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Thursday, March 21, 2019
How To Make Elderberry Wine With Tips
Elderberry wine, made correctly, is every bit as good as wine made from its cousin the grape. Aged, oaked and mellowed, wine from elderberries bears a close resemblance to some of the huskier, more brooding red grape wines; Mourvedre and Petit Verdot spring to mind. Elderberry wine is a wonderful drink when the weather turns cold and you find yourself in front of a fire with friends and food.
Balance is what to seek. Fine wine has acidity, alcohol, and tannin all in proper proportion. One of the prime problems in fruit wines is lack of balance. Some fruits are too acidic. Some too sweet. A few are too tannic. Grapes are the fruit closest to achieving perfection all on their own, which is why they “won” in the great winemaking game of life.
Elderberries have excellent tannin levels, wonderful color, and reasonable amounts of sugar and acid. All you need to do is adjust these levels and you are on your way to making a wonderful wine. As you read these instructions, keep in mind that this method also works with other fruits. Other good wine fruits include plums, blueberries, blackberries, huckleberries, apples, and pears.
Oh, and for the record, only make wine from the Western blue elderberry, Sambucus Mexicana. You can also use the Eastern blue elderberry, S. nigra.
Do not make wine from red elderberries.
You want to pick elderberries that are at their peak of ripeness. How do you know when that is? For starters, the elderberry season runs from July to early October, depending on where you are. Within that period, you will get some bushes ripening before others, and even on the same bush, you’ll have some clusters riper than the ones next to it.
Look for a cluster that is fully ripe, no green berries, and whose stem has turned pink. If you want to get extra picky, only choose those clusters that already have a few elderberry raisins on them because these will be the ripest.
Snip off the whole cluster with shears and put them in paper grocery bags.
A lot of people prefer to freeze the fruit before stripping the berries. This does make the process, which can be tedious, a lot faster, but you absolutely must thaw only a few clusters at a time. Once thawed, the berries get mushy. But either method works fine.
Now you need to juice or crush your fruit. I normally do this in a clean five-gallon bucket. You can do it all by hand, or crush it with a potato masher, a blender, or your very clean feet.
Watch out, though, elderberries will stain your skin for days), or even a blender.
Be careful with blenders or food processors, though, as you will want to avoid crushing too many seeds. Seeds contain bitter elements that can overwhelm your wine. Crush just enough to get broken-up fruit.
Elderberries are not pectin-rich, but many fruits do contain a lot of pectins. Pectin is great for setting jam, but not for wine. To prevent your wine from jelling, buy pectic enzyme for these fruits. The enzyme eats up the pectin and using it also extracts more flavor and color from the fruit skins. Fruits high in pectin include citrus, blackberries, apples, cranberries, gooseberries, and plums. Other low-pectin fruits include apricots, blueberries, cherries, elderberries, peaches, pears, raspberries, and strawberries.
Once you have crushed your fruit, you will need to add water for volume. My recipe below is for 3 gallons, which is a good starter volume. Three gallons makes 15 bottles. For experienced winemakers, 5 gallons is better. Once you have added water, it is time to break out your hydrometer and acid test kit.
Mix the juice and water and pour a little into your hydrometer’s test tube. Drop the hydrometer into the tube and read the scale. Most hydrometers have several ways to measure sugar levels on them, and I prefer Brix (pronounced “bricks”), which is the scale professional winemakers use. Ideal red grape juice is made into wine will have a Brix rating of about 24.5; an ideal white grape juice is about 22.5. You want your sugar levels above 20 and below 28 Brix.
ADDING SUGAR It is not likely that your elderberries will be in this window. “Fixing” your juice requires some math. The following formula is adapted from the book, The Way to Make Wine.
(Target Brix – Initial Brix reading) x 0.125 x gallons of juice = pounds of sugar to add Let’s say you have crushed 12 pounds of elderberries and added water up to the 3-gallon mark. You check the sugar level, and it comes out to 17 Brix. You want it higher, around 24 Brix, meaning the difference between your target and your initial Brix is 7 points. Following the formula, you multiply 7 x 0.125 x 3, meaning and you find you need about 2.6 pounds of sugar to hit your target.
Sugar acts weird, so once you have determined your target sugar levels, dissolve the amount you think you need in a little water and add in four batches. After each batch, stir the juice, wait 5 minutes or so, and take another reading. Keep adding until you are within 1 to 2 Brix of your target. A rule of thumb is to shoot low with fruit wines, and here’s why: They will often pick up sugar overnight, so your initial Brix reading can be artificially low.
Temperature Brix reading will be skewed if your juice is really cold or warm. Hydrometers assume your juice is 60°F. If the juice is instead, say 45°F, you need to subtract a half-Brix from what your hydrometer reads. If your juice is 75°F, you need to add about a half-Brix. You don’t need to alter the temperature of your wine to do the hydrometer test, but you do need to know it.
CHECKING ACIDITY, now you have enough sugar to ferment a wine with roughly 12 to 14.5 percent alcohol, – perfect for table wines.
The acid test confirms that your juice has enough acid to withstand aging without going bad. Acid also makes the drink taste bright, not dull. There are several ways to measure total acidity. I use a test kit where you take some juice, put a few drops of one chemical in it, then add another chemical drop by drop until the juice changes color. The number of drops you use of the second chemical corresponds to the total acidity of the juice.
Fruit wines can be all over the map on acidity. You want the total acidity (TA) to be between 6 and 10 grams per liter. In most cases, you will need to add tartaric acid, although blackberries, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, plums, and strawberries are generally high enough in acid already.
Always test your acidity, even with high-acid fruits. You might not need to adjust it, but it is good information to know. If you find your acidity is too low, use this formula: To increase the TA by 1 gram per liter, add 4 grams of tartaric acid for every gallon — yeah, I know I just gave you a formula in both metric and English measurements. Sue me. Always recheck your TA after each 4-gram batch you add, so that you don’t add too much.
Too much acidity makes an unpleasantly tart wine. More water and sugar will offset this.
Now, ready for the yeast? Hold your horses. First, I advise adding into the juice a pinch – less than 1 gram — of K-meta, potassium metabisulfite. This is your insurance that wild yeasts will not jump on your sweet, lovely juice until you are ready to add the good yeast. Simply sprinkle it on and stir the juice.
COLD SOAK This next part is optional. I recommend “cold soaking” your elderberry wine for up to 3 days. It extracts more color and body from the skins of the fruit, and is an excellent choice when working with blueberries, huckleberries, and plums, too. Do you know those big, burly Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa? Almost all of those wineries do this. Here’s how you cold soak: Cool your juice to below 50°F, by any means necessary. Put it in the fridge, or drop in either a sealed ice pack or a plastic soda or milk carton filled with ice into the juice. Don’t let the juice climb above 50°F or it might begin to ferment. Keep changing the ice cartons as they melt to keep your juice cool.
Cover the juice. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap over it—right on the top of the juice and crushed fruit. You want no air touching the juice, if at all possible. Advanced winemakers pump carbon dioxide over the juice, which is heavier than air, forming a gas seal. Gas canisters are available at brew shops.
Be sure to add any pectic enzyme when you start this process. You want it to get to work before you add your yeast.
Even if you don’t cold soak, you will need to add pectic enzyme and any tannin into your juice on the first day, about 12 hours after you put in the K-meta. Cold -soaking or no, once you’ve added any pectic enzyme or tannin, cover the bucket and walk away until tomorrow.
THE FERMENT Day Two (if you are not cold -soaking) begins with your yeast. Start by mixing into the juice half the amount of yeast nutrient, the diammonium phosphate, that you intend to use for the whole wine-making process. Now get your tap water hot, measuring it with a thermometer until it hits 100°F. Pour a one-half- cup of the hot water into a measuring cup and then add the yeast. Just sprinkle the yeast on top of the water. Wait 5 minutes before stirring it in gently. Wait another 15 minutes. Now you can add your yeast to the juice.
If your juice is colder than 70°F, just let the yeast sit on top of the juice for 30 minutes. This lets it acclimate to the colder juice; shocked yeast can die, or delay fermentation. If you are cold- soaking, you will want to let your juice come up to temperature early in the day, and pitch the yeast when it has warmed to at least 60°F. After the yeast has acclimated, stir it in and put the bucket cover on. Now walk away.
Yeast will take a day or so to get rolling, but by morning you should see it bubbling, and the temperature of the juice should have risen. Now your job is easy. Take the juice’s temperature every day. This helps you track fermentation. It will rise steadily as fermentation gets started, then drop as the initial fermentation finishes, usually after 3 to 6 days.
For elderberries and other dark fruits, during the fermentation, you will also need to churn the juice at least twice a day, and up to four times a day. Simply stick your clean arm in the juice and swish it around. This aerates your yeast and blows off any hydrogen sulfide (an unwanted by-product of yeast fermentation), and will result in a wine with more color and body.
If you are making white fruit wines, aerate the juice no more than once a day; skip it altogether if you have nothing floating on the top of the juice.
On Day Two of the fermentation, add the rest of your yeast nutrient. This will help the yeasts eat up the last of the sugar.
THE PRESS The initial fermentation should be done in 3 to 6 days; five days is normal. After the temperature tops out, ideally at about 80°F for reds, the temperature should drop toward room temperature. When it does hit room temperature, that’s a good sign the initial ferment is done. Now you’ll need to separate your wine – because that’s what it is now – from the solids. Serious winemakers use a grape press. I’d suggest something called a press bag, which is essentially a giant jelly bag. Get ready to be messy.
First, ladle off the “free run” juice into the 3-gallon carboy – this is what looks like wine in the bucket, not mushy fruit. Try not to get any debris in there. If this is impossible, pour a bit of the debris-laden juice through a fine-mesh sieve into another bucket, or a big bowl. Using the big carboy funnel, pour the strained juice from the bowl into the 3-gallon carboy.
Now you will want to get all the wine locked in the elderberry skins into the carboy. Scoop the skins into the press bag (you can use a standard jelly bag, too) and squeeze it over that fine-meshed sieve — with a layer of cheesecloth over the mesh — into a bowl. It will get gunked up frequently, so you will have to rinse the cheesecloth from time to time. Pour the strained juice into the carboy. This step will result in a cleaner, clearer wine down the road.
It is vital that you fill your carboys to within an inch or so of the bottom of the airlock stopper. This prevents your wine from oxidizing and protects it from wild yeasts or bacteria. After filling, you may have more than 3 gallons. If so, pour any excess into a glass container that will just about hold the amount of excess; you want to minimize air in the containers.
If you find yourself short of the 3 gallons for some reason, top off the new wine with a comparable wine: For elderberries, I typically use a commercial Mourvedre or Petit Verdot to top off. You want the wine to come up to about a one-half- inch below where your rubber stopper will be. Don’t worry about this no longer being “your wine.” The amount of commercial wine you add in the entire process will be less than 5 percent.
MOPPING UP Top the carboys with their airlocks and stoppers, and put them in a cool, dark place. This is especially important with white wines, which can oxidize and turn amber if left in the light too long. You will soon notice two things: First, the suspended solids in the juice should be settling to the bottom. Second, the wine will be bubbling slightly. This is called secondary fermentation, and it is important that this step is done before you bottle unless you like exploding bottles.
I let my wines age in the carboys like this for several months before I begin to mess with them. A good rule of thumb is to wait two 2 months. After this time elapses, you will need to “rack” your wines. This is where that second 3-gallon carboy comes in, as well as the wine siphon.
Clean the inside of the new carboy by adding a pinch of K-meta to it, then swishing around a lot of water. Pour out and rinse well. Now add 1 gram more of K-meta: This will help the wine age safely. If you fail to use sulfites, your wine can develop “off” flavors or aromas or even turn to vinegar.
To rack your wine, use the flexible tubing to siphon it from the old carboy into the new one, making sure you get a little of the sediment that has fallen to the bottom as possible. To do this, set the full carboy higher than the empty one.
Now put one end of the tubing midway into the full carboy, and get yourself close to the other carboy. You will need to be quick on this next step: Suck the air from the tube, pulling the wine with it. The moment you get a splash of new wine on your lips, stick the tubing into the new carboy. Suction should siphon the wine from one carboy into another. It is better to leave some wine in the carboy than to transfer too much sediment.
Due to the sediment, you will have a lower volume of wine than you thought. What to do? You have a choice: Add some more commercial wine, or add oak cubes. Oak cubes simulate aging wine in oak barrels. I add oak cubes for my elderberry wines. How many? Depends. French oak, toasted medium, which are pretty mild. A heavy-toasted American oak will be stronger. The more powerful the oak flavor, the shorter the time it should stay in the wine. In no case use more than a handful in a 3-gallon batch.
If you do add oak cubes, taste your new wine after 3 months to see if it is getting oaky. If it is, siphon the wine off the oak cubes into a clean carboy and replace the lost volume with table wine.
BOTTLING AND BEYOND When can I drink my wine, you ask? No earlier than 6 months, if you want decent wine. Honestly, elderberry wine needs at least a year. Wine ages differently in the carboy than in the bottle and both steps are necessary. I typically bottle my red wines after a year or so. I then age them in the bottle for several more months before drinking. You can bottle anytime after 4 months or so.
When you bottle, be sure to use real cork if you plan on aging your wine a long time. Synthetic corks do not allow a wine to breathe, so they’re fine for whites and roses, but not for your big elderberry, damson, blackberry, or blueberry reds. Do yourself a favor and label your bottles. You will forget which is which if you do not.
What if, after all this, you make a bad batch? It happens! What if it is really bad? Well, it is no sin to chuck it out. Yet hopefully this blog will help. Try it again.
Elderberry Wine Recipe
This is the basic recipe for red fruit wines. It will work with blackberries, blueberries, plums, or any other dark fruit or berry. All these wines age very well and do well with added oak. If you make them correctly and age them a few years, you can shock your wine snob friends. Serve it first, and tell them what it is later.
Ingredients
- 9 to 15 pounds elderberries, stems removed
- 10 quarts water, spring water is best
- 3 to 6 pounds of sugar (see above for exact amount)
- Tartaric acid (see above for exact amount)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pectic enzyme
- 3 teaspoons yeast nutrient
- Wine yeast
Instructions
-
Crush the berries by hand, or pulse them in a food processor in batches just enough to break up the berries. Do not liquefy them.
-
Pour the crushed berries into a large pot with 10 quarts of water. Add 3 pounds of the sugar. Bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat. Heating elderberries make them easier to digest and helps set the color of the wine.
-
Pour the juice into a freshly cleaned 5-gallon bucket and let it cool to room temperature. Test the juice for acid and sugar. Both may be a little low, so be prepared to add another 1 to -3 pounds of sugar and possibly tartaric acid. Add tartaric acid to get the juice to about 7 grams per liter. You might not need to add any – I’ve had elderberry batches that needed no additional acid and, others that needed a lot. We’re dealing with wild food, and wild foods are variable.
-
Add the pectic enzyme (and tannin, for blueberries and blackberries and blueberries), and chill to below 50°F in the fridge or with ice packs. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap on the juice to keep out air. Keep the juice covered and at this temperature for up to 3 days. The longer you cold soak, the more flavor you extract. (But you run a higher risk of oxidation, which will turn the wine an unappetizing brown, or of spontaneous fermentation, which can ruin the whole batch.)
-
On the third day, bring the juice up to room temperature. Add half the yeast nutrient as the juice warms. Once the juice is at room temperature, hydrate your yeast and add it in, then follow the above directions from here.
Note that prep time is only for that initial first day’s work. Elderberry wine takes a long time to mature.
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How To Make Elderberry Wine With Tips
Elderberry wine, made correctly, is every bit as good as wine made from its cousin the grape. Aged, oaked and mellowed, wine from elderberries bears a close resemblance to some of the huskier, more brooding red grape wines; Mourvedre and Petit Verdot spring to mind. Elderberry wine is a wonderful drink when the weather turns cold and you find yourself in front of a fire with friends and food.
Balance is what to seek. Fine wine has acidity, alcohol, and tannin all in proper proportion. One of the prime problems in fruit wines is lack of balance. Some fruits are too acidic. Some too sweet. A few are too tannic. Grapes are the fruit closest to achieving perfection all on their own, which is why they “won” in the great winemaking game of life.
Elderberries have excellent tannin levels, wonderful color, and reasonable amounts of sugar and acid. All you need to do is adjust these levels and you are on your way to making a wonderful wine. As you read these instructions, keep in mind that this method also works with other fruits. Other good wine fruits include plums, blueberries, blackberries, huckleberries, apples, and pears.
Oh, and for the record, only make wine from the Western blue elderberry, Sambucus Mexicana. You can also use the Eastern blue elderberry, S. nigra.
Do not make wine from red elderberries.
You want to pick elderberries that are at their peak of ripeness. How do you know when that is? For starters, the elderberry season runs from July to early October, depending on where you are. Within that period, you will get some bushes ripening before others, and even on the same bush, you’ll have some clusters riper than the ones next to it.
Look for a cluster that is fully ripe, no green berries, and whose stem has turned pink. If you want to get extra picky, only choose those clusters that already have a few elderberry raisins on them because these will be the ripest.
Snip off the whole cluster with shears and put them in paper grocery bags.
A lot of people prefer to freeze the fruit before stripping the berries. This does make the process, which can be tedious, a lot faster, but you absolutely must thaw only a few clusters at a time. Once thawed, the berries get mushy. But either method works fine.
Now you need to juice or crush your fruit. I normally do this in a clean five-gallon bucket. You can do it all by hand, or crush it with a potato masher, a blender, or your very clean feet.
Watch out, though, elderberries will stain your skin for days), or even a blender.
Be careful with blenders or food processors, though, as you will want to avoid crushing too many seeds. Seeds contain bitter elements that can overwhelm your wine. Crush just enough to get broken-up fruit.
Elderberries are not pectin-rich, but many fruits do contain a lot of pectins. Pectin is great for setting jam, but not for wine. To prevent your wine from jelling, buy pectic enzyme for these fruits. The enzyme eats up the pectin and using it also extracts more flavor and color from the fruit skins. Fruits high in pectin include citrus, blackberries, apples, cranberries, gooseberries, and plums. Other low-pectin fruits include apricots, blueberries, cherries, elderberries, peaches, pears, raspberries, and strawberries.
Once you have crushed your fruit, you will need to add water for volume. My recipe below is for 3 gallons, which is a good starter volume. Three gallons makes 15 bottles. For experienced winemakers, 5 gallons is better. Once you have added water, it is time to break out your hydrometer and acid test kit.
Mix the juice and water and pour a little into your hydrometer’s test tube. Drop the hydrometer into the tube and read the scale. Most hydrometers have several ways to measure sugar levels on them, and I prefer Brix (pronounced “bricks”), which is the scale professional winemakers use. Ideal red grape juice is made into wine will have a Brix rating of about 24.5; an ideal white grape juice is about 22.5. You want your sugar levels above 20 and below 28 Brix.
ADDING SUGAR It is not likely that your elderberries will be in this window. “Fixing” your juice requires some math. The following formula is adapted from the book, The Way to Make Wine.
(Target Brix – Initial Brix reading) x 0.125 x gallons of juice = pounds of sugar to add Let’s say you have crushed 12 pounds of elderberries and added water up to the 3-gallon mark. You check the sugar level, and it comes out to 17 Brix. You want it higher, around 24 Brix, meaning the difference between your target and your initial Brix is 7 points. Following the formula, you multiply 7 x 0.125 x 3, meaning and you find you need about 2.6 pounds of sugar to hit your target.
Sugar acts weird, so once you have determined your target sugar levels, dissolve the amount you think you need in a little water and add in four batches. After each batch, stir the juice, wait 5 minutes or so, and take another reading. Keep adding until you are within 1 to 2 Brix of your target. A rule of thumb is to shoot low with fruit wines, and here’s why: They will often pick up sugar overnight, so your initial Brix reading can be artificially low.
Temperature Brix reading will be skewed if your juice is really cold or warm. Hydrometers assume your juice is 60°F. If the juice is instead, say 45°F, you need to subtract a half-Brix from what your hydrometer reads. If your juice is 75°F, you need to add about a half-Brix. You don’t need to alter the temperature of your wine to do the hydrometer test, but you do need to know it.
CHECKING ACIDITY, now you have enough sugar to ferment a wine with roughly 12 to 14.5 percent alcohol, – perfect for table wines.
The acid test confirms that your juice has enough acid to withstand aging without going bad. Acid also makes the drink taste bright, not dull. There are several ways to measure total acidity. I use a test kit where you take some juice, put a few drops of one chemical in it, then add another chemical drop by drop until the juice changes color. The number of drops you use of the second chemical corresponds to the total acidity of the juice.
Fruit wines can be all over the map on acidity. You want the total acidity (TA) to be between 6 and 10 grams per liter. In most cases, you will need to add tartaric acid, although blackberries, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, plums, and strawberries are generally high enough in acid already.
Always test your acidity, even with high-acid fruits. You might not need to adjust it, but it is good information to know. If you find your acidity is too low, use this formula: To increase the TA by 1 gram per liter, add 4 grams of tartaric acid for every gallon — yeah, I know I just gave you a formula in both metric and English measurements. Sue me. Always recheck your TA after each 4-gram batch you add, so that you don’t add too much.
Too much acidity makes an unpleasantly tart wine. More water and sugar will offset this.
Now, ready for the yeast? Hold your horses. First, I advise adding into the juice a pinch – less than 1 gram — of K-meta, potassium metabisulfite. This is your insurance that wild yeasts will not jump on your sweet, lovely juice until you are ready to add the good yeast. Simply sprinkle it on and stir the juice.
COLD SOAK This next part is optional. I recommend “cold soaking” your elderberry wine for up to 3 days. It extracts more color and body from the skins of the fruit, and is an excellent choice when working with blueberries, huckleberries, and plums, too. Do you know those big, burly Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa? Almost all of those wineries do this. Here’s how you cold soak: Cool your juice to below 50°F, by any means necessary. Put it in the fridge, or drop in either a sealed ice pack or a plastic soda or milk carton filled with ice into the juice. Don’t let the juice climb above 50°F or it might begin to ferment. Keep changing the ice cartons as they melt to keep your juice cool.
Cover the juice. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap over it—right on the top of the juice and crushed fruit. You want no air touching the juice, if at all possible. Advanced winemakers pump carbon dioxide over the juice, which is heavier than air, forming a gas seal. Gas canisters are available at brew shops.
Be sure to add any pectic enzyme when you start this process. You want it to get to work before you add your yeast.
Even if you don’t cold soak, you will need to add pectic enzyme and any tannin into your juice on the first day, about 12 hours after you put in the K-meta. Cold -soaking or no, once you’ve added any pectic enzyme or tannin, cover the bucket and walk away until tomorrow.
THE FERMENT Day Two (if you are not cold -soaking) begins with your yeast. Start by mixing into the juice half the amount of yeast nutrient, the diammonium phosphate, that you intend to use for the whole wine-making process. Now get your tap water hot, measuring it with a thermometer until it hits 100°F. Pour a one-half- cup of the hot water into a measuring cup and then add the yeast. Just sprinkle the yeast on top of the water. Wait 5 minutes before stirring it in gently. Wait another 15 minutes. Now you can add your yeast to the juice.
If your juice is colder than 70°F, just let the yeast sit on top of the juice for 30 minutes. This lets it acclimate to the colder juice; shocked yeast can die, or delay fermentation. If you are cold- soaking, you will want to let your juice come up to temperature early in the day, and pitch the yeast when it has warmed to at least 60°F. After the yeast has acclimated, stir it in and put the bucket cover on. Now walk away.
Yeast will take a day or so to get rolling, but by morning you should see it bubbling, and the temperature of the juice should have risen. Now your job is easy. Take the juice’s temperature every day. This helps you track fermentation. It will rise steadily as fermentation gets started, then drop as the initial fermentation finishes, usually after 3 to 6 days.
For elderberries and other dark fruits, during the fermentation, you will also need to churn the juice at least twice a day, and up to four times a day. Simply stick your clean arm in the juice and swish it around. This aerates your yeast and blows off any hydrogen sulfide (an unwanted by-product of yeast fermentation), and will result in a wine with more color and body.
If you are making white fruit wines, aerate the juice no more than once a day; skip it altogether if you have nothing floating on the top of the juice.
On Day Two of the fermentation, add the rest of your yeast nutrient. This will help the yeasts eat up the last of the sugar.
THE PRESS The initial fermentation should be done in 3 to 6 days; five days is normal. After the temperature tops out, ideally at about 80°F for reds, the temperature should drop toward room temperature. When it does hit room temperature, that’s a good sign the initial ferment is done. Now you’ll need to separate your wine – because that’s what it is now – from the solids. Serious winemakers use a grape press. I’d suggest something called a press bag, which is essentially a giant jelly bag. Get ready to be messy.
First, ladle off the “free run” juice into the 3-gallon carboy – this is what looks like wine in the bucket, not mushy fruit. Try not to get any debris in there. If this is impossible, pour a bit of the debris-laden juice through a fine-mesh sieve into another bucket, or a big bowl. Using the big carboy funnel, pour the strained juice from the bowl into the 3-gallon carboy.
Now you will want to get all the wine locked in the elderberry skins into the carboy. Scoop the skins into the press bag (you can use a standard jelly bag, too) and squeeze it over that fine-meshed sieve — with a layer of cheesecloth over the mesh — into a bowl. It will get gunked up frequently, so you will have to rinse the cheesecloth from time to time. Pour the strained juice into the carboy. This step will result in a cleaner, clearer wine down the road.
It is vital that you fill your carboys to within an inch or so of the bottom of the airlock stopper. This prevents your wine from oxidizing and protects it from wild yeasts or bacteria. After filling, you may have more than 3 gallons. If so, pour any excess into a glass container that will just about hold the amount of excess; you want to minimize air in the containers.
If you find yourself short of the 3 gallons for some reason, top off the new wine with a comparable wine: For elderberries, I typically use a commercial Mourvedre or Petit Verdot to top off. You want the wine to come up to about a one-half- inch below where your rubber stopper will be. Don’t worry about this no longer being “your wine.” The amount of commercial wine you add in the entire process will be less than 5 percent.
MOPPING UP Top the carboys with their airlocks and stoppers, and put them in a cool, dark place. This is especially important with white wines, which can oxidize and turn amber if left in the light too long. You will soon notice two things: First, the suspended solids in the juice should be settling to the bottom. Second, the wine will be bubbling slightly. This is called secondary fermentation, and it is important that this step is done before you bottle unless you like exploding bottles.
I let my wines age in the carboys like this for several months before I begin to mess with them. A good rule of thumb is to wait two 2 months. After this time elapses, you will need to “rack” your wines. This is where that second 3-gallon carboy comes in, as well as the wine siphon.
Clean the inside of the new carboy by adding a pinch of K-meta to it, then swishing around a lot of water. Pour out and rinse well. Now add 1 gram more of K-meta: This will help the wine age safely. If you fail to use sulfites, your wine can develop “off” flavors or aromas or even turn to vinegar.
To rack your wine, use the flexible tubing to siphon it from the old carboy into the new one, making sure you get a little of the sediment that has fallen to the bottom as possible. To do this, set the full carboy higher than the empty one.
Now put one end of the tubing midway into the full carboy, and get yourself close to the other carboy. You will need to be quick on this next step: Suck the air from the tube, pulling the wine with it. The moment you get a splash of new wine on your lips, stick the tubing into the new carboy. Suction should siphon the wine from one carboy into another. It is better to leave some wine in the carboy than to transfer too much sediment.
Due to the sediment, you will have a lower volume of wine than you thought. What to do? You have a choice: Add some more commercial wine, or add oak cubes. Oak cubes simulate aging wine in oak barrels. I add oak cubes for my elderberry wines. How many? Depends. French oak, toasted medium, which are pretty mild. A heavy-toasted American oak will be stronger. The more powerful the oak flavor, the shorter the time it should stay in the wine. In no case use more than a handful in a 3-gallon batch.
If you do add oak cubes, taste your new wine after 3 months to see if it is getting oaky. If it is, siphon the wine off the oak cubes into a clean carboy and replace the lost volume with table wine.
BOTTLING AND BEYOND When can I drink my wine, you ask? No earlier than 6 months, if you want decent wine. Honestly, elderberry wine needs at least a year. Wine ages differently in the carboy than in the bottle and both steps are necessary. I typically bottle my red wines after a year or so. I then age them in the bottle for several more months before drinking. You can bottle anytime after 4 months or so.
When you bottle, be sure to use real cork if you plan on aging your wine a long time. Synthetic corks do not allow a wine to breathe, so they’re fine for whites and roses, but not for your big elderberry, damson, blackberry, or blueberry reds. Do yourself a favor and label your bottles. You will forget which is which if you do not.
What if, after all this, you make a bad batch? It happens! What if it is really bad? Well, it is no sin to chuck it out. Yet hopefully this blog will help. Try it again.
Elderberry Wine Recipe
This is the basic recipe for red fruit wines. It will work with blackberries, blueberries, plums, or any other dark fruit or berry. All these wines age very well and do well with added oak. If you make them correctly and age them a few years, you can shock your wine snob friends. Serve it first, and tell them what it is later.
Ingredients
- 9 to 15 pounds elderberries, stems removed
- 10 quarts water, spring water is best
- 3 to 6 pounds of sugar (see above for exact amount)
- Tartaric acid (see above for exact amount)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pectic enzyme
- 3 teaspoons yeast nutrient
- Wine yeast
Instructions
-
Crush the berries by hand, or pulse them in a food processor in batches just enough to break up the berries. Do not liquefy them.
-
Pour the crushed berries into a large pot with 10 quarts of water. Add 3 pounds of the sugar. Bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat. Heating elderberries make them easier to digest and helps set the color of the wine.
-
Pour the juice into a freshly cleaned 5-gallon bucket and let it cool to room temperature. Test the juice for acid and sugar. Both may be a little low, so be prepared to add another 1 to -3 pounds of sugar and possibly tartaric acid. Add tartaric acid to get the juice to about 7 grams per liter. You might not need to add any – I’ve had elderberry batches that needed no additional acid and, others that needed a lot. We’re dealing with wild food, and wild foods are variable.
-
Add the pectic enzyme (and tannin, for blueberries and blackberries and blueberries), and chill to below 50°F in the fridge or with ice packs. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap on the juice to keep out air. Keep the juice covered and at this temperature for up to 3 days. The longer you cold soak, the more flavor you extract. (But you run a higher risk of oxidation, which will turn the wine an unappetizing brown, or of spontaneous fermentation, which can ruin the whole batch.)
-
On the third day, bring the juice up to room temperature. Add half the yeast nutrient as the juice warms. Once the juice is at room temperature, hydrate your yeast and add it in, then follow the above directions from here.
Note that prep time is only for that initial first day’s work. Elderberry wine takes a long time to mature.
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Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Plastic Bottle Ban In San Francisco with Tips
San Francisco has become the first city in America to ban the sale of plastic water bottles, a move that is building on a global movement to reduce the huge amount of waste from the billion-dollar plastic bottle industry.
Nowadays, plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental burdens…
We’ve all been told that we should recycle plastic bottles and containers. But what actually happens to the plastic if we just throw it away? Emma Bryce traces the life cycles of three different plastic bottles, shedding light on the dangers these disposables present to our world.
Over the next four years, the ban in San Francisco will phase out the sales of plastic water bottles that hold 21 ounces or less in public places. Waivers are permissible if an adequate alternative water source is not available.
One of the largest supporters of the proposal was the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, a national effort that encourages restrictions of the “eco-unfriendly product.”
San Francisco’s ban is less strict than the full prohibitions passed in 14 national parks, a number of universities and Concord, Mass.
Violators of the ban would face fines of up to $1,000.
Joshua Arce, chairman of the Commission on the Environment, said the ban is “another step forward on our zero-waste goal.” The City wants to have no waste going to its landfill by 2020. Its diversion rate now stands at 80 percent.
Past efforts toward the goal included banning plastic bags and plastic-foam containers.
“We had big public events for decades without plastic bottles and we’ll do fine without them again,” Arce said.
The American Beverage Association, which includes Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo, said in a statement that the ban was “nothing more than a solution in search of a problem. This is a misguided attempt by city supervisors to decrease waste in a city of avid recyclers.”
Source: Global Flare
According to the EPA, the national recycling rate in the U.S. is only about 34%. That means most of our solid waste goes to landfills and incinerators – including recyclable items like paper, glass, metal, and plastic.
Massive amounts of food waste that can be composted is clogging landfills, creating dangerous greenhouse gases.
Many cities are starting to tackle this problem by implementing policies to help curb waste by recycling and composting more. It’s known as the “zero waste” movement, and San Francisco is on the forefront. Other cities that have zero waste goals include Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, and Oakland. But San Francisco has been the most aggressive.
In 2009 the board of supervisors passed an ordinance requiring all residents and business to recycle and compost their waste, making it the first American city to make composting mandatory.
Its goal is to achieve zero waste by 2020, and it has diverted 80% of its waste from landfills so far. Now the city is getting attention from all around the world.
Government officials from China, Italy, France, Denmark, India, and many other countries have visited San Francisco’s state of the art recycling and composting facilities in hopes of learning how to replicate its success.
For more on San Francisco’s Zero Waste plan: http://sfenvironment.org/zero-waste
Here are ways to reduce your plastic waste:
- Stop using plastic straws, even in restaurants. If a straw is a must, purchase a reusable stainless steel or glass straw
- Use a reusable produce bag. A single plastic bag can take 1,000 years to degrade. Purchase or make your own reusable produce bag and be sure to wash them often!
- Give up gum. Gum is made of synthetic rubber, aka plastic.
- Buy boxes instead of bottles. Often, products like laundry detergent come in cardboard which is more easily recycled than plastic.
- Purchase food, like cereal, pasta, and rice from bulk bins and fill a reusable bag or container. You save money and unnecessary packaging.
- Reuse containers for storing leftovers or shopping in bulk.
- Use a reusable bottle or mug for your beverages, even when ordering from a to-go shop
- Bring your own container for take-out or your restaurant doggy-bag since many restaurants use styrofoam.
- Use matches instead of disposable plastic lighters or invest in a refillable metal lighter.
- Avoid buying frozen foods because their packaging is mostly plastic. Even those that appear to be cardboard are coated in a thin layer of plastic. Plus you’ll be eating fewer processed foods!
- Don’t use plasticware at home and be sure to request restaurants do not pack them in your take-out box.
- Ask your local grocer to take your plastic containers (for berries, tomatoes, etc.) back. If you shop at a farmers market they can refill it for you.
- The EPA estimates that 7.6 billion pounds of disposable diapers are discarded in the US each year. Use cloth diapers to reduce your baby’s carbon footprint and save money.
- Make freshly squeezed juice or eat fruit instead of buying juice in plastic bottles. It’s healthier and better for the environment.
- Make your own cleaning products that will be less toxic and eliminate the need for multiple plastic bottles of cleaner.
- Pack your lunch in reusable containers and bags. Also, opt for fresh fruits and veggies and bulk items instead of products that come in single serving cups.
- Use a razor with replaceable blades instead of a disposable razor
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Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Tremendous Tacos Today Top Tips
Tremendous tacos at home depend on a few variables normally based on how your preference of taste is.
Enjoy the tips and information below to help improve your taco building skills
Homemade Salsa Is Best:
Fresh salsas are simple to make and taste way better than anything store bought. Make them the same day you’re planning to serve the tacos.
Salsa Recipes:
– Tangy Salsa Verde:
Chop and blend husked tomatillos, a little white onion, cilantro and jalapeño or serrano peppers to taste with a little salt.
– Earthy Salsa Roja:
Char tomatoes, onion and a few cloves of garlic in a dry skillet until a few black spots develop. Blend with a few canned chipotle peppers, cilantro or oregano and a touch of salt.
Make Your Own Guacamole
There’s nothing exotic about making guacamole at home. To make it is as simple as mashing some avocados with a little lime juice, onions, chile and cilantro and a touch of salt.
If you see the herb papalo at the bodega, buy it and use it, it’s an awesome touch.
Chile Verde Tacos
5 tomatillos, hulls removed and halved
2 jalapeño chiles, stemmed and halved
4 cups water
1 clove garlic, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup chopped yellow onion, plus 1 1/2 cups sliced onion
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
One poblano chile, stemmed, seeded, and cut
2 1/2 pounds pork butt or shoulder, trimmed of fat and cut into 3-inch cubes
Corn tortillas, warmed for serving
Chopped white onion, chopped fresh cilantro, salsa of choice, and lime wedges, for serving
In a large pot, combine the tomatillos, jalapeño chiles, and water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, then cover and cook for ten to 15 minutes, until the tomatillos and chiles are soft. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.
Transfer the contents of the pot to a blender. Add the garlic, chopped onion, cilantro, and salt and process until smooth. If your blender is too small to accommodate everything in one batch, puree the ingredients in two batches.
Dry the pot, place it over medium heat, and add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the poblano chiles and sliced onions, and cook, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes, until the onions are soft. Add the pork, pour in the tomatillo and jalapeño mixture, and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer gently for about two hours, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching, until the pork is tender enough to pull apart with forks. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the pork into a bowl with some of its juice. Using a pair of forks, shred the meat into chunky pieces.
Serve with the tortillas, onion, cilantro, salsa, and lime.
Flour Tortillas
6 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 heaping cup vegetable shortening
2 cups warm water, plus a little more if needed
Mix dry ingredients (it is not necessary to sift them), working in shortening with your hands until it’s the consistency of oatmeal. Pour in the lukewarm water, adding it all at once. Mix well and knead for two or three minutes. Dough should be moist but manageable—a little drier than biscuit dough. Coat with a little oil or more soft shortening, and put it into a plastic bag for 20 minutes until dough is soft.
Take a large piece of dough and squeeze out a portion the size of a pingpong ball.
Roll the ball around in the palms of your hands until smooth. It’s best to prepare half the dough in balls while you keep the remaining half in the plastic bag so they don’t dry out.
Using the tips of your fingers, flatten each ball slightly, then roll out with a rolling pin to the size of a saucer.
Heat a griddle, and cook the tortillas like flapjacks until they develop slight brown spots. To avoid scorching, reduce the heat as necessary to maintain an even temperature. The tortilla will puff up slightly as it cooks. Once you have turned a tortilla and completed the cooking cycle on both sides, press down with your spatula for about 30 seconds or more on all edges, so that you produce a flat, golden disk. Do this on both sides.
Cool on a clean dish towel.
How to Make Store-Bought Tortillas Shine
Yes, homemade tortillas are amazing, but they’re not always the most practical thing. Don’t sweat it if you can’t make them. If possible, look for a locally made tortilla, which will definitely be fresher than options from national brands.
That said, most tortillas can be revived by a few minutes of warming on a hot pan. Put it on the griddle or hit skillet and flip it back and forth for about a minute and the tortilla seems to hold together better when you fill it.
If your tortillas seem especially dry, add a small amount of canola oil to the griddle or pan before warming.
Tuna Can Tacos
Chopped onion (Half to one onion is probably about right.)
One can oil-packed tuna, drained
Pickled jalapeños
Handful of chopped herbs of your choosing (Cilantro, basil, or oregano would all work.)
Capers (Optional)
Tortillas
Sauté the onions until they’re translucent. Add the drained tuna and the pickled jalapeños. Cook until warm. Add the chopped herbs and capers and cook another minute or two. Fold the filling into a warm tortilla, and top with your favorite Mexican hot sauce.
Toppings and Fillings
Free your mind of what constitutes a taco filling.
Veggie tacos are a thing, and they are exceptional. If I can advance one, ahem, opinion here, it is that vegetables make incredible taco fillings.
Great vegetables for tacos: zucchini, mushrooms, kale, squash blossoms, potatoes, Swiss chard, huitlacoche (a prized corn fungus), refried black beans, poblanos, butternut squash and pumpkin.
I love griddled steak tacos, too, but you can braise beef shoulder for barbacoa or cure round for cecina. Heck, you can eat tongue, intestines, brains and all kinds of other fun parts of the cow. And that’s just one kind of animal!
Chorizo is the bacon of the taco world; it makes everything taste better, but it needs a partner. A taco with only chorizo is like a cake made entirely out of frosting.
Grilled fish tacos are almost always mushy. Fried fish tacos are great but messy to make on a weeknight. Don’t forget about shrimp tacos.
Adding rice is almost always a terrible idea.
I USE BEEF BOUILLON
Here is a complete shocker for you. I don’t add salt to my taco meat. You won’t find it in my seasoning mix, or anywhere else. There is a really good reason why too. This is where I get to go on and on about my love of all things beef bouillon, or any bouillon for that matter. It wasn’t until College that I realized the genius of this ingredient. Like with salt, start with a little, and add as much as needed for your desired taste. 1 teaspoon per pound of meat is a good starting point.
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Monday, March 18, 2019
Saturday, March 16, 2019
St. Patrick’s Day History And Traditions
This holiday is celebrated every year on March 17th, honoring the Irish patron saint, St. Patrick. The celebrations are largely Irish culture themed and typically consist of wearing green, parades, and drinking. Some churches may hold religious services and many schools and offices close in Suffolk County, the area containing Boston and its suburbs.
People all over the world celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, especially places with large Irish-American communities. Feasting on the day features traditional Irish food, including corned beef, corned cabbage, coffee, soda bread, potatoes, and shepherd’s pie. Many celebrations also hold an Irish breakfast of sausage, black and white pudding, fried eggs, and fried tomatoes.
Common traditions include:
Parades – This event is most often associated with the holiday. Cities that hold large parades include Boston, New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Savannah, and other cities worldwide. Drinking – Since many Catholics are Irish-American, some may be required to fast from drinking during Lent. However, they are allowed to break this fast during the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. This is one cause for the day’s association with drinking heavily.
Dying water or beer green – Chicago dies its river green for the festivities, and many bars serve green-dyed beer. The White House fountain is also dyed green. Other incorporations of green – In Seattle, the parade routes are painted in green. Observers are supposed to wear green or else risk being pinched. Parade floats and decorations will feature the color green.
Religious services – Those who celebrate the holiday in a religious context may also hold a feast. Outside of this context, overindulgence tends to revolve around drinking. Pea planting – In the Northeast, many celebrate by planting peas. This is largely due to the color and time of year (prime pea-planting conditions.
Saint Patrick – The Missionary and Bishop of Ireland St. Patrick, or the “Apostle of Ireland,” actually started out in the pagan religion. While not much is known about his early life, as many of his life’s details were lost to folklore, letters from St. Patrick reveal that he was captured in Wales, Scotland, or another close area outside of Ireland and taken to Ireland as a slave. Years later, he escaped and returned to his family, who were Romans living in Britain, going back to Ireland for mission work after finding a place as a cleric and then Bishop within the Christian faith. He was born around 460, and by the 600s, he was already known as the Patron Saint of Ireland.
There are many legends associated with St. Patrick. The symbol of the shamrock used for St. Patrick’s Day comes from the story of St. Patrick using the shamrock to illustrate the Holy Trinity. The three-leafed plant coincided with the Pagan religion’s sanctity of the number three and is the root of the green color theme. Another popular belief is that St. Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland. The story says that while St. Patrick was fasting, snakes attacked him, so he chased all snakes into the ocean. However, there have never been snakes in Ireland during the post-glacial period. The absence of snakes and symbolism involved with snakes is believed to explain the story, although it could have been referring to the type of worm rather than snakes.
One legend has St. Patrick sticking a walking stick into the ground while evangelizing, which turned into a tree. The History of St. Patrick’s Day and why it’s celebrated. St. Patrick’s Day was first celebrated in America in 1737, organized by the Charitable Irish Society of Boston, including a feast and religious service. This first celebration of the holiday in the colonies was largely to honor and celebrate the Irish culture that so many colonists had been separated from. Early celebrations continued this modest tradition.
In New York, the first celebration took place as a small gathering at the home of an Irish protestant. St. Patrick’s Day parades started in New York in 1762 by a group of Irish soldiers in the British military who marched down Broadway. This began the tradition of a military theme in the parade, as they often feature marching military units.
The holiday eventually evolved from the modest religious dinner into the raucous holiday we know today. Worldwide St. Patrick’s Day Parades and Celebrations Parades and wearing green have always been a traditional part of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, but the events will vary based on the city:
Boston – St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Boston bring over 600,000 visitors to the city, which has a large Irish-American community. The city has one of the largest parades, which many veterans take part in, and events are held in a large number of Irish pubs in the city. The Irish Cultural Centre holds a celebration, and many events feature Irish food, such as corned beef.
New York – New York City is the place of the oldest civilian parade, which boats over 150,000 participants. This may include veterans along with firefighters, policemen, and cultural clubs. It is led New York’s 69th infantry regiment. Another city in New York state, Pearl River, has the second largest parade in the state with crowds of over 100,000. In Buffalo, there are two St. Patrick’s parades. Scranton – This Pennsylvania city’s parade is one of the oldest and largest. Since 1862, this parade has been one of the most popular, with current celebrations attracting around 150,000.
Chicago – The Irish community makes up a large part of Chicago’s celebration. Chicago dyes the Chicago River green and holds the South Side Parade, which has actually had to be scaled back in recent years due to the celebration growing too large for the Irish groups that hold the parade.
New Orleans – This coastal city was the largest point of immigration for the Irish. St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are typically held at the community or neighborhood level.
Ireland – This celebration is more religious in nature, as it is considered a religious feast day. While it was made an official holiday in 1903, the first Saint Patrick’s Festival was held in 1996.
During these recent years, the event has become more cultural and consists of many celebrations in the streets.
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Spring Gardening Tips
Spring Time is My Favorite Time For Gardening!
There may be no greater satisfaction to gardening than watching your spring garden bloom. Sitting back on your lawn and watching your garden shine with a natural and beautiful array of plant life can be a relaxing and stress-relieving process.
There is some skill behind creating and caring for the perfect spring garden that requires patience, love, and attention to detail.
That fun yet hard work is what makes the finished product so rewarding and fulfilling.
Whether you are planning your first garden or have been watching vegetables ripen every spring for as long as you can remember, getting your garden off to a solid start is one of the most important things you can do to ensure success.
Get your soil ready:
Preparing your soil for a spring garden should be done as early as possible. The main process is tilling your garden area around 8 to 12 inches beneath the surface and removing any rocks or debris. The next major step is to add organic matter and fertilizer. One thing you want to avoid is tilling when your soil is too wet. The extra water will hinder plant growth.
Weeding your yard:
Weeds can be a pesky thorn in your side—especially if you let them run wild for most of the winter. Weeding is the boring and tedious work of caring for a garden, but it must be done. Start early, and do a little at a time so you won’t tire yourself out.
Fertilize your garden with coffee grounds:
During the winter, you may have moved some of your shrubs to indoor planters – now’s the time to move them back out again! Using coffee grounds to prep your soil is a great way to save a little money and be a bit more ‘green’ in the process. The grounds are filled with nitrogen, a mineral that aids in vegetable and plant growth. Simply add them to your compost pile or directly into the soil itself.
Use cooking water on your plants:
Watering your plants using leftover cooking water is another great way to add a nutrient boost with the vitamins and minerals left behind after you have boiled some pasta, vegetables, or potatoes. Just be sure to let the water cool down before you feed it to your plants.
Watering your plants with chamomile tea is a great way to help ward off bacterial and fungal infections that come with springtime. Spraying your plants with a chamomile tea mix a few times a week will help stop your seedling from damping off.
Throwing some eggshells in the same hole that you will be planting your vegetables in help your plants avoid “blossom end rot” which is often caused by a calcium deficiency. Just be sure to grind up the eggshells as much as possible.
Garden at night:
Many gardening experts believe that planting at night will help your garden grow faster and stronger than by planting during the day. Planting at night also maximized your water usage. Just be sure that you have the proper lighting to see what you are doing. Since the cold of the winter months might not have completely passed, you should probably wear a sweater, too!
My garden every year has flowers and vegetables. I plant a large number of Plants.
Also over the years, I have added Fruit trees and bushes.
My most favorite thing in the spring is gathering the Morel Mushrooms.
Indoor Vegetable Seed Starting Basics: Seeds, Starting Supplies & Lighting
I will be doing a longer video series called Gardening 101 exclusively on 2nd YT Channel My First Vegetable Garden. It can be searched with a digital table of contents. The series is geared to the first time vegetable gardener. Today’s episode is all about the basics of indoor seed starting. I cover seeds and what GMO, Heirloom, Hybrids, and Organic means, basic seed starting supplies, seed starting mix and out of the box grow-lights. Enjoy!
0:00 Series Introduction 1:30 What are GMO’s Seeds 2:33 What are Heirloom Seeds 3:30 What are Organic Seeds 4:56 What are Hybrid Seeds 6:44 Pressed Peat Moss Seed Starting Cells – ‘I don’t like them’ 7:47 Basic Plastic Seed Starting Cells 9:30 Basic Seed Starting Mix Tips 10:50 Boiling Water to Stop Fungus Gnats 11:22 Water Trays and Bottom Watering 14:17 Basics on Cool Weather and Warm Weather Crops 15:30 Grow Light Basics – Lumens & Kelvin Ratings
Here is Episode 2 of Gardening 101: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uxsa…
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Friday, March 15, 2019
PEANUT BUTTER NOODLES RECIPES
Peanut Butter Noodles are the answer if you are looking… Continue reading
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