Degassing Wine & Other Thoughts
I’m not sure where my head is tonight. Or where it was when I visited Andrews Scenic Acres and purchased some fruit, including black currants back in October. Tonight, I did some grocery shopping and am positive I put bacon into the shopping cart. When I got home, there was no sign of any bacon.
Later on, I decided I was a tad hungry, and thought I’d open a can of French Canadian style pea soup. Put it on the burner on medium, and then got distracted.. and started writing an article. About 45 minutes later, I smelled something. “Has someone left something on the stove?” I thought to myself. It didn’t even click in that it was ME that had left something on the stove. Went to the kitchen where I was met with burned pea soup. Guess I wasn’t that hungry after all.
I checked my freezer tonight. In October, I drove to Andrews Scenic Acres specifically to buy their frozen black currants. I bought about twelve pounds. I’m sure of it. I also bought gooseberries and elderberries for wine. But it was the black currants I was after. But in my freezer, I can only find 4 lbs of black currants, and many more pounds of gooseberries. Makes no sense. 4 lbs of black currants is not nearly enough to do what I was planning on doing. Perhaps I got confused while rummaging around the freezers at Andrews Acres.
Or perhaps a certain redhead is rubbing off on me! I write that with a little smile on my face. But anyhow…
One of the things I’ve been noticing is that many folk are looking for information on degassing wine. So while my pea soup was burning, I wrote some of my thoughts on degassing wine and how most wine kits don’t provide the best instructions for this very important step of the wine making process, especially if you are hoping to bottle wine in 4 to 8 weeks. You can read it here. I hope you find it helpful.
Getting back to the black currants: After double checking and being almost 80% sure that there are no more black currants in the freezer other than what I found (I suppose it could be under side of beef I put in there, but I don’t think so), I may have sourced an even better supply of black currants! I did some checking, and the cost is much better than what I’ve been getting at Andrew’s Scenic Acres. If things work out, I’ll tell you more about that shortly. How does 20 lb pails for $25.00 sound? Before I tell you where, I need to make sure they are excellent quality – and if so, that this guy will reserve some for me every year before he sells out of them to you!
I really enjoy black currant wine, and one of the things I wanted to do was have a good quantity on hand to do some experimentation as well as duplicate the last batch I made which turned out heavenly.