The story I linked to here last week about the kid who rode his bike around Cali for 2 months and lived off of volunteer fruits and wine that he made in his pannier as he rode got me inspired…
I liked his descriptions after a hot day of riding of chugging the “best tasting, most refreshing grog” that he’d made a couple days earlier from grape juice he handsqueezed into a bottle in his pack. Simple, no?
I’m not one to stand on fanciness. If a “grog” tastes refreshing, I don’t care about its pedigree. I’m ecumenical, I guess.
So I’m trying the same thing.
I’ve made my own wines and beers before. It’s mostly been good. Really good.
I planted a little $1 hop vine last year so now I’ll have hops the rest of my life (and could even build a house from their bulk or something). They smell nice anyway. But one only needs about 100th of what’ll grow.
My first batch of homemade wine I made quite formally last year. It’s said to taste like skins—I mighta left the skins in too long. But it might also just be too dry—I didn’t add any sugar. Or, ya know, maybe I just should’ve drunk it right away while it still had a simple fresh fruit taste. I’ve had the young Gruner Veltliner wine they make every late summer in the hills of Vienna. I can take a young wine just fine.
So I’m ready to go simple the easiest route possible. At least for a test.
I’m making a gallon of wine from red grapes of some kind from my bro’s farm. And I’m making a small jug of hard cider from apples we pressed last weekend. No sugar added, no nuttin’.
I’m just putting the juice into clean gallon jugs plus a little foamed-up bread yeast, leaving a good gap at the top, leaving the caps loose, setting them in a tray and seeing what happens.
Here’s a couple websites where I got info and encouragement along this “do nothing” path:
