Closing for the Season

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Well it's already the time of year where everyone is preparing for the Holidays. For us, it means that we have now closed the Tea Room and Market for the season. We will be re-opening in the Spring and the opening date is currently set for March 21st.

This season was full of excitement and surprises. We feel we have accomplished quite a few things on the farm, the manor and the Tea Room. Next year promises a lot more.

We ended our week and our season with one final private corporate dinner at the Tea Room. The setting was just perfect for a cold wintry day and it did feel very much like Christmas.

The Tea Room ambiance was perfect for that one last Christmas private function

Meanwhile we had to continue work on our Kiwis. We are now pruning the plants we had put on trellis some two years ago. These are much easier to tackle than the "feral" plants. However there is still some issues we need to tackle. At first we guided our vines along the trellis cables. This proved to be a great mistake as the vines "pig tailed" along the cables making them extremely difficult to untangle and prune. We've already had the misfortune of inadvertently cutting a Polyamide cable (one of the drawbacks of this technology).

Kiwi "pig tails"...a real problem

What we are trying to achieve is a main trunk and two branches from which first year vines can be "draped" across the cables. We found some great reference to how this should be done and it is our guiding principle right now.

Our ultimate objective

The second problem is that n the first year, we were not particular as to which vines we kept (we kept the strongest and healthiest). In some cases, it meant we had extremely long branches that are much too far from the main trunk. As a result, we are in some cases keeping a new shoot closer to the trunk to eventually become our main branch. Basically it may take us a few years to really train these Kiwis to grow the way they should....but we are getting close.

Slowly getting to the right configuration

We'll have to have one final word on Kiwi growing this year. They are certainly one of our favourite berries, however for those who think they are a good idea to grow...beware! They are extremely labour intensive. We are now looking at a minimum of three pruning sessions a year.

During those cold wintry days this week, we spent a bit of time inside and focused on our wines . A month ago, we started our Kiwi wine using our new fermenter and trying to fine tune our process based on our experience last year. This week, it was time to take our brew and place it in secondary fermentation. As the wine was transferred, we had the opportunity to measure the specific gravity of the the solution (currently 1.10) and get an early taste.

Time to transfer our Kiwi wine into carboys for secondary fermentation

The result so far is very good. The wine is sweet almost resembling ice wine but it has that distinctive Kiwi exotic fruit bouquet. Over time, we expect it to clarify, lose some of its sugars and increase in alcohol content. We expect that this will make a great white wine for bottling in the in the new year.

It was also time to check on our hard cider experiment. A couple of weeks ago we reported on our effort and it's now time to report.

We used locally produced unfiltered, unpasteurized Apple juice. In all home brew directions, one would normally add Potassium or Sodium Metabisulfite to the juice (typically in the form of Campden tablets). This kills any pre-existing bacteria prior to adding a wine yeast.

In past home wine making efforts some years ago, we found that sometimes this can add a taste to the wine. As a result, everything we have done so far avoids this step. When doing this, we are taking the risk that our brew will turn foul. However, so far, our experience has been positive and in the end, we would like to keep the process as traditional and free of chemicals as possible.

This is what we did with the cider. We simply added an yeast to our juice and let it sit. We did this for two weeks until the air trap showed no significant amount of bubbling (meaning the yeast would have processed the majority of the sugars). It took two weeks and it was now time to test, taste and bottle.

The first test for specific gravity was a bit of a surprise. The reading was 1.00, basically similar to water. This meant that the cider would be dry and indeed it was, although some sweetness did remain. Visually, the cider is not clear and has retained its unfiltered juice features. This is not entirely surprising. Some ciders traditionally produced are opaque.

Our first batch of hard cider: 1.00 on the hydrometer scale

The taste of the brew is very similar to a commercial hard dry cider (akin to Blackthorn which is available here commercially). The major difference is in the feel to the mouth since it lacks of carbonation. With hard cider, carbonation is an option but is a difficult one to handle based on the degree of sweetness desired, as well as the alcoholic content.

To naturally carbonate the cider, the objective is to bottle the brew with enough sugar so that the yeast will continue to process it into alcohol while releasing carbon dioxide. In a sealed container, the carbon dioxide dissolves into the liquid giving its "sparkling" quality.

There are two ways to do this. Bottle the brew before the yeast has had a chance to consume all sugars or let the yeast consume all sugars from the juice and then add sugars during the bottling process. This along with the desired alcoholic content means that there are 3 major variables to play with, one over which we have little control (the sweetness of the juice will depend on the Apples and the season).

You can tell we will have to go through quite a lot of experimentation when our orchard begins to produce. The real trick is not to blow up any bottles!

In any case, we decided to bottle our current batch (currently at about 5% alcoholic content). When bottling cider it is recommended you use beer bottles and caps. We used whatever we had on hand (primarily screw caps and flip top bottles). Given the specific gravity, we do not expect any further fermentation or risk of blowing up some bottles. However to be on the safe side, we put our bottles in a large plastic container (we've already made enough of a mess in our kitchen with some previously failed experiments).

Keeping it safe, we're storing our bottles in a large and sealed plastic container.

On the side, we actually took a pair of bottles and added a teaspoon of honey...just to see. We're not certain we will get carbonation and our bottles may not be the best sealed bottles around, however it was worth testing out.

We'll end this blog by wishing all our readers of very Merry Christmas. Although our major operation is closed for the year, we will now be reporting on our winter farm activities as well as the manor's Art Glass Gallery for which we have a lot of work to accomplish.