Wild Berry Wine

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Now about the wine.

I want to purchase some wine bottles with cork closures, that is fairly pricey on Amazon, plus (and I should have guessed) I'll need a bottle corking machine in addition to the corks. I'll be updating that experiment as well very soon.

That wine is so strong on alcohol, it isn't going to go bad in the fermentation bucket, plus I strained it out already so it can wait for a while.

[Finspiracy]

I find it amusing that this thread is in the "Survival and Sustainability" Sub forum.

But then again, i am weird.

I bet the wine is great, Swamp Buck. Enjoy!

[wtbengineer]

I just popped open the first bottled beer after one week. It was one of four bottles I put into the fridge to keep an eye on. The average temperature in the fridge is under 40 degrees, so I never expected the primer sugar to over ferment and explode a bottle and that never happened. In fact I've been expecting the carbonation to be low because yeast does best around 70-80F. Also, because I didn't bottle at the recommended two weeks and went for four, the alcohol level got pretty high with the sugar I'd been adding to keep the ferment going, so the yeast couldn't be very active at this point, or so I thought.

Well, it let off some pressure when I popped the top and had a very small head and a fair amount of carbonation bubbles through out. It had some "mouth feel" from the carbonation as well. It was very low though, about half of the carbonation I wanted. Also the flavor was quite different from the quarts I had in plastic containers. It was not as full bodied and had a more regular beer flavor, less of a kick from the hops, but still very present. Not as sweat either, but still somewhat sweet and just different enough to taste a bit off from the fresh "living" beer I had been drinking all week and had grown used to.

I think I should bring in that beer from out doors and get it to the room temperature of the house and give it another week. I doubt it will activate enough to blow up at this point, but I was so paranoid about that, I was handling the bottles like they were filled with nitro this whole time and feel rather foolish now that I actually opened one up and found the carbonation to be rather low. Hardly seems dangerous at all now.

Also, the yeast and a lot of sediment collected at the bottom of the bottles, but the particulates were still so heavy that it made it cloudy, it looks a lot like orange juice actually.

I'm not at all surprised that the beer you put in the fridge to carbonate wasn't that carbonated.  And I'll bet the ones you let carbonate at room temp will taste much better to you.  Just wait and see and let us know.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

The bottles I had outside in a cooler, I had put them under the house where the temperature is higher and then the weather got warmer for a while, so . . .

Monday a popped a couple and yes indeed, a very robust head and nice carbonation. It has a mouth feel throughout the entire beer. It is beer and damn it ain't bad. Two is more than enough and three will do you for the night.

The head dissipates rather quickly and leaves little lacing behind. It has less body, is a little drier and the hops have mellowed a bit. It has a mildly fruity aroma and a sweet taste. It has a nice dry peppery aftertaste like you'd expect from an IPA, but it isn't overwhelming. It has so much particulates it still looks like orange juice and the way I'm going I might have one with breakfast.

Actually, I'm drinking one now and there is this fruity taste to it. I had thought it was a wine like flavor before, now it seems more like citrus. It could have a little more carbonation, maybe it will after another week, but at least I didn't make a bunch of bombs.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Well then, on to more wine making. Not wild berries, but deer apples.

My GF purchased a number of bags of deer bait apples with the intention to bake something with them. But as nice as those apples were, she found them to be bland and decided to dump them in the woods. I found them to be bland too, but rather sweet and thought that would be a horrible waste, so . . .

I cut up a few bags worth and ground it up in the blender and naturally I put it into a fermentation bucket and yes it is fermenting. I should have about four gallons when it's done. It smells pretty good and strong, just like the wild berry wine, but apples instead.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

I find it amusing that this thread is in the "Survival and Sustainability" Sub forum.

But then again, i am weird.

I bet the wine is great, Swamp Buck. Enjoy!

I guess it is amusing to think that in order to survive I should be able to make alcoholic beverages. But, from my perspective, I have the knowledge to create from scratch a desirable commodity in a SHTF situation, and I have the product to prove it.

Plus alcohol, once distilled from these fermentations, is highly useful from a medical perspective as in essential oil extraction or even to preserve food, esp. if it turned to vinegar. It could even power an internal combustion engine as distilled alcohol or at least it could light a lamp.

Yes you can enjoy the effort once you get something good like this beer or the wild berry wine, but even if you just used something like sugar beets to make alcohol, it can be more than something to get drunk with.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Given the subject matter of Survival and Sustainability, what kind of alcoholic beverages might be acceptable in a situation where nothing else is available?

Whiskey In The Old West

A lot of whiskey was consumed. There was good whiskey and there was bad. Or, as some would say, “It was all good, but some was better.”
by Marshall Trimble | May 21, 2020 | True West Blog

One of the favorite whiskey recipes is Ol’ Snakehead. Ingredients were:

1 gal. alcohol.
1 lb. plug or black twist of tobacco for color.
1 lb. black strap molasses for flavor.
1 handful red Spanish peppers for spice.
5 gal. river water.
2 rattlesnake heads per barrel. This gives it “spirit.”


Then drop in a horseshoe. If the shoe sinks, it ain’t ready yet but when it rises to the surface and floats, the whiskey is ready to drink.

https://truewestmagazine.com/whiskey-in-the-old-west/