...not by beer alone

Man can not live by beer alone, try as we may, there are many other things that deserve our attention.  In what I hope to make a regular feature for School Master, "...not by beer alone", we will take a look at things outside of brewing.

This is our first attempt at wine, "Conrad Concord", named after the local 18th century Iroquois translator and frontiersman, Conrad Weiser, is seen here next to a carboy of "The BN Session Brown", English Brown Ale.  It is quite different making wine; no grains, no boil, gravity readings above 1.100!
We started with 30.0 lbs of Concord grapes picked from a relatives arbor and frozen until we made time to make the wine.
A must was started with...

• 5 crushed campden tables (sodium metabisulfite (Na2S2O5))
• 30 lbs crushed Concord grapes
• 2 gallons water
• 10 lbs sugar
• 5 tsp yeast nutrient
• 2-1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
• 2 packets wine yeast

A few days later the must was  bubbling well enough to push the "cap" of grape skins to the top of the primary fermenter.  The wine was racked into a glass carboy with an air-lock and set to age after 10 days.  It is now bubbling away next to a batch of beer in the basement brewery. 
Again, there are some serious differences between making beer and wine.  Wine does not involve a boil, so spoiling bacteria, wild yeasts and other "nasties" are removed by adding sulfur-based compounds to wine.  When transferring the wine from the primary fermenter to the carboy we put the grape skins in a sanitized mesh bad and squeezed it with our bare hands.  Granted I washed liked the dickens; trimming my fingernails, scrubbing my hands and arms and then submersing my my arms in star-san. but the process was a little odd.
The wine tastes good thus far and I am looking forward to finishing this batch and making many more.