Racking Strawberry Wine

Hot Summer Week. Good thing there's lots of berry farms to go picking at on the weekend. Today we headed out to Blueridge Farm in Western Wisconsin to pick some blueberries. Then off to the Garden Diva for raspberries. They didn't weigh us when we went in or left, so we weren't charged for anything we ate. My shirt was stained with blueberries when I left..guilty as charged.

Earlier in the summer we picked some fresh strawberries..You can see the result of that in the glass carboy next to the blueberries and raspberries. We're looking forward to some strawberry wine this winter if all goes well.

Today I spent about 30 minutes racking the wine from one container, (a five gallon glass carboy) into another container. Right now we're working on the wine's clarity. By transferring the wine from container to container over a the course of a month, I'll be able to allow much of the particulate to settle to the bottom and with each siphoning make the wine just a little clearer.

All you need is a bit of plastic tubing and a racking cane. I have tried to do the mouth siphon technique..and failed. So i fill the plastic tubing with some of the sanitized water and then plug it up and hook it on to the racking cane. That was enough to get the siphoning started.

We'll let the wine sit for another week, probably rack it one more time and bottle it. We'll crack a bottle in six months I imagine..January. Who knows what the world outside will look like then.