28 Gallons

We now have about 28 gallons of wine in various stages, demijohns and buckets all over the place.

Our Carafe 21 Kits will be ready this weekend. They're supposed to be ready in 21 days, providing a temperature of 25C is maintained. It's been a fair bit lower, so the wine has taken longer. The SG is now below 1000, so we added the fermentation stopper yesterday. We need to stir it for a couple of days, then syphon it off and add the finings in 2 days time. The wine should be drinkable by Saturday so we'll need to get 60 bottles ready.

The next wines that should be ready are the first 2 raspberry wines. They've been in demijohns for 6 weeks now and we're still seeing the occasional blip in the airlocks. Again, temperatures have been lower than ideal, so it's taken longer. On the plus side, as we have the Carafe 21 Kits we're not in any major hurry. However, the sooner they're ready, the sooner we'll have more demijohns and airlocks ready for the next batch.

The elderflower tree at the bottom of the garden has over 100 bunches of flowers so we'll pick some today. We spotted a few elderflower / elderberry bushes / trees on the common yesterday, but it really was only a few. The mother-in-law has a big elderberry tree in her garden, so we'll have some flowers or berries off that too. Ideally we want to get the flowers wherever we find them and get the berries from our garden.

We still have some plums and gooseberries from last year in the freezer. We'll turn these into wine when we get a chance. It's only a case of space for the buckets and getting the old demijohns cleaned out properly - many are still filthy inside and not coming clean easily.

The gooseberries in the garden are packed with fruit so we'll have loads more to turn into wine. From what I've read, gooseberry wine should stay in the demijohns for several months. If they're being used for one type of wine, they can't be used for other types. Luckily we have about 36 demijohns, so hopefully we won't run out of demijohns.

Raspberries and loganberries in the garden are doing well too. Should have a pretty good haul from these. Our new blackcurrant bush has some fruit, the red and white currants are growing, but not fruiting. Our first grape vine has started growing.

We've found loads of cherry plum trees out in the local streets, including our own street. We should get a massive haul of free fruit from these this year. I must look up to find out if they're good for wine - fingers crossed that they are!

We've been on the lookout for other free fruits and berries to pick from the common, in particular we'd like to find sloes. There are loads of brambles and a few elderberry trees, but no luck on the sloes or anything else.

I'd better get cracking on other things now ....