Coffee Wine

While shoveling snow from a recent storm I piled some on top of the garden bed that grows mint in my yard.  Maybe this will give it an extra cool taste this year.  It's certainly leaving me feeling cool right now.

I'm thinking about this because I have discovered a mint wine recipe:
http://pixiespocket.com/2015/06/recipe-box-one-gallon-mint-wine.html#comment-37062

I definitely want to experiment with this during the Summer.  I am having fun experimenting with different wine recipes, changing the recipe a little as I go until I find that I really like it.  Right now I have this coffee wine brewing.  It's basically a cold brewed iced coffee that should end up around 10 - 12 % abv.  Here you can see me stirring the coffee grounds as it was brewing the coffee:

Stirring the Coffee

I have made 1 gallon and it's fermenting now.  I have a friend who has challenged me to make a gluten free beer, so I need to get moving on that.  There is also a bucket of 11 lbs of honey and two sugar pumpkins waiting for me to make some mead with, all while this coffee wine is fermenting.

Thank you for taking the time to check out my brewing projects here; I will be publishing updates as these projects move along.

Check out Pixie's Pocket on Google+ or on the web for some 1 gallon wine and mead recipes:
http://pixiespocket.com/one-gallon-mead-recipes

Updates

 Sometimes things in the fermenting business are quiet except for the sound of an air lock.  I have some ideas brewing in my mind, like a coffee stout.  For the moment all is quiet.  Last night I racked the concord wine for the second time.  I lost a lot of volume the last time I racked it because the amount of yeast sediment from the champagne yeast was so much.  If I placed the auto siphon the bottom of the carboy it was below the yeast cake.  I held on to the auto siphon to keep it above the yeast and it's clearing up nicely. It started out with a gravity of 1.100 and it is now 1.000; the champagne yeast is very aggressive.  I was told this would help with removing some of the musty flavors of the concord grapes.

  I wonder if blending the concord grapes with some frozen Welches grape juice might help with that as well.  I'm not sure I like using the champagne yeast but time will tell.  According to some things I've read from Jack Keller, a red wine like this needs to age 2 years in the bottle.  

 The dandelion wine has been in the bottle for a while now.  I did notice a tiny amount of sediment in one of the bottles yesterday, but it was very small compared to the first time I tried a dandelion wine.

 Now I'm looking at the sugar pumpkins I have and thinking about a pumpkin wine, maybe for next Thanksgiving.  Cheers to you.