Viking Hall Winery

09/09/2024

Not a lot of brewing has been done since moving to San Diego due to lack of space, but our 5th anniversary with my wife featured a wine from the area where we first lived together at, Fort Drum, NY. It was the neighboring town of Philadelphia, NY that is home to Otter Creek Winery and their fantastic Adirondack Red. Aged approximately 3 years and it has held up wonderfully. They got us hooked on their wine slushies and I joked with my wife that it's funny our favorite wine ever is a $15 bottle. We might have to look at getting some more shipped to us for future anniversaries.

12/02/2023

Just bottled the pyment. Going to let it sit in bottles for a little bit until we try the brews side by side. Lalvin 71B is better on darker fruited wines so I figured it would do well for this Grape juice and honey mixture, where Lalvin EC-1118 is a fast and hard fermenter that is neutral in nearly every category. Just off the aromas alone 71B still smells a lot like the Grape Juice we started with! Yeast play a huge role in recipe development and how your final product will end up so I'm excited to start this journey of yeast exploration.

11/22/2023

It sure has been awhile since I posted! I did a cherry mead again but this time I put the fruit in secondary (after the initial fermentation and racking) because I wanted to see if I could tell a difference between the fruit being in primary or secondary. In my opinion I liked the fruit better in secondary and will probably keep doing it like that.

Pictured below I racked a pyment style (grapes or Grape Juice and honey). The carboy with the white b**g I used lalvin 71B as my yeast and in the yellow b**g carboy I used lalvin EC-1118. The color looks richer and on the nose 71B seems more true to the Grape aroma. I think the name for this will be Grape of God (GroG).

10/08/2023

Ordered a honey sampler from Flying Bee Ranch and they did not disappoint! Meadowfoam and buckwheat were the strongest. Meadowfoam tasted like cotton candy honey and buckwheat was a very rich and "dirty" for lack of a better term honey. Orange was good it was light and had a very small hint of orange at the end. Clover tasted just like great value walmart honey, but just a bit sharper and a more even and consistent flavor. Scotch broom tasted like meadowfoam but a bit lighter and not as strong on the candy flavor. Blueberry and pumpkin didn't seem like they carried their flavoring very much but I'll have to try them again because after tasting 8 honeys in a row you feel like you need to give them another go to truly understand them. Snowberry was the one I was most excited for I'm not sure why, but I personally couldn't pick up a very distinct flavor profile that makes it easy to identify.

More varieties I want to try are avocado blossom, lehua blossom, tupelo, and alfalfa! Lots of different honey varieties out there and they vary by region with slight nuances as well.

09/18/2023

Did some bottling today of all the brews we had just racked earlier. Going to let these bottle age for a couple months but I'm excited to see what everyone thinks of them! My wife told me the acerglyn "tastes like Canada" and is "the best I've made so far". Going off that I'd say I'm optimistic about people's opinions!

09/13/2023

Racking day was a couple of days ago and didn't snap a pic until just now. In my 3 one gallons I have a gallon of the left of a maple syrup mead (acerglyn) and added some vanilla extract after racking. The other 2 gallon carboys have a bochet cyser, so it's cooked honey on the stove and apple juice instead of water. The large 5 gallon carboy is a black cherry Cider. It had black cherry juice from concentrate and apple juice in primary fermentation and after I racked it I added whole frozen blueberries and pitted sweet cherries to give those flavor profiles a bigger boost. Hopefully these will turn out great!

08/17/2023

I'm always looking for commercial products of the same things I make to compare and contrast them. Here was a more budget Cider at Aldis, a 6 pack for 8 dollars and while it has that apple character, I think they went too sweet with it and in that regard it doesn't have good balance. I'm not surprised at this price point it doesn't have a balance that brewers strive for but it was an interesting comparison to make with it being much more carbonated, more sweet, but almost no tannins or acidity. The bite comes from the carbonation and not from a natural citrus tongue feel and it washes down quite easily and the flavor doesn't sit in your mouth for any reason other than the carbonation.

Carbonation can be an easy mask for a bad beverage which is why cheap beers don't taste too different from a well made craft beer (as long as they're the same style) but a cheap wine tastes very different compared to a fine wine.

If anyone has recommendations for commercial products for me to try to see what I think of it let me know!

08/02/2023

While 2 gallons of Viking Blood has been fermenting I've been doing some recipe research and getting more fermentation vessels. I procured some food grade plastic buckets from Sam's Club Bakery section (they're awesome, 2 dollars a bucket) and drilled a hole in the top for our rubber seal and airlock to go in. Very cost efficient, and don't worry they were cleaned very thoroughly with some PBW (powdered brew wash, an alkaline cleaner) and sanitized very well. Currently I have 4 gallons of Cider going in there.🍎 The recipe was modified slightly from my previous post with the bottled version because to me it stayed quite acidic even after letting it age out a little.

Recipes to be brewed are an Acerglyn (maple syrup mead)🍁 and a Bochet Cyser (cook the honey for a period of time and add in apple juice instead of water)🍎

A recipe I'm currently trying to figure out is a wacky one. I want to do a mint chocolate mead! I just need to talk to some more meadmakers about things they've done in the past when working with these ingredients.🍫

Also pictured is the aftermath of my hands after pitting cherries and bagging them to freeze for the Vikings Blood mead🍒 I think you can tell which knife I was using to cut and which to handle the cherries

07/02/2023

Bottling day! In the swing top we have our Cider, trying out natural carbonation for the first time. Left is a traditional mead, second time making this recipe and very excited for the feedback from our customer. We got 4 bottles of each and a little extra for sampling. I think next I will do a Viking Blood Mead (cherry mead) since cherries are in season now.

07/01/2023

To celebrate the birth of our second child, we had one of our favorite local wines; Chocolate Rose from Homestead Vineyards & Winery, sold by Salado Winery Company & Salado Wine Seller if you ever find yourself in Salado, please stop by and see if they have a bottle. Absolutely fantastic and something I would call an aphrodisiac in a bottle.

06/20/2023

Racking day! Center is a new recipe which is a hard Cider, to the left and right is another brew of the traditional mead for 2 customers. A little bit of head space and not a full 1 gallon for either because of the volume the citrus took up in primary fermentation. I had a little leftover from the Cider so I took a sample and to me it tastes like a late summer/early fall beverage because of how crisp the taste is and it washes down quite easily. We'll see how the tastes blend together as it conditions though!

06/10/2023

I'm happy to see you here! Hopefully you will get to taste our highly enjoyable brews and enjoy the process with us. Please let me know any flavor requests whether specific or vague and I will do my best at imitating anything you've had before and can't get your hands on for whatever reason. :)

Send a message to learn more