It was a productive weekend. Projects were worked on and hobbies were started. Mr Lobster Shorts is building a shed from scratch. Neither of us has built a shed before. This weekend we finished the base. It seems sturdy and I’m hoping it keeps going so smoothly. I’ve already got plans next year for him to build a pergola in the garden, but one thing at a time!
One of my hobbies is making wine. I used to make it at home frequently with take-home kits. It’s a lot of work and it’s messy, so now I go to the winemaker shops. It’s been a long time since I’ve had some made and I was out of bottles. You need 30 bottles when you bottle wine. If you don’t have them, the shop will provide them, but it’s $2 a bottle. That adds another $60 to your winemaking bill. I put an ad out asking for leftover used wine bottles, I figured it would take a while to collect enough, but a generous soul donated 4 1/2 cases of old bottles they no longer needed. One and done!
Over the weekend I cleaned and disinfected all the bottles in a bleach solution. There were a lot and I did it in two stages.
I have the second half still drying on the bottle dryer. The dryer is handy, but it’s two days later and they are still wet inside. I don’t currently have a better solution. Also pictured above is a 4L wine jug I found at the thrift store for $3.00. That one still needs cleaning and disinfecting. I bought that little jug for a reason. Rhubarb wine!
On top of having wine made at the shop, I’ve gotten back into making it at home. I bought a lovely book at Chapters years ago, by Beshlie Grimes. It’s no longer available at Chapters, but I did find it on Amazon. I’ve made her apricot, and plum wine and both were delightful. This time I wanted to try rhubarb wine. My rhubarb plant is thriving and had tons of rhubarb stalks. I usually harvest the rhubarb for pie, but this year it was time to try something different. I’ve never had rhubarb wine before. This book is for small-batch wines (about 5 bottles) and it’s the perfect size for me not to feel too overwhelmed. Maybe one day I’ll get back into the thirty-day kits, but for now, this is much more manageable.
I washed and chopped all this rhubarb with a pair of scissors. I would not do that again. I’d use a knife. I’m pretty sure my cutting board was in the dishwasher, which is the reason I went with scissors. Next time I’ll wait for the washer to finish! My hand was aching!
The next step was to pile a ton of sugar on top of all this rhubarb and wait 3 days. And that’s the step I’m at… 24 hours in. The rhubarb is starting to get liquidy at the bottom. Two more days and it will be time to add water, yeast and yeast nutrient, for fermentation. It’s such a fun hobby. I’m enjoying myself.
Now for the second hobby…. rock tumbling! I recently got a new toy on Amazon. A National Geographic Rock Tumbler. I’ve had a rock tumbler before, but it was damaged. I love rocks. I love to search for neat rocks in all sorts of random places. At the same time I was thinking of getting another rock tumbler, I found out my spouse wanted one too, for completely different reasons. He wanted one to clean up nuts and bolts. I had no idea you could even put those in a rock tumbler.
And these are the rocks that came with the kit. There is a really pretty blue and white rock in there that I am super excited to see come out. A lot of these rocks look so small that they will be just ground down to sand, but maybe not. I might have overfilled the barrel with all these things, but it’s my first try in the new tumbler and I’m allowed to make mistakes.
The tumbler is LOUD and it’s going to take about a month to get these rocks polished. The tumbler has been tucked in a back room out of sight, but we can still hear it. I can’t wait until my first batch of rocks comes out!
Lobster Shorts 