Racking Wine

We made two batches of wine last autumn: a blackberry (2nd Sept '10) and a blackberry and elderberry (20th Sept '10). They've been quietly sitting in the airing cupboard, and were mentioned last November. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that they were clearing well, and would need racking, and here we are.

I was excited to discover that our new supermarket ('new' being a relative term, as it's on the route to Liz's new workplace -- I think it's been there some time) has a selection of wine/beer/cider making equipment, so I replaced the siphoning tube/tap/filter a couple of weeks back. I've now racked the two wines into clean demi-johns...and, of course, reserved a bit to try. The blackberry's still, possibly, a little sweet, and the black & elderberry hasn't fully cleared, so they're probably not quite done, but both are tasting very good. The demi-johns are back in the airing cupboard: when I feel like it, I might measure the specific gravity of them, to see if they warrant further fermenting; that might require a restart yeast, though.

Over the long weekend, in addition to a session of bicycle maintenance that needs doing but which fails to fill me with joy, I'm hoping to install the irrigation system. We'll see if that happens...