Making of the Autumn Olive Wine

Hi everyone!  Well, better later than never I say.  I should have had this post done up a while ago, but life, it seems, gets in the way most of the time.  But now is the time to get rolling.  Here are a few pics and the process of making our Autumn Olive Wine.  If you are wondering what Autumn Olives are, give a scroll down to the post below and there is some good information there on what these little beauties are.  Let's now get down to business.

Step 1.  Pick the Autumn Olives.  DONE  This year we enlisted the help of Mark's Brother in Law Mike, and picked in the back yard of Mark's Dad Leonard.  There were 3 trees absolutely full of these yummy gems.  Here we are:

A two person berry picking job....I got stuck holding the proverbial bucket !



Leonard, the Chief Overseer of the Autumn Olive Berry Picking Crew  A.K.A. Mark's Dad

 Here are some of the Autumn Olives we picked.   Now, we had to fill this bucket completely up in order to have enough to make the wine!

In the bucket they go!

Step 2:  Smashing the berries:  Now this is a process.  After all of the berries have been "looked", (gone over and had the stems removed and any bad or smashed berries removed from the mix) we then put small portions into our nylon straining bag and "Smash" them with a sterilized potato masher.  This helps to release the juice and allow for proper fermentation.

Some of the berries, in the bag, in the primary fermenter, already "smashed"!

Step 3:  Once the berries have all been smashed....and let me tell you, it is a workout for your arms...the required amount of Sugar and Water are added.  The sugar has to be melted into the water over heat.  For this partiular recipe, it takes almost 13lbs of sugar to 5 gallons of water.  Mark is an expert at heating the water, I do have to say!

Berries, Water, and Sugar, all ready to go!

Step 4:  To add the required other ingredients that help the water, fruit and sugar turn into wine.  We only purchase our products from Midwest Supplies.  They are so great at getting us what we need when we need it.  If you ever want to get into making  your own homemade wine, please take a look at their website, and drop them a line and tell them how you found them!   Below, are the necessary additives that, for this recipe, went into the mix.  These are natural ingredients like Acorbic Acid, grape tannin (comes from grapes), Yeast nutrient (natural food for helping the yeast work at it's best), Pectic Acid, (a form of pectin that helps the sugar and yeast work together).

Additives necessary for proper results of homemade wine.  Midwest Supplies is our supplier.  Visit them sometime!

Now that everything has been added, but the yeast, the "must" as it is called must sit for a full 24 hours before the yeast is added.  After we put the yeast in, we stir daily, as it bubbles and bubbles in the air lock.  When the SG or Specific gravity reaches the required level we "rack off" to the secondary fermenter, where it sits and finishes its fermentation over 2 to 6 months.  The next post will be of the bottling process, which is another workout!

"must" ready to be covered, and a finished bottle of Autumn Olive Wine, started Last year about this same time, now ready to drink!

Step 5:  PATIENCE!  Fine homemade wine takes its own time to become ready!  This wine will be ready to drink about this time next year.....Good thing we have last year's wine!  We also have a batch of Fall Grape wine in the secondary, working it's magic as well.  I plan on putting up a bit of information for you on the type of grapes we used for that wine as well.  A few posts down, you can view one of our latest grape picking adventures!  We even brought along Snooch!

I hope you have enjoyed this little look at our home wine making!   Please stay tuned for more!

Have a great day and A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A little history and information of Autumn Olives, a tasty little fruit we use to make our lovely Autumn Olive Wine.

Hi everyone!  It is that time of year, when we go out to pick the ripe fall grapes and Autumn Olives for our wine making endeavors.  Now I can imagine you all are saying, "What is an Autumn Olive?"  Hey, I didn't really know either, but after a bit of research, I have gathered a bit of information on this fantastic wine making fruit.

The Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata)... commonly called Autumnberries or Japanese Silverberry, is a decidious shrub, native to eastern Asia from the Himalayas to eastern Japan.  They are classified as an "invasive species" because they spread rapidly and are very difficult to eradicate should you want to get rid of one in your yard.  They are banned in several states due to their invasiveness.  However, they were frequently used to help reclaim land used forstrip mining of coal (here in Southeastern Kentucky we have tons of them) and the mining of other natural resources.  If you are lucky enough to have the plants near you, you can use the fruit, which have been found to have 7 to 17 times the lycopene as tomatoes and possibly contain cancer fighting properties, for delicious jellies and extremely tasty homemade wine.  Which is exactly what we plan to do after we acquire the required 18 to 20 lbs. of these red beauties. 

When ripe, the Autumn Olive is juicy with a sweet tart taste.  I seem to always taste cherry on the finish.  But that is just me.  The fruit is relatively easy to pick,  you just have to watch out for little thorns sometimes hiding among the fruits and leaves.  Below you will find what the Autumn Olives here look like.




Autumn Olive Berries on the tree shown here by Mark McKnight.  Photo by Jessica L. Gill copyright 2010


They grow in bunches and are either bright or dark red, or on occasion, a dark orange color with very very small silvery brown dots.  They contain a chewable seed, but I never eat the seeds.  Nothing is wrong with them, I just don't like them.  But the wine that these berries produce is simply delicious.  We often add a bit of cherry fruit to accentuate the sweet/tart taste and enhance the blush color.

While there is much debate on the invasive qualities of this shrub, and much research being done on its value as a potential cancer fighting fruit, we are just as happy to pick it in the cool fall weather and produce our Autumn Olive Wine, which in itself, is good for you, in moderation.  There is just something calming and pleasing about going out, testing the berries for taste, and spending an afternoon with Mark, picking the berries and talking about how we are going to make the wine, and possibly some jellies.  It is our "Together" hobby and we truly enjoy the time we spend together doing this.   I do hope that  you will check back soon to see the wine making process with these delicious fruits.  And soon, the Fall Grape information post will be up.

Hoping you all have a great day!

Ohhhh, Fall Grapes for the Wine!

Hey everybody!  Well, it has been a good week here.  We (Sir Markus, myself, and Snooch, the grape lovin' pooch) went up on the mountain and found a large supply of perfectly sweet fall grapes.  I mean these *taste* like the word Grape sounds.  The fresh grapi-ness just explodes the minute you bite into one of these little beauties!  We spent about 2 hours picking them off the vines.

This is how we pick the grapes, pick the grapes, pick the grapes

The Great Grape-mobile!

......this is how we get stuck!




Hung up in the ditch.....well, while I am up here, these grapes  look like they need to be picked.


  Mark had to climb up on a not-so-safe-looking rock to pick them. 



Not the safest place in the world to be a-pickin grapes!

 I stayed on the ground!  After all I had already had my hand smashed under a big piece of steel and a chunck of wood.  "Graceful" is NOT my middle name.

   And Snooch stayed in the buggy, filtching grapes out of a coffee container that we brought along to put them in as we picked them.  She is a sneaky little bugger!  We did not even know she liked these grapes, guess we do now!




We had to put a lid on the smaller buckets!!!!  She was a little thief!  I found grapes smashed on her little feet!

 Anywho, we did not quite get enough to  make the 18 to 20 lbs. of grapes that we need for a full batch of wine, so we have plans to go back up after another frost to see if all the other good spots have sweetened up enough.  For those of you that have never see or heard of Fall Grapes, here is what they look like.



Fall Grape Clusters

  They are small, like a pea, but they grow in bunches like grapes that are in the supermarket. 
They are simply beautiful hanging out on their vines in nature!


Lovely Lovely Sweet Fall Grapes!




Grapes on the vines.

Now that the frosts are coming, we will be able to get the rest of these lovely grapes to start the Fall Grape Wine.  The great folks at Midwest Supplies are the "ONLY" people we trust to order all of the necessary items to make our fantastic wine.  If you are a wine lover, head on over to MidWest Supplies to see all of the great winemaking kits, supplies, glasses, labels, openers, and oh so much other good stuff!  We would not think of using anyone else!

Well, that is about it for this Grape Picking Adventure!  We will be doing another adventure here shortly and then I will be putting up the entire process we go through to get the batch started!  Hope you will stay tuned to see how it all is done!

Have a great day!



Oh goodness.....Time to make the wine!

Yep, you heard me correctly!  Time to make the first Autumn batch of wine.  We just got our third 5 gallon add on kit for our wine making equipment.  Man those guys at Midwest Supplies are awesome!  We've picked the berries, but will be making an Autumn Olive run here this weekend. They make the best best best Zinfindel type wine you have ever tasted!  Once we get like 20 lbs of those little red beauties, we will be off and running to start our mixed berry and Autumn Olive batches.  Once we start, I will post our pics.  But in the meantime, I have to run to the grocery and get the ingredients for my "Fried" Ravioli and Marinara Sauce dinner for this weekend.  You simply must try this quick and easy dish for the big game, or just an easy breezy dinner.  Ill be back with the recipe and pics for you all!

Stay tuned....right now, off to do my Yoga and my UPHILL walk! (Getting ready for the Raviolis!)