeast.  With the regular wine kits I have done, yeast activation was unnecessary; the fermentation took right off when the yeast was simply sprinkled on the surface.  I visited the Wine Kitz store to get another packet of yeast and had a chat with one of the Wine Kitz dudes.  He told me, from extensive experience, that mead was very difficult to start because honey has anti-microbial properties.  In fact, he informed me that if you sprinkle yeast onto neat honey, all the yeast will die.  So, yeast activation was critical.  Back home, I quickly activated a packet of yeast with warm water and added it to the carboy.

The activated yeast certainly performed better, but the bubble rate plateaued at just over 4 bubbles per minute, which seemed very slow.  Next thought: add some yeast nutrient.  I added two teaspoons of this stuff, and the fermentation took off immediately.  You can see this in the following graph.

This graph tells the story of a learning process. The lessons are:

1. Activate the yeast
2. Use yeast nutrient
3. Don't let your children turn off your oil heater (they think they will save you money on your electricity bill, but it also lowers the room temperature and slows fermentation)

The last data point in the bubble graph is from this morning, which is day 16.  It kind of looks like the fermentation rate is leveling out, but it's not over yet.  It may be worth taking a hydrometer reading to check the progress.

Oh, by the way, the aromas coming out of the airlock are just fabulous.  It smells very yummy!

(2) Mead primary fermentation on day 16