• 3 lbs mesquite bean pieces previously used to make wine
• 6 cups water
• 4-1/2 cups sugar
• 3 tblsp lemon juice
• package of pectin

Add water to bean pod pieces and simmer one hour, mashing the pieces as possible with a potato masher during the simmering time. Strain off liquid and measure. Either simmer longer to reduce quantity to 4 cups or add water to make 4 cups. Stir in sugar and lemon juice. When thoroughly dissolved, add pectin according to the directions that came with it. I cannot predict which pectin you use so cannot say what adjustments you might have to make, but I had to mix a powdered pectin with 3/4 cup of water, bring it to a boil, add an additional 1/2 cup of sugar to the mesquite- water mixture, add the pectin, and bring it to a 3-minute boil. It set up beautifully and is a most delicious jelly.

• Using Your Hydrometer, the page in question
• Mesquite Bean Wine, my other recipe
• Mesquite Bean Wine, my site, but Dorothy Alatorre's recipe

I must apologize to all for the long absence. Some of you knew already that I am originally from Louisiana and have family members concentrated on both sides of the state. Hurricane Katrina roared through east Louisiana and Mississippi and relocated many of them -- mostly into Texas. The news has covered Katrina well -- too well, perhaps, but at least we can say well.

Then Hurricane Rita swept through western Louisiana and scattered many more of my extended family across three states -- and tens of thousands of others, as well. From Cameron, LA to Port Arthur, TX, on the Gulf, up past Leesville, LA to Jasper, TX, the Texas-Louisiana border region is in shambles. Most communities in that belt still do not have electricity, natural gas, water, sewer, gasoline, produce or refrigerated foods, or any retail outlets or services requiring electric power.

The news media has burnt out on this story. It was not as spectacular a storm as Katrina (although certainly it was more powerful a cyclonic storm) and no major city was devastated, so they tired of it and went home. But in a belt 90 miles wide and at least 200 miles long, hundreds of thousands of trees fell across roads, driveways, homes, automobiles, power lines, telephone lines, businesses, and everything in between. People are hurting for basic essentials, but I have not seen any major private, non-profit or corporate fund-raising efforts for these victims -- although this very morning in Wal-Mart I saw a collection box for Hurricane Katrina victims. The victims of Rita are not only already forgotten, they were not really ever recognized except in those few towns the news media chose to broadcast from. There are no collection boxes for Rita's victims.

During this period the President signed the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) recommendations and life at work got more complicated. My base will shed itself of its military components and my unit will move to Fort Sam Houston, TX. Someone has to represent the moving units in this process and see that adequate facilities are built and services provided at the gaining installation. For my unit, I am that person. There is a lot to do.

So, my attention has been elsewhere. I apologize for this, but hope you will understand. If you sent me an email recently asking for help or advice, be patient. It's all I can do to rack my wines on schedule.

A little over a week ago I received a phone call from a winemaker in Winnie, Texas -- west of Beaumont. He said his airlock had been positive, passing CO2 bubbles intermittently from within the carboy to the outside, which was normal. He noted this Thursday evening, but about an hour later it had backed up, meaning the liquid in his "S"-type airlock reversed itself and was rising toward the inside of the airlock. Whenever this had happened before, his fermentation was finished, but this time bubbles were still being forced down through the liquid and out, a very strange occurrence. Then, Friday morning, it had reversed again. What, he asked, was going on?

I told him simply, "You're about to get a hurricane. The airlock was normal, but then the high pressure system that was keeping Rita in the Gulf of Mexico got compressed by the sheer force of the storm and that pushed the liquid down and toward the junction with the carboy. Overnight, the high pressure system moved away and the liquid reversed itself again under the influence of approaching storm. He thought that was cool. As we talked, I watched The Weather Channel display the anticipated track of Rita. I suggested he join the traffic jam heading west. I don't know if he did or not.

Back in April I noted I was relaxing with a glass of semi-sweet orange wine. A reader wrote recently to ask for the recipe, which I provided him. This wine took a first place in the Fruit Wines (Dry) category at the San Antonio Regional Wine Guild's 2005 Spring Competition, so it is pretty decent.

• 6 lbs. very ripe or over-ripe oranges
• 1 11-oz can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 1-1/2 lb Turbinado Sugar (do not substitute brown sugar)
• water to make up a gallon
• 1/8 tsp grape tannin
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• wine yeast

Put two quarts of water on to boil. Meanwhile, peel the oranges and remove any brown spots and all the white pith (it is bitter and will ruin the wine). Break the oranges into sections and remove all seeds (very important). Drop them in a juicer or a blender and liquefy (you may have to add a cup of water to the blender). Mix the juice or liquefied oranges with the sugar, tannin and yeast nutrient in primary. Add boiling water and stir well to dissolve the sugar. Add grape concentrate and additional water to make one gallon total must. Cover and set aside to cool. When cooled to room temperature, add yeast. Ferment 7-10 days and strain through a fine-meshed nylon straining bag, squeezing to extract juice from pulp. Transfer to secondary, top up if required and fit airlock. Rack every 30 days until not even a light dusting of lees settles on the bottom between rackings (3-4 times). Stabilize and sweeten to a specific gravity of 1.006. Wait 3 weeks to ensure fermentation does not restart and rack into bottles. Age (very important) 6 months to a year before tasting. We drank a 2-year old bottle recently that was to die for. [Author's own recipe]

• Orange Wines, two other recipes
• NOAA Hurricane Katrina Images, click on map marked "Index Maps"
• NOAA Hurricane Rita Images, click on map marked "Index Maps"

I have a ton of email to get to, but wanted to hit a few subjects here before I start on that -- which I may not get to today anyway. As I said in a previous post, life is full. I have 41 wines under airlock and two batches of venison jerky in the dehydrator. There is no correlation between the two, although venison jerky and dry red wine go together pretty well.

Speaking of the dehydrator, I have a friend who takes all his second harvest wine grapes (those that were not quite ripe when he picked the bulk of the crop) and dries them out in a dehydrator. He then vacuum seals them and labels them for later use. As food raisins, they are not enjoyable because they have seeds, but as varietals for winter and spring winemaking projects they are exceptional. He gave me 1.5 pounds of Zinfandel raisins and they were used right away in two wines.

There are several things to say about using raisins:

• They are generally about 60-70% sugar -- use 65% as the average. If you use 1/2 pound per gallon of wine to give the wine body, you are adding a little over 5 ounces of sugar (about 2% potential alcohol) to the must, so plan accordingly.
• Even though grapes are usually dipped in sulfite solution and ascorbic acid before being dried into raisins, they still oxidize to some degree. This gives pure raisin wine its sherry-like flavor and does affect the flavor of every wine raisins are used in. Just be aware of it.
• Varietal raisins cannot be minced or chopped because the seeds will break and flavor the wine adversely. Buy some seeded grapes and eat them, chewing the seeds and all. If you like the flavor, then go ahead and mince the varietal raisins. It is far better to put them in a bowl and pour hot (boiling is okay) water over them and let them sit and rehydrate. The plumped up raisins can then be easily crushed.
• Commercial golden raisins can be rehydrated and then minced far easier than just mincing the dried fruit. That meat grinding attachment to your food processor is perfect for mincing (and not nearly as messy) after the raisins have soaked a while.
• When making varietal raisins, be sure to wash them, destem them, dip in sulfite solution, and then thoroughly dehydrate them. They will go moldy if you don't. You can add ascorbic acid to the sulfite solution to help prevent oxidation, but you must realize there will still be some oxidation anyway.
• Varietal raisins offer country winemakers a great deal of added diversity in their winemaking. I added 1/2 pound of Zinfandel raisins to my last batch of plum wine and it gave it body and a new dimension of fruitiness. I have some Blanc du Bois raisins I will use in a dandelion batch next spring. I could just as easily used hem in an apple wine I'm making now.

Prickly pear cactus fruit (called "tunas") are ripening in my area, so it is natural people are inquiring about making wine from and harvesting them. The wine can be one of the most beautiful wines one will ever encounter -- a deep, iridescent magenta -- but is an acquired taste. Further, if you are allergic to beets (approximately 1% of the population is), you will also be allergic to prickly pear wine, as it is a specific pigment in both that is the problem. However, for those of us who can drink it and acquire the taste, it is a most enjoyable wine. As a bonus, four ounces of the wine with an ounce of tequila makes a wonderful (but powerful) drink.

There are many ways to pick (harvest) the tunas. How you do it will depend on the means you have available or a personal preference.

I use long metal tongs and a long bladed fillet knife. The tongs are necessary because the tunas possess clusters of very small by annoying spines. The tunas should be dark purple or dark red. There are some varieties that turn yellow when ripe, but I have never seen them in South Texas. The deep color indicates ripeness. Grab one with the tongs and if it is really ripe it will practically fall off. If it doesn't fall off or break off and you are certain it is ripe, cut it off with the knife. I use a bucket to collect them, as the only time I used a plastic bag we ended up with millions of very fine spines in the trunk of the car that stuck to everything we put in it thereafter.

Most people burn off the spines. They are very fine -- only 1/16 to 3/16 of an inch long -- and grow in small clumps that burn easily. Some people use a propane torch, while others bring them home and use a propane barbecue grill -- lay them on the grill, turn the fire on high enough to burn the spines, and turn the tunas several times to burn off the spines all around. Do not "cook" them.

I don't burn the spines off because I don't have a propane torch or grill. I hold them with the tongs and cut the top off, then hold them upright on a wooden cutting board and use the fillet knife to thinly cut the skin off them with narrow downward slices. Then they get a quick wash, get chopped up and go into the primary. If you burn the spines off, you don't need to peel them -- just chop.

Yet another way (I used this method for years) is to put the tunas in a large crock or pail and then pour one gallon of boiling water over them. Wait two minutes (to loosen their skin) and drain off the water. Allow the fruit to cool and use the tongs and knife to carefully peel the skin off.

• 5-6 lb. prickly pear fruit
• 2 lb. granulated sugar
• 1 tsp. acid blend
• 1/2 tsp. pectic enzyme
• 1 gallon water
• 1 tsp. yeast nutrient
• wine yeast

Remove spines from fruit using one of the methods discussed above. Cut fruit into pieces not larger than one inch, put in pot, add 1/2 gallon water, bring to boil. Reduce heat to maintain gentle boil for 15 minutes. Cover pot and allow to cool to luke warm. Pour fruit and juice into large nylon grain-bag (fine mesh) or sieve and squeeze juice into primary fermentation vessel. Discard pulp. To juice, add sugar, acid blend, pectic enzyme, and yeast nutrient. Stir to dissolve sugar and additives. Cover well and set aside for 10-12 hours. Add yeast and set aside in warm place for seven days, stirring daily. Siphon off lees into secondary fermentation vessel, top up with water, fit airlock, and let stand three weeks. Rack and top up, then rack again in two months. Allow to clear, rack again if necessary, and bottle. May taste after one year, but improves with age. [Author's own recipe.]

• Prickly Pear Cactus Wine, another recipe

In plowing through the ton of email backed up on me I ran across some very good questions which, in turn, prompted me to answer as I could. I'll try to address a few of them here as I have time, but first I need to address a problem that has surfaced.

Spam is not just a creeping problem, it is an epidemic. There are many strategies for combating spam, but Earthlink users are more and more opting to use a service that requires the sender to log into a webmail site and register to send them email. They then "preapprove" the sender and add them to a list of approved senders. While I admire this approach to combating spam, I cannot subscribe to it.

Let me explain. The computer I use to answer emails pertaining to my web site or WineBlog is behind a double firewall. The security I enjoy on this machine is non- negotiable; I cannot turn it on and off, and it will not connect to the Earthlink webmail site. Indeed, it will not log into any webmail site. This is a security feature designed to protect a very large network against computer viruses, worms and trojan horses, which can bypass email antivirus protection by coming in over webmail.

As a result, I cannot get placed on your preapproved senders lists and my answers to your questions end up being killed by Earthlink. I wasted at least an hour yesterday answering four emails which were so killed. I have very little time to answer emails as it is, so I really resent wasting what little time I have writing answers that will never be read. So I have had to adopt a new rule:

If you are an Earthlink user and use this extreme anti-spam measure, then put me on your preapproved senders list yourself, before you write to me, or don't bother writing. You're asking me for advice or information, so either allow me to answer you or ask someone else.

I received two different but similar questions pertaining to the shelf life of wines. One concerned sugar and the other concerned acidity. One wanted to know why an expert had written that very dry wines had a short shelf life, while the other wanted to know why I had written that low acid wines also had a short shelf life. The answers are self-supporting.

The shelf life of wines -- that is, their ability to retain their freshness and drinkability while aging and growing more complex -- is determined by the preservative elements they contain. Primarily, these preservatives are alcohol, acid and sugar, although tannins also have lesser preservative qualities. The final preservative found in most wines is sulfur dioxide, which is usually introduced by the winemaker.

Alcohol has long been known as a preservative. Most winemaking books include a statement about alcohol preservation, such as, "Wines containing 12% alcohol by volume are self-preserving." Actually, the number is lower than that, but the point is made.

Sugar has also long been known as a preservative -- jams and jellies have very long lives until exposed to air. In wine, off-dry or semi-sweet wines generally have longer shelf lives than dry wines, while sweet ports, sherries and other dessert wines enjoy even longer potential lives.

Acidity as a preservative actually refers to its ability to deter spoilage bacteria. In wine, both alcohol and acidity work in concert to this end. Acetobacter aceti and related species that convert ethanol to acetic acid in the presence of air are unaffected by either alcohol or acids in wines, but are stopped cold by aseptic levels of sulfur dioxide.

A woman wrote to me about using POM-brand pomegranate juice to make wine with. She said, "The juice is pricey, but I think it might still be more economical than the 30-45 pomegranates a person would need for a 3 gallon batch." She essentially wanted to know how many pomegranates each bottle of POM represented. I had seen the juice in several supermarkets, but really had no idea what the answer to her question was. I basically told here this. Some time later she informed me she had written to the POM Company's customer service and they had responded: "Each 16 oz bottle contains the juice of approximately five crushed pomegranates. Thus, one 8-ounce serving would contain the juice of 2.5 pomegranates."

Based on this information, she then proposed a recipe for a 3-gallon batch. I made a few comments and that was that. I intend to make wine from this juice just to know it better. After I have done so, I will publish the recipe. However, if you want to get a head start on me, sources of the juice and an alternative concentrate are linked below.

In a forum discussion at WinePress.US, a winemaker noted he had an orange wine that had lots of air bubbles in it when he tried to take a hydrometer reading. Indeed, when he inserted a rod into it to degas it, an eruption of bubbles came up and caused an overflow out of the secondary. He would wait a while and attempt to degas it again, only to have another eruption of bubbles. It did not seem to him that any headway was being gained on the gas problem. The gas was undoubtedly CO2 which is usually produced in wine by either alcohol fermentation or malolactic fermentation (MLF). Various opinions were offered, including a hunch that MLF was occurring. I saw it quite differently.

I didn't think it was MLF. MLF is a bacterial fermentation in which very specialized organisms process malic acid into lactic acid. MLF can occur naturally if (1) the must contains malic acid in the first place, (2) the MLF bacteria was present on the grapes or other ingredients that went into the wine, and (3) the must is not sulfited beyond a certain point prior to MLF starting. But there wasn't any malic acid in the recipe (my Orange Wine [2] recipe) except what was in the raisins specified in the recipe, and that would not be enough to produce as much gas as was reported. Also, it was very unlikely that any ML bacteria came into the must through the orange juice, raisins or boiled banana slices the recipe called for. To rephrase Sherlock Holmes, if we eliminate the possible, the explanation must reside in what is left. I think it was just CO2 produced by the yeast during the later stages of alcohol fermentation.

I asked the winemaker if he was using a cylinder-type airlock or S-type bubbler? If a cylinder-type, I would guess it was over-filled (has too much water in it -- it should be filled to the line in the middle and then the inner cup inserted and the cap snapped on). If the S-type, I would again bet it was overfilled for the conditions. The wine is obviously still fermenting, although at a very slow rate. If fermentation slows so dramatically that the CO2 being produced doesn't create enough pressure to move the water in the airlock, the CO2 will be absorbed into the wine. I recommended he pour all of the water out of the S-type airlock except just enough to barely seal the bottom "U" and see it this doesn't allow bubbles to escape. Also, I recommended stabilizing the wine now so that fermentation indeed stops altogether in a few weeks. Then he can degas the wine once and for all.

If the must has been sulfited to an aseptic level -- a level sufficient to kill the various bacteria winemakers are likely to encounter -- spontaneous (i.e. natural) MLF will not occur. A sulfited must can decline from 70 ppm SO2 to 15 ppm during fermentation and then undergo MLF, but only if you inoculate it with the MLF culture. The 70 ppm high will have effectively killed any wild MLF bacteria in the must unless the must had a dangerously high pH to begin with (3.8 to 4.0, for example), in which cases a much higher dose of SO2 was needed to create an aseptic environment.

In the normal scheme of things, MLF is not all that dramatic an event unless you happen to be a molecule of malic acid that gets consumed by the bacteria and turned into a molecule of lactic acid. In grapes, excluding "late harvest" grapes and certain predominately sub- temperate varieties that have little malic acid anyway, an MLF in the bottle will produce just enough fizz to let you know the wine is no longer perfectly still -- not enough to warrant Champagne flutes as the winemaker described. The same applies even more to an MLF in a secondary, where an airlock can at least offer an escape route for the CO2.

On the other hand, an apple or blackberry or other exclusively malic fruit that undergoes MLF can produce a noticeable amount of gas, but nothing like the winemaker described and rarely ever enough to raise a cork should it occur in the bottle. The affect on TA and pH is slight except in wholly malic wines and is most useful in grape wines where a slight malic edge needs to be honed. It has little affect on grape wines with jagged edges, as these are usually caused by too much tartaric acid.

I consider these observations important because far too many novice (and even experienced) winemakers are talking about spontaneous MLF occurring under conditions in which it should not. If you analyze the must -- that is, the sum of all the ingredients that went into it -- and its history (it was boiled, or made from concentrate, or aseptically sulfited with Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite), one can readily determine if natural MLF is even possible. When it isn't possible, then it almost certainly did not occur.

A winemaker asked me for a conversion factor for sugar, volume to weight. This is quite simple. Using U.S. measures, two level cups of finely granulated refined sugar weighs one pound. Thus, eight ounces of the same weighs 1/2 pound, and one dry ounce (volume) equates to one ounce by weight.

Two pounds of refined sugar dissolved in one U.S. gallon of water has a specific gravity of 1.090. Thus, one pound of refined sugar dissolved in one U.S. gallon of water has a specific gravity of 1.045.

I specified finely granulated refined sugar for a reason. This sugar is fine enough that the measures given above work out perfectly. If regular granulated refined sugar is used, the air spaces between the gains of crystal are ever so slightly larger and the volume changes. I use two level cups plus 3/4 teaspoon of regular granulated refined sugar to measure one pound volumetrically. In truth, I rarely ever use the regular grind of sugar, even though it is usually a few pennies cheaper per pound -- even more if it is beet sugar rather than cane sugar. It is simply easier and faster to dissolve the finely granulated sugar than the coarser "regular" grind. And the volume measures work out evenly, as was already said.

• WinePress.US Forums, an index of winemaking forums (I usually visit General Wine Making)
• Sugars in Winemaking, more on sugars

I racked, degassed and stabilized some wines today, moving them further along the path to bottling. I don't taste all of my wines when racking, but occassionally I taste a wine I've never made before to see where it is balance-wise. One of them today lacked tannin, and while I could have simply added powdered grape tannin, instead I added two tablespoons of dried elderberries to also increase its fruitiness.