On the First Floor

Here on the first floor of our house we have, at the moment, a five-gallon crock (Western Stoneware, with a maple-leaf decoration) full of beer Martha made which may go into a secondary fermenter today; and a three-gallon Red Wing crock with sorghum beer that I started last Friday. And in the back room is a five-gallon carboy with LaCrosse grape wine in its secondary-fermentation stage, which I suppose I could start bottling any day now. Martha was kind enough to order in some corks with her latest beer-making supplies.

I was just thinking of these, and then of the unknown numbers of gallons of wine in secondary fermentation in the basement -- not a huge amount; but the variety is not bad -- and was thinking, too, how similar the situation is to my miscellaneous writing projects. Who knows how many I have, in the basement. Here on the main living floor, I have just a few projects in active or semi-active state.

I just checked my wine-making notes. The carboy of wine is mostly LaCrosse grapes, with some Edelweiss, and also some that I thought might be the Alpenglow variety. All these were grown by Bob at Vernon Vineyards, in nearby Vernon County. All are northern grape varieties; all are Elmer Swenson varieties. In LaCrosse, a white grape, I remember the bunches being tightly packed and compact. The Edelweiss are a large white-Concord-type, extremely flavorful. The Alpenglow have a slight, quite attractive blush to the skin.

Homegrown hops, by the way, went into the sorghum beer.