Tomatoes, Pears and Wine

First and second major canning of tomatoes, Kathleen has been canning diced and whole tomatoes, as well as tomato juice.

Daddy and Seppi have been drying tomatoes.

Seppi likes to add leaves from his pet basil plant to the tray when we start it. (His pet basil plant’s name is “Basil.”)

It’s amazing how five pounds of tomatoes can dry into five ounces of tomato slices.

We picked pears at Dude’s house on Friday the 28th and canned them on Friday the 4th (can you spot the one that didn’t seal?)

A whole bunch of bottles and demijohns ready for racking off.

More wine making. The science lessons continue.

We figured out a great way not to use the hygrometer.

Don’t run it under the insta-hot to sanitize it. It softens the plastic enough that it changes the volume of the air bulb and permanently ruins the calibration.

So we don’t know what the specific gravity of this elderberry wine is. We just know that the fermentation slowed down, and there was a strong layer of lees at the bottom. So we just moved it to secondary fermentation.

Color is good, but not clear. Once we put this back down in the basement it started up fermenting quite rapidly again. We’ll get a new hydrometer and check it before we rack it off into bottles.