New batch of wine in the primary!

I discovered a five gallon bucket of sap on my door step last night. I had been talking to some of my friends about turning Maple sap into wine. They were tapping trees and were getting more than they had the capacity to boil down.
The recipe I used was pretty simple: sugar; cloves; lemon (juice and zest); cinnamon; tannin; yeast nutrient; and yeast. I based it off a recipe I found here. Their measurements were for a gallon of wine, however, and I really wanted to try a bit of cinnamon with the maple. If anybody wants the exact measurements I used, email me. I’ll send them along.

One other change I made to the recipe was the yeast. I couldn’t find any Riesling yeast yesterday, so I used a packet of Red Star Montrachet – can’t imagine that being too big of a deal.

It took until this morning for the must to cool down enough to add the yeast. It looked great – the recipe called for boiling the sap for 15 minutes which turned it from clear to a beautiful amber. The tannin pushed it a bit darker, but I’m guessing it will return to that amber color over time. The must also had a wonderful smell and flavor – spicy, like an old New England farm house during Christmas.
Maximum expected alcohol percentage is right around 15%.

This batch will spend about nine days in the primary (a bucket) before being transferred to a secondary (a five gallon glass carboy).

Before anybody asks me for a bottle, I’d should point out that the stuff won’t be drinkable until January 2010 at the very earliest. It probably won’t be great until July of that year. Damn.