This is my amazing
oak fermenting barrel
You can use them to ferment vegetables
but this one is reserved for my wine making.
So you use it for the primary fermentation
That's when the wine and the water and the yeast
and all the ingredients are all on with the plant matter, with the flower or the fruit.
This one is making me a lavender flower wine.
Come and have a look!
The barrel comes with an oak press which helps to keep the
vegetation submerged.
Actually I've been coming along
twice a day
and just on just mixing
through just to be sure that
nothing
dries out or starts to go mouldy.
Can you see how active the wine is in here?
with all the gas bubbles coming to
the surface.
Ahhh. That is divine!
Even at 7 days old, this lavender, in the oak barrel
has totally transformed. It doesn't have that really
sharp lavender knock-you-out aroma.
It has mellowed. It has sweetened ...
You can smell the forest. You're getting the infusion from the oak.
And this is the traditional way of brewing wine in Northern Europe,
using an oak barrel.
I can well understand because the oak actually adds health properties; It helps to protect the wine,
and it adds a nice tannin flavour
to the wine as well.
So, I'm now going to separate the plant matter from the 'wine must'
and we'll get this 'must'
into the demijohns
for the second fermentation.
Even though these barrels  are really well made; they're kind of heavy when they're empty,
with the wine in them, they are still easy to handle.
That's the beauty of a barrel. Just give it a hug, or pick it up like you would a child.
So here we go!
Just let that drain.
I'm not going to press that through.
You can see here that is the lavender flowers
which I started with. I used figs
as a yeast nutrient, Had some yeast
in there and some sugar and some lemon.
So I had everything on hand
with just picking the lavender flowers.
So, let's have a look.
There may not be two gallons of liquid there but don't worry
we have a solution. We'll put this evenly into
two demijohns
and top up with water from the clay amphora
if we need to do that. I put fresh tap water in here this morning
and it's been conditioning all day. So that will be fine.
You'll see that the yeast will be very happy
to have a top up of water from the amphora.
So I am going to rearrange the equipment, to make everything easy
and to avoid mess.
So let's get the wine must
evenly between two demijohns
So remember, I've been working with a 10 L barrel.
The barrel wasn't exactly full
and some of the space was taken up with the flowers and so on.
But we'll divide it between 2 demijohns
It will give us a strong wine, and as I say we will be topping up the demijohns with
with water as needed.
 
 
That's about half and half.
Now we want our conditioned water.
this
Don't worry if it is slightly overfull becuase actually tiny fragments
of lavender flower will float up to the surface and we don't really want those in there.
so I just lot those float up and
tip the rest of that water out and then we'll fit the airlock.
So we're setting out to make a totally
chemical free wine.
that's amazingly healthy for you.
And in my opinion, the oak barrel is an important part of the process.
because instead of your beautiful
organic flowers
sitting in a plastic tub for 7 days, they are being nurtured in an oak vessel
 
We'll pop back and watch this wine on the go.
And I am afraid that we're going to have to wait 9 months or so for the tasting.
I will do a grand wine tasting for you.
Hopefully, you will have made your own
and we'll be able to do a testing and tasting together!
Marvelous!
