The GGA Project -- Day #158 "Third & Final Step"

A couple of months back, I wrote about making mead (honey wine) with my friend Brian.  Then, some weeks later, I wrote about step #2 of the process, which was "racking" the wine (removing the sludge that had collected at the bottom).  Finally, today, I learned the final step of this particular wine-making process, which was....


Today's New Activity: Bottling Wine


With the fermentation process complete, it was time to get our concoction a permanent home (homes).  So we took it from these jugs

and used the vacuum device doohicky I described before to get it into bottles.  That part, though a little tricky, went pretty smoothly.


We took a moment to sample the wine, which in an individual glass was a beautiful shade of amber

To be honest, I wasn't as happy with the final outcome as I would have liked.  Brian had a previous version of mead he'd made, which I liked more than this because the taste of honey was very prominent (checking the diligent notes he'd taken 6 years ago when he made it, we learned there'd been 22 pounds of honey used in the making of that batch (!)).  The wine we made was a different take on that, and the recipe included maple and molasses.  Though I'd never tried a mead aside from the two I'd now tried at his house, I can say that, of the two, I definitely had a preference.  Still, it was smooth and novel and certainly worthy of bottling.


We only needed to employ some heavy duty assistance:

The mechanics of the device in the picture are pretty basic.  It's a corking device.  You place the bottle on the black plate, drop a cork in the hole up above, and put all your weight onto a lever that's just out of view, which simply jams the cork down into the bottle.  Brilliant!


It was mini-workout, getting the five large bottles and six small bottles we filled corked.  And look what a lovely collection they made: