Jason

Make a winter candy board to overwinter honey bees

November 13, 2010 by Jason Leave a Comment

We think a candy board is kind of like a cheap insurance policy. The benefits of a candy board, made correctly adds many benefits to help the beehive over the winter. The candy board is simply a hardened sugar mixture that lives in a 2-3 inch frame body and uses 1/2″ hardware cloth on the bottom to hold the “candy” up. I said 1/2″ hardware cloth, not 1/4″. This is important. We also put a pollen patty in the top so that it’s there in February (around the time for brood-rearing to begin.) It sits on the top hive body just under the inner cover.

Let’s consider some benefits:

If the bees deplete all the honey stores, they hit the candy board and this may help feed them for the remainder of the winter, or at least until you look in the hive again.
Condensation is a big concern in the hive. Cold air outside and warm bees inside make moisture. This moisture can collect on the top of the hive. The candy board will absorb most, if not all the moisture into the sugar and likely keep it from dropping back down on to the cluster. Wet bees will die.
There is also a hole that passes up through the candy board and a 5/8 inch hole is drilled through the front. See the pictures, and the video. This allows warm humid air from inside the hive to exit out this hole to prevent condensation in the hive.

To us, these benefits alone merit putting a candy board on the top of each hive. Watch the video to see how you can make your own candy board. Click here for the ingredients and recipe/directions.

As of this posting, not two weeks after putting the candy board on top of the hive, my bees have eaten a hole up through the top. I had to play patch-work with a new batch of sugar and filled in the hole in the candy board. The idea is that around late Jan or Feb, when the bees may have depleted their stores, they hit the candy board. So, I’m thinking we may want to put the candy board on later… when it’s mostly cold and the bees don’t want to break cluster. This may make the board last into the cold times when you need it most. Keep your logs and see what works best for you.

I also noticed a little mouse nibbling on the front of my entrance reducer. I’ll surround those little openings with sheet metal ASAP.

Here’s a recent video I did when our winter bee meeting was cancelled due to inclement weather.

Here’s a video we did back in 2010 at our bee meeting location. It has good information, and it’s fun to see how far we have come since then.

Harvesting and processing black walnuts

November 9, 2010 by Jason Leave a Comment

Processing walnuts reminds me when I was a kid… when my dad made us all help him. I mean all of us, my friends too, whenever they were over. There was a time I felt I was in danger of loosing my friends because of all the “chores” my dad made them help with. It seemed like whenever I had a friend over, it was the perfect opportunity get another chore done, with all the free labor loafing around. Nostalgic moments like this often drives me to do the things I do. I told myself I wasn’t going to step over the walnuts and forget about them this year. So, I grabbed my son (who didn’t have any friends over) and grabbed them all up.

In my family, there was always a bowl of nuts on the table… especially through the winter. Maybe I did it just to have some nuts laying around. Black walnuts have a hard shell that takes a hammer (or a heavy-duty cracker) to bust the shell. I recall using a hammer and my dads anvil to crack black walnuts and tediously pick the nuts out of the shells for hours when I was a kid. But the reward was something else. It is something I crave more now as an adult then I did when I was a kid. Here, in my back yard… the best quality nuts for the taking, and all I need is the desire.

My dad would collect them when they were soft and mushy and would drive over them with the truck to loosen the hulls. I took a more precise approach. Here’s the method I employed. I clamped a drawknife in the vise and rolled the walnut over it to cut the husk in half. Then, using both hands (with latex gloves on,) twisted either side of the hull in opposite directions. The greener ones came right out… the darker, harder ones took rolling them on the ground under my shoe.

Cleaning the gunk off is a multi-day process. Put them in a bucket of water and use a paddle on a drill or something to agitate the goo off. The water will be black. Again, this will stain your clothes and hands. I got some holes in my gloves and had black fingers for weeks. Still on my hands as I type as a matter of fact. Nothing will take the stain out, except time. I took this same bucket of water and tossed all the walnut hulls in it and let it soak for about a week. When it was done… a perfect wood stain. Serious. Try it.

Afterwards, I put them under some screen or wire to let the sun hit them and dry out. You have to keep them under wire or the squirrels will haul them off! After the hulls are clean enough, bring them in side and store them in a cardboard box in the corner… even near the fireplace. The nut will contract in the shell and be easier to get out later when you crack it.

Do this with your kid, but allow them to become bored and don’t force them to appreciate this process like you do. It’s only important to expose them to it, so that one day, they may look back as I have… and maybe take it up on their own. After all, us Morgan’s become a little nuts over time. Take a look at the pictures to see the process.

How to measure acidity in wine using an acid titration kit

November 2, 2010 by Jason Leave a Comment

The home winemaker will typically use a basic acid titration kit to measure acidity in wine because other manners can be quite expensive.

While not 100% accurate, it’s close… and it’s a test whose results I do not ignore. You can rely on it especially when you have become consistent enough in the process of conducting the test. This video shows you how.

Just to clarify… once I have achieved the color change that is described in the video, I will subtract the amount of sodium hydroxide that remains in the syringe (3 cc’s) from what I started with (10 cc’s). So the result is 7 cc’s and each cc is approximately .1% acidity (expressed as tartaric acid, TA)

So, we started with 10 cc’s and we consumed 7 cc’s, leaving 3 cc’s. So that gave us an acidity reading (expressed as TA) of .7% for this white, Sauvignon Blanc.

Update: I said Cabernet Sauvignon in the video, but it’s obviously a white wine. I meant to say Sauvignon Blanc 🙂 Happens to the best of us, right?

Too much alcohol in that wine!

October 27, 2010 by Jason Leave a Comment

About everyone has heard me complain that my wine has too much alcohol. I should say *HAD* because I have refer to my latest wines as my “next generation” wines. My next generation wines are made with more care, criticism, thought and intention. All of them are made with the promise of not messing with sugar and letting the fruit shine through. I want to substantiate my self-criticism and feelings about my early wine with something I found on Jack Kellers blog today. It sums it all up perfectly. I like how he even used the same adjective to describe high alcohol wine, “HOT” – I pass along this excerpt from his site so that winemakers can unite!

“This was a great question, asked casually at a wine tasting in Alamo Heights, an incorporated area surrounded by San Antonio. The gentleman tasted a Pinot Grigio, made a face denoting displeasure, picked up the bottle and announced “Too much alcohol” while scanning the label. “Ah,” he said, “14.6% — too much.” His companion asked, “What percent is too much?” His response was both illuminating and totally correct.

To paraphrase him, he essentially said there is no magic number, but 14.6% for a table wine is almost certainly too much. Certainly it is too much when you taste the alcohol over the fruit, when the heat from the alcohol burns the taste buds, and when the winemaker is obligated to sweeten the wine to attempt to achieve balance and fails in the attempt. What you have here is an overly sweet, hot wine. You have to search for the flavors, which in this particular wine were quite nice, he admitted, but you shouldn’t have to search for them. The fruit, not the alcohol, should be up front.

The gentleman was absolutely correct. Alcohol creep began in earnest about a dozen years ago, when growers began letting their grapes hang longer to develop the full flavor of the fruit. The general consequences were higher Brix and lower acidity. In big reds, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, these can result in a rich, chewy wine, but one that can pack a whollop when the bottle is empty. In whites, the lower acidity can result in hot, flabby wines. I would not have called that Pinot Grigio “flabby,” but it was “hot” on the tongue.

In home winemaking, one has a certain amount of control the commercial winemakers may lack. We can dilute a high Brix must or chaptalize a low Brix in areas where this is not allowed for commercial producers. When making non-grape wines, we have complete control over the chemistry, limited only by our knowledge and the means to achieve that control. Means in this sense refers to laboratory analysis and equipment.

Yet the greatest abusers of excessive alcohol tend to be novice or young home winemakers. The first group mistakenly believes that more is better while the second group is just seeking a quick buzz without regard for balance or any concept of what a good wine really is. I know. I was among them once, as were many other experienced winemakers. I’m not sure when one grows out of that phase. In my case it occurred when I tasted a truly great, nearly perfect Zinfandel and noticed the alcohol was a few decimals below 13%. For others it might occur when they begin competing and receive feedback from conscientious judges.

But to be fair, I know two local winemaker who have developed a taste for high alcohol wines in much the same way as another friend has developed a taste for moonshine. I do not judge them. They like what they like. But they know what I and most judges will say when we judge their wines.”

2010 2nd Annual Apple Smash

October 25, 2010 by Jason Leave a Comment

The head count of the 2nd annual smash grew tremendously and along with many new families, we saw most of the Muddy Portage crew in attendance. It was great to see faces we haven’t seen in a while as well as several new friends we’ve met over the summer.

There were enough people who pitched in to make the process go. As you can see, there are parts to fill with such an operation and without diligent help, it can go slow. Those apples didn’t stand a chance.

I had mentioned we try to put together a video so that we can look back at how our families grow over the years. People took the “dressing for the part” quite seriously so I think we’ll have some good you-tube fodder real soon. I have to say that my hat looked rather dumb compared to all the straw and cowboy hats correctly sported by others.

The apples “smashed” more difficult than last year. They were pulpy and it took more effort to extract all the juice. We have a rough estimate of about 28 gallons compared to the 47 gallons last year. While we’re sure the dry weather had an effect, I felt the apples were a little too ripe (along with the fact that we had only a Gala, Winesap and Winter Banana mix – Not completely ideal for cider) Still, everyone had cider to take home and Glenn and I had plenty left over to make sure our other loves ones got some.

Thanks so much to Glenn and Mary Burris for not only providing a great venue, but going above and beyond to make this look like an event coordinated by a committee. The hay rides were an exceptionally nice touch and the kids loved it. A little background… the smash wasn’t going to happen this year just due to how busy everyone has been. Glenn and Mary stepped up and said they were planning a fall party of some sort anyway and this was just the thing.

The apple smash means a lot to me because as a kid, I attended a number of these with my dad, along with steam-engine shows, berry picks, you get the picture. My dad refurbished this press and made all the wood parts, painted it and got it all ready to use. But, he never got to use it before a stroke in 2001. So, last year was its maiden smash… and this year was its second run. I hope to keep this going so that our kids can remember such things. I truly believe that by instilling the spirit of our fathers in them will make them remember, and even aspire to push it further… ultimately to become better contributors to society. I can still see and remember my first apple smash, and my dad heading it up, all to only be sure there was enough cider for everyone to take home. So, my heartfelt thanks go to Glenn and Mary for making this happen.

We’ll be shooting for the first or second week of October next year. If you liked it, you might mark your calendar. The food this year was stellar. Thanks to all who brought something. That really made the food easy! We’ll be thinking of ideas to completely eliminate the monetary apple overhead for the next time. It might be nice to get everyone to bring a sack or two of apples so that the apple purchase doesn’t lie on one or two people. Bring apples, take cider! We’re open to ideas. I hope you enjoy the pictures.