Elderberry Wine and Prosciutto

Sounds very fancy doesn't it? Well I finally got around to picking my elderberries, in the rain, nothing fancy about that. I had already picked some blackberries last week and put them in the freezer. So I took them out last night and this morning I got down to making some elderberry wine and some blackberry wine.

The kitchen takeover

I got my recipe from Andy Hamilton's "Booze for Free." His recipe is for a blend of elderberry and blackberry wine. I decided to make two separate batches to try them on their own and blended together. The recipe is as follows:

2kg of elderberries/blackberries
1.5kg of sugar
4litres of water
Juice of one lemon
1tsp of pectolase
1 Campden tablet
1tsp of yeast nutrient
sachet of red wine yeast

I started the yeast with the yeast nutrient and some sugar in a cup of warm water to get it started. I then added the berries to the fermentation bin and mashed them with a potato masher to get some juice out. Then added the sugar and 1 litre of boiling water and stirred until the sugar dissolved. I then added the remaining ingredients and the yeast mixture. I also added a cup of strong tea to the blackberry mixture. This increases the tannins in the wine, but is not needed in the elderberry wine as there is already plenty of tannin present.

The yeast, sugar and yeast nutrient mixture

The blackberry wine in the fermentation bin

I then set the two fermentation bins beside a radiator to ferment. I put the lid loosely fitting on one and a tea towel over the over because it doesn't have a lid, or at least I can't find it. I put them there at about midday today and I have just checked them now at 7pm, no bubbles yet but there is a distinctive "homebrew smell" in the room. Hopefully there will be some fermentation signs in the morning. I will post another blog with more information when I am going to rack the wine into demijohns and post a link here.

EDIT: Here is the link to the update on the wines

All set for the yeast to do it's stuff

My next job of the morning was one I have been meaning to do for almost a year. When we got the pigs killed and butchered last year I set aside a half leg of pork to make prosciutto (or Parma ham). We got the pigs back from the butchers just before Christmas and I didn't have time to cure and hang the leg of pork. Then the summer came along and I didn't want to hang meat in the hot weather. It now looks like any risk of hot weather has passed for the year so I finally got around to it. I got my recipe from Michael Ruhlman's great book "Charcuterie; The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing." It is a relatively simple recipe. It involves rubbing as much salt as necessary into the meat. I used about a kilo of salt. It was enough to get it all well covered in salt, concentrating on the parts where the flesh was exposed and rubbing some into the skin. I then placed the leg into a plastic container.

The salted leg of pork

The recipe says the it needs to be left in the salt for 1 day per 500g. My half leg of pork was a little under 3kg so it should be ready to come out in about 6 days. It says to keep an eye on it, remove liquid that comes from the meat and reapply salt as necessary. The recipe was for a full leg of pork, 6 or 7 kilos, so I will have to play it by ear a little with the timing I think. It also said it needs to be weighted with about 5 kilos on top of the leg. I don't know if this is related to the size of the leg or not but I have knocked together a weight on top of the leg in the fridge as you can see below.

When this comes out from the fridge in about a week it needs to be hung for a few months to air dry. The ideal location is 15 deg C and 60-70% humidity. I am thinking of hanging it in a cold room in the house which should be something close to those conditions. **here is the update on the prosciutto**

Yesterday I planted out a few potatoes that we saved from our early potatoes this year. They have gone into large pots in the polytunnel so hopefully we should have some fresh potatoes for Christmas dinner. I have never tried this before so I don't know it will work and it is probably fairly weather dependant. I have also started work on building my cider press. I have taken a few photos so far and the plan is to have a post about the cider press being built. Of course if the press doesn't work I will deny that I ever attempted to build one. But hopefully I will have it built by the weekend and the post up Sunday or Monday.

Until then.