Will these grapes make good wine? Personally? I don't think so. But that hasn't stopped me from trying. And this batch may be the best possible example of what fox grapes can produce. Or at least the best possible that I am likely to come in contact with. What makes this batch special is that nothing was done to control the end result. The grapes were allowed to become the fermented version of themselves without any interference from the addition of yeasts, sulfites, or sugars. It is simply the juice pressed from the grapes, left to ferment under an airlock, which produced wine with an estimated 10% ABV which, it seems to me, is pretty solid for wine made from fake grapes!

Prior to committing to harvesting all the grapes, I made a small eight ounce test batch of wine. My notes from the test batch state, "It tasted very sweet and quite good actually. There was almost an inch of sediment even in this tiny bottle. I think it is worth proceeding with making regular wine out of this."

As harvest time approached, I tasted the grapes almost daily. Time got ahead of me and in my mind the prime time had passed by a few days, but I picked the grapes at the first opportunity. I was able to harvest one very large bowl of grapes, crush them by hand, and start them fermenting in a gallon jug. The wine fermented in the gallon jug with an airlock for just under one month. On 11/3/24 I transferred the wine from the gallon jug to a half-gallon growler for secondary fermentation.

There was also enough leftover to fill a 375ml bottle, which I corked and stored in the basement. The half-gallon growler was left for a proper secondary fermentation until 12/23/24 when I transferred the wine into bottles.

I was able to have a taste and taking into account the fact that the terroir is "my backyard in upstate New York" and the grape varietal is "fake grapes", it is totally ok! Pretty good even! It is slightly acidic and tart, but the end product is wine of its own distinction. It represents well the terroir of my backyard. And is quite drinkable. Pairs well with an antacid tablet.

I am happy to say I have a few 375ml bottles of wine that uniquely represent the native grapes of Clifton Park!

Pressed: 10/21/23
Bottled: 2/19/24
ABV: 8% (this is probably not accurate, see below)

10/21/23

The equipment is clean from having fairly recently brewed. I rinsed and sanitized all the equipment with Star San.

The cider pressed nicely and easily. One or two apples had gone brown, but the rest looked great. Measured to 8% alcohol potential which is the highest I have ever seen by a full percentage point. It filled a gallon jug to a little over halfway. I’ll leave it upstairs wrapped loosely in a down blanket since we’ll be away next week, likely with the heat turned down and maybe it will be a little warmer up there that way. I didn’t add anything (no yeast, nutrient, sulfites, priming sugar, etc.).

11/25/23

I transferred the cider to a keg. I sampled the sludge at the bottom. It’s amazingly sweet and delicious, which suggests that the low house temps (set to 65f) and natural yeasts didn’t yield much fermentation. Thankfully it doesn’t have any off-flavors whatsoever. In fact it just tastes amazing, that sweet spot between cider and hard cider. I can’t explain it, but in this state in mid-fermentation it tastes twice as sweet as regular cider.

2/19/24

The cider filled three fancy little bottles, and there was enough left over to taste. It still has that sweetness to it and no off flavors. Very interesting and tasty! Although because it’s sweet it’s probably not actually at 8% since that indicates all the sugar didn’t ferment. Cheers!

This cider was made with apples from a pick-your-own apples adventure at Indian Ladder Farms with J, J, and M.

A variety of apples were picked on 9/30/23. The cider was pressed immediately after pressing C27. The cider filled a half-gallon growler a little over halfway and  measured to 5.5% alcohol potential. I’ll leave it upstairs wrapped loosely in a blanket since we’ll be away next week, likely with the heat turned down and maybe it will be a little warmer up there that way. I didn’t add anything (so no yeast, nutrient, sulfites, priming sugar, etc.). It might be interesting to compare this to C27 since they were made the same way on the same day, the only difference being the apples.

11/25/23

There was not a lot of cider to work with so it wasn’t worth transferring to a mini keg. I primed bottles with c02 then I used a funnel and poured it from the fermentation growler into the bottles. I also poured some into a glass. It smells appley and good, but tastes harsh and not very good. It’s almost woody (oaky?), and a little bitter and a tiny bit sour. Just kinda bad compared to C27 which was made identically. It actually has the taste of farm funk, which I have experienced in hard ciders in a pleasant way, but this takes it a little too far, but maybe if the cider gets a chance to mature it could improve, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Oh and because I bottled them directly, it’s possible they haven’t fermented completely like C27 in which case these two bottles could be solid candidates for bottle bombs. But again we’ll just have to wait and see.

12/15/23

I labelled the bottles. And while I was at it I let a little c02 out of one just to determine if it was a bottle bomb or not. It seemed totally fine!

7/7/23

Picked sumac with S, M, M, & M. We made a bunch of sumac soda. And added a little to a gallon jug with a bunch of table sugar and a bit of wine yeast. Enough sugar was added to give it a 5.2% alcohol potential.

10/6/23

Transferred from jug to mini-keg and added Hen of the Wood Mushroom. It will just sit in the keg with the mushroom at the bottom.

11/25/23

Bottled this from the mini keg. It has been chilling in the cold room and carbonating. Unfortunately the mushrooms in the bottom of the keg clogged the ‘out’ tube in the keg which made the cider barely come out and turned to fizz as it passed through the clogged tube. Under the circumstances it bottled pretty well, just a bit slow, and probably lost some carbonation.

It tastes pretty good at this stage. Mostly just has a bit of tartness from the sumac. I’m not sure I taste the mushroom much.

Volker brought over some apples from the trees in his backyard, and at the same time Joe let me know his concord grapes were "definitely ripe" if I wanted to grab some. I'd been wanting to make a concord grape apple cider, so the timing was perfect.

I thoroughly cleaned the 6 gallon carboy and the apple grinder with PBW, then sterilized all the equipment. I ground the apples and squeezed them with a strainer bag making about 3.5 gallons of cider. It is beautiful, tasty stuff and weighed in at a whopping 7% alcohol potential. The apples are harder than I’m accustomed to and near the end the grinder over-heated and automatically turned off until it cooled down. I pressed the already-ground apples while waiting for it to cool. The darkly colored cider was some of the easiest I’ve ever pressed. Absolutely ideal apples.

Next I pressed the grape juice by hand-squeezing then pressing through the mesh strainer bag. The grapes are very ripe. I tend to eat the bad ones rather than use them for the cider, and some of the overripe ones that I ate have a slight acetone taste (which is a taste I encountered in some of my very first grape-fermenting experiments). I added a bunch of skins and the juice to the carboy, added an airlock, and put it upstairs in a dark closet with no added yeast or anything. The grape juice also came out to 7% alcohol potential.

I’m a little worried that whatever is making the acetone taste will take over fermentation in the cider. I’m also kinda tired after all that work. In the end I have to accept that this is always a big experiment with the possibility of failure, and I had wanted to make cider this way, so I just have to give it a chance and see how it comes out.

9/26/23

It’s about two weeks later and the cider has fully fermented. The cider took a few days to get going, so after a few days I wrapped it in a down comforter to bring up the temperature. A few days later it was fermenting too aggressively and felt very warm so I opened up the comforter again to let it cool down. I cleaned and sanitized a 5-gallon keg and the auto-siphon. I siphoned the grapey cider into the keg. It smells amazing! Lightly concord grapey. That gives me great hope! Not a hint of an acetone smell. I’ll plan to let it sit for a while (weeks or months) in the keg as a secondary fermentation before bottling.

12/14/23

I filled thirty-eight bottles from the keg. The cold room was at forty-three degrees fahrenheit. I used the Tapcooler counter-pressure bottle filler to fill the bottles. It definitely didn’t work perfectly, but it did give me control, allowing me to stop flow and slow things down as needed to control foam. It will be interesting to see how well the carbonation holds on this batch. The bottle filling was very consistent, only one bottle ended up under-filled.

I tasted the little bit of cider that overflowed during the process, and I really like it. It is dry and and tart. I can't wait to try it (and share!) after it has had a chance to age in the bottles a bit. Thanks Volker and Joe!

7/1/23

I purchased four bags of apples from Devoe’s. The specific gravity suggests cider will have 6% alcohol. I discarded more apples than usual, some were brown and soft. The cider tastes good. I finished pressing the cider and added the campden tablets at 9pm on Friday, by adding five campden tablets while I was pressing the last bag of apples. I soaked the tablets in a bit of cider first, then crushed and mixed, then poured it into the carboy. I added pectic enzyme the next day (Saturday). Then on Sunday I added the yeast and yeast nutrient. I dropped in a half dose (2.5 tsp) yeast nutrient to the 5 gallons, and a packet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast around noon.

7/4/23

It is fermenting nicely with a lot of foam.

7/9/23

The cider is looking good. It has been fermenting steadily at 70-72 degrees fahrenheit.

7/11/23

I siphoned the cider from the carboy into a 5-gallon keg.

8/2/23

I bottled the cider into lots of big bottles, all with the euro/champagne caps. I added dextrose to bottle condition (1 tsp to the 12 ounce bottles, and 2 tsp to the bigger bottles, 750’s, etc.).

8/14/23

I tried some cider from the mini keg. It seemed possibly kind of funky but I’ll give it time and see.

9/22/23

The cider from the mini keg is very good! A little time has significantly improved it.

9/28/23

I labelled the bottles and tried some, it's not bad!

While mountain biking with V last week, we got pretty off-trail. At one point we'd been thrashing around in the woods for a bit and were standing on an old and wrecked path collecting ourselves for the next thrash when I looked down to see a plant that I thought... Could it be? I pulled out the "Seek" app on my phone which helps identify plants, and sure enough it was the sought after Sweetfern!

I filled up my pack, and let it dry on a cookie sheet on the dining room table. After a week of drying, I pulled the leaves off the stems and filled a big jar with the dried leaves. I also made a batch to drink. It has a very tea-like taste with a pleasant bitterness from the tannis.

Then today, while biking again I found several big plants right next to the parking lot at Gurney Lane. I grabbed some of that. This time I used the fresh leaves, and steeped those for five minutes, and filled a bunch of bottles.

I bought 2 bushels of apples at Devoe’s. 1 bag consisted of large yellow apples that I believe were golden delicious. These pressed a little mushy but weren’t too bad to press. The other 3 bags consisted of mostly a red apple with little yellow streaks. Probably fuji. They pressed wonderfully. I measured the cider from each type separately, and both measured to an alcohol potential of 5%. They pressed into a 6-gallon carboy and a 1-gallon carboy, with about a liter to spare to drink as regular cider. I added pectic enzyme and swirled the 1-and-6-gallon carboys and put them upstairs with a clean cloth covering the top. I need to figure out the timing for:

• Looks like the *correct* order would have been:
  • Add k-meta powder immediately after pressing (S02 can deactivate the pectic enzyme, and tablets contain a binder)
  • 12-24 hours later add pectic enzyme
  • 12-24 hours later add yeast and yeast nutrient
• I messed up and added pectic enzyme first. So now what is my planned schedule?
  • Added pectic enzyme at noon, immediately after pressing
  • Once lots of sediment drops out, wait an hour or two then add campden tablets.
  • Wait 12-24 hours and add yeast and yeast nutrient.

• Pectic Enzyme - according to pkg instructions - ½ tsp per gallon - added immediately after pressing.
• Campden tablets
• Yeast
• Yeast nutrient (2 tsp for the big carboy worked well previously) (which I’m out of. I might need to buy more).

3/5/23

I auto-siphoned from c23 and c24, filling the two kegs. I also had a little left over from the first batch which went into a growler. There ended up being a little bit of c24 left over, which got mixed with the sediment and I bottled it (those 5 extra bottles will be *very* sedimenty, but couldn’t hurt to see what happens to them).

3/18/23

I printed labels and filled some ciders using my new TapCooler counter-pressure bottle filler. I definitely made some mistakes this day. There is a deliberate set of steps to take, I kept forgetting important steps like turning off the cider flow when I was done, yielding a small firehose of cider shooting all over the place. And I also learned that it is, in fact, important that the cider and the bottles be cold. Otherwise the CO2 foams up like crazy.

3/23/23

I bottled more ciders. This time I was much more careful to keep bottles chilled. It worked out much better this way.

12/20/22

I put some PBW in the carboy and bucket this morning, and let things clean while I was at work. I slipped out a little bit early in the afternoon and picked up 2 bushels of apples at DeVoe’s. I must be getting the system down because I made quick work of sanitizing everything then filling the 6-gallon carboy, a 1-gallon carboy, plus a little extra. Also the apples were easy to press because the cider just fell out of the ground apples. I added pectic enzyme immediately after pressing. It’s my first time using pectic enzyme. The specific gravity reading suggested an alcohol potential of 5%. The resulting cider is good, but not the strongest in terms of flavor or sweetness.

Why pectic enzyme? A batch last year came out a little weird, with swirling clouds that I suspect are a result of pectin doing it’s thing. Also adding the enzyme may accelerate the process of clarifying the cider. I kind of like a cloudy cider, but the occasional clear one is good as well. Also I suspect there may be other benefits to adding the pectic enzyme such as encouraging the sediment to drop out more quickly, which I think is a benefit for my cider. The quicker I can get it off the sediment the better as far as avoiding off-flavors. That’s the idea anyway.

Wow just 2-3 hours later a ton of sediment has dropped out already:

12/22/22

There is a thin layer of bubbles on the surface, but it seems a little slow to take off. I added about 1.5 teaspoons (just a little) of yeast nutrient.

It sounds like you can add pectic enzyme earlier, to the ground apples to produce something like a 10% better yield because more juice will extract.

Also by adding the yeast nutrient like I did may also cause some of the nutrients to drop out, so adding a yeast nutrient might not be a bad idea.

12/23/22

It's foaming quite a bit, if it keeps going it might blow its top. I gave it a little swirl to try and reduce the foam a bit.

12/25/22

The airlock is bubbling once per second, and you can see the fizz fixing to the surface. It’s going great so far!

12/27/22

It quickly slowed to 35 seconds between bubbles! I added about a teaspoon of yeast nutrient. It doesn't seem to have done anything after a few hours so maybe it just fermented quickly.

12/29/22

The airlock isn’t bubbling at all! There is a scant quarter inch of sediment. I moved it down to the ‘cold room’ to cold crash it.

12/30/22

I transferred the cider from the carboy into a 5-gallon keg. There was also enough to half fill a 1.5 gallon keg.

The cider looks great, and tastes good!

It looks like almost all the sugar is fermented which is good:

I hooked it them up to the c02 tank (in the picture there is also some plain seltzer hooked up) to get the process of carbonation started:

12/31/22

I shook the kegs for 5-10 minutes at roughly 18 lbs pressure to accelerate the carbonation process.

1/1/23

I bottled the cider from both kegs, yielding 2 cases plus a few bottles.