Shimmerwine: Making the Wine FIREFLY Never Explained

Let's get this shindig going and brew up some shimmer wine. Now, shimmer wine was mentioned one time in Firefly, and it was on Persephone during the duel thing. Right, so this was the shindig episode of Firefly. That's the reference. Where basically, Anara was trying to get out of an uncomfortable conversation with Ashton and said, oh, I'm looking for the boy with the shimmer wine, and she wanders off. So we don't have any tasting notes. We don't have any clear description of it. We just have that reference. And then during the episode, we saw people walking around pouring what looked like a champagne-like beverage. So that's our basis for the factual notes in the fictional thing of Firefly. But we do have an idea of what this beverage should be. It should be elevated, because this is a fancy party. It should be carbonated, since they were pouring something that looks like champagne. And it should be kind of clearish, maybe a little pinkish hue. I don't know. So that's where we're going with our thoughts, based on the television show itself. But then, of course, everybody and their brother has to make a version of a cocktail that is shimmer wine, and one got published. And this was two fluid ounces of St. Germain elderflower liqueur, one fluid ounce of vodka or gin, which they're going to change the flavor drastically, depending on what you choose, and then eight fluid ounces of chilled champagne. And then additionally, they had two different shimmer effects that are separate recipes in their book that you could prescribe to the brew. So we're going to do it all in one, but I have some things that I want. I'd like to be- It's not going to be a cocktail. We're actually making this. We're making a wine. Making a wine. So to make a wine, eat grapes. I got grapes. They're frozen. They were cleaned, de-stemmed, cut in half, and frozen. That way, all the cell walls break up. They're white grapes, and they're just going to sit there and think about what they've done as we get the other elements in the brew. So one of the things we're going to use is- Martinelli's apple juice. We got two, one liters, I guess it is. So it's a little over a half gallon when you do that. I'm just going to pour some off and shake the rest. Kind of chaotic. It's because this is our train of thought trying to be projected into all the things that we've been thinking about to make this brew. And we've actually thought about this for quite some time. This has been going for quite some time, yeah. Like years we've been thinking about it. And then when they dropped the announcement- We thought, you know, now's a good time to do this. It is. It's time. So I'm shaking this up for a couple of reasons. First, if there was any sediment in the bottom, I want to get that in. Second, see how it changed color? I want to get that oxygen in there because that's going to help the yeast later on build a colony. You don't have to worry so much about being sloppy in primary fermentation. Now this is roughly a one gallon final batch, but we're starting with a one and a half gallon container because it's going to be a little bit over a gallon to start with. The grapes are going to add a little bit more volume and we want to have some extra headroom for fermentation itself to occur. So I have a couple of fruit juices beyond the grapes that I chose because of their light flavor and also their ability to ferment nicely. This is still apple juice. Apple juice ferments lovely. It does tend to have a bit of a funk sometimes at the end, but we know that goes away with time. We're also using a pretty good quality juice. Yes. Martinelli's is quality. It does have vitamin C. But that's it. A hundred percent apple juice, vitamin C. That's it. And it smells delightful. Yeah. Yeah. We like Martinelli's juice. We don't use it very often because it tends to be a little more pricey, but this is the kind of thing that they served it at a fancy shindig. So, you know. Price was not an issue. The other juice we're using, and Derek was worried about this because if you look at it. It's cloudy. Yep. But that is from pectic haze. We're going to be adding some stuff to get rid of that. And it is pear juice. So we have apple and pear mixed together. I think that's a nice combo. And apple, pear, and white grape are all generic fruit juices that are often added to fruit juice mixes when they need to lower the cost point for a fruit juice. So lots of times you'll be like, oh, it's, I'm trying to think of a random fruit juice that is often. Any, any mix really. They're usually. Yeah. Lots of times you look at the ingredients and it's like, oh, it's only a little bit of that one fruit juice, but the rest is filler, which is either apple. Happens all the time. Pear or white grape. Yeah. So already we're going to have, because these are both, well, this is 32 fluid ounces. So we have 64 ounces of pear, 66 point, oh, 67.6 ounces of apple juice. I am really not going to worry about those couple extra ounces because it just doesn't matter. Another reason which I may or may have not mentioned is I selected these fruits in particular because of their light flavor. I don't want this to be an aggressive. Yeah. Heavy flavor thing. I want this to be more delicate and elevated. Right. You want the bubbles to carry the flavor to your nose. That's right. Cause this is a fancy shindig. That's right. Pinkies up. I mean, you know, if you want to see Kaylee in the big cupcake dress, layer cake, layer cake, that's what it was. All right. So what I want to do now though, let's take a reading on this before we go much further. So I know how much more to add. Usually juices fall about 1.050. So we have these two together that I didn't mix before I took the reading. Probably should have done that just in case. Yeah, it's all right. It's all right. You can do that because everything here was sanitized in which is literally a 10 gallon bucket that we make star sand to the manufacturer's suggestion with water and stuff gets dunked in it for like two minutes. And then we put it over here to use. Yeah. All these bubbles you see on the rim, that's star sand. Cause star sand is a foaming sanitizer. No rinse foaming sanitizer. It foams. So that way it gets into any nook and cranny to make sure everything is properly sanitized. So it's kind of like English muffins. English muffins have nooks and crannies. You know what I mean. It was funnier in my head. Oh, this is a little on the lower side. That's a little surprising. Look, there's foam. Come on. But we have reasons or have ways of fixing that. I'm going to call it 1.050. So pretty close. The juice alone is 1.050. Yep. But we're not done yet. Right. I'm thinking I want this to be around like a 1.090. Cause here's the thing. We're going to be using a pretty strong yeast, but not a crazy strong yeast. So I want it to end up being like maybe 12% and then we can carbonate this at that point. So this is going to be a natural carbonation too. Just wait. It's going to be pretty awesome. I hope. Okay. So I need to add sugar to that point, which means I need to scale. Here's the thing. I say 1.090, but a little lower than that doesn't bother me either. So I might do just three quarters of a pound. So instead of 16 ounces, I'll do 12 ounces. Houston, we have a problem. What? Oh, it's too heavy. All right. Well, we have preparations for that too. I had a bowl out here. Yeah, I didn't move the bowl. So I don't know what happened to it. It's okay. I got a container. It works. The scale can only measure to 17 pounds and apparently that's more than 17 pounds. So I want 12 ounces of sugar. This is just plain old white sugar. Some people like to use corn sugar. Some people like to use all sorts of different kinds of sugars. And it's all okay. Just know that every different kind that you use is going to have a slightly different flavor profile. Like if you use Demerara sugar, it's going to be a little bit more caramely. If you use brown sugar, which is really just white sugar with molasses added, it's going to have more of a molasses-y thing. For this, plain white sugar is what we wanted because all it's really doing is raising the alcohol level. We have the flavor pack here already. We don't need to add more. And I think diluting it slightly by adding the sugar is probably a good option. Yep. But we need a little more because that packet wasn't enough. I got my knife freshly sharpened. Almost cut my hand off at that time. I haven't used this thing in 20 plus years. Somebody asked me about it. It's funny. Yeah, I paid almost no money for it and it's worth like $250. So I was kind of surprised. I looked it up to find out. I'm not selling it. I'm not going to put it on a shelf. Knives are meant to be used. I'm using it. Could use a little bit of a cleanup though. And a sharpen. Okay, 12 ounces of sugar. If you think, wow, that's a lot of sugar. You're right. It is, but it's going to get turned into alcohol. Because that actually comes up more often than you might think where people think it's going to be super sweet because of all the sugar we added. This is yeast food. Yeah. The intent is for this to go dry. Now, because we did have slightly over a gallon of the liquid, we might be a little bit lower than my perception, but that's okay. Because how much alcohol do you really want this to have? 10, 12%? Something like that? I don't really care how much alcohol it has as long as it tastes good and it's bubbly. Yep. But I think having too much alcohol makes it complicated and can harm carbonation later. And not having enough alcohol might not make it taste like a champagne style beverage. So somewhere in the middle. About right. All right. Sugar dissolved super fast. Yeah, it's almost mixed. I like it when that happens. But I'm going to go ahead and get another tool out while you're doing that. That seems pretty well mixed. So it's time to take a reading on it. And this will be our original gravity reading. Now, it's always an approximation. But in this case, it's even more so because those grapes are going to give off a little bit of liquid, might dilute it a little. I don't worry about it, okay? Basically, I just don't want to overwhelm the yeast is really the thing here. But I don't want to have not enough sugars either. So somewhere around like 1070 to 1090 is probably appropriate. 1.074. Let me explain a little bit. If you have a triple scale hydrometer and I put my finger down to the 1.074 mark and spin it around, I get just about 10%. So a little bit of sugars that the grapes are going to add. This is probably going to be somewhere around 10%. Once we add carbonation to it, it'll be a nice, light, bubbly beverage. What's next? All right. So do we put the pectin enzyme in now? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we are going to be using pectic enzyme in this one. And I'm going to use double the amount because we want this to be clear. So normally I would only use a quarter of a teaspoon. This time I'm using half a teaspoon. I think that's what I marked here. Half a teaspoon of pectic enzyme. Look at that. It's almost like I knew what I was doing because I wrote it down. Now, pectic enzyme is going to help break down some of the pectin that's in these juices and in the grapes. And it's just going to help it to clear a little and pull out a little bit more juices. It's not necessary. Like it'll still ferment fine and probably taste just fine. But it will help it to be a little more clear, which is what we're looking for. So next up, if you noticed, I got a sanitized brew bag. That's right. We're using a bag. And a sanitized pickle pebble, which we don't use to make pickles. We use it for this. We use them to make pickles too. I just don't make pickles much anymore. So we have different pickle pebbles for pickles. Oh, we do? Yes. Oh, these are our sanitation weights. These are our brew weights. Brew bag weights. So I put that in there. So hopefully it will anchor the bag at the bottom, even when all the gases are created during the fermentation process, because we don't want our bag to float up to the top and block off access of those gases escaping through the airlock because bad things could happen. So what's going in the bag? In the bag is going to be our ode to that cocktail recipe. And we're going to be adding elderflowers. Yep. And I'm going to use three tablespoons of elderflowers. These are dried. If you're using fresh, you probably need more. I think this is a significant amount, but this way it really does give the essence ode elderberry, you know? Elderflower. I knew what I was saying. Now there's lots of different ways that you can- Don't put elderberry in this. It'll be a completely different thing. It's raining. But there's lots of different ways that you can add a flower to a brew. One of them is teas. Oh, that's the- From my point of view, it's the green. I was like, what? It was just the tag. Okay. So you can put it in dry. You can make a tea and add that tea to it. Some would call that a tisane or a decoction. I call it tea. Another element that we're going to add that was of our own design is a little bit of rose petal. I feel like if you're being hoity and toity, you should put some rose in it. This will add color more than anything because we're only going to use one tablespoon of dried rose petals. These are not rose hips. This is dried rose petals. Yes. Rose hips and rose petals- Vastly different. Bring vastly different things. They smell good. I'm hoping it brings the aroma as well as the color because that would just make this lovely. I didn't want to- And I didn't want to put in too much of that because I was afraid it would color it far too strongly. Yeah. We want it to be kind of light, a light pink, pinkish hue. Yep. It has a pinkish hue. All right. So what I want to do now is tie up this bag. I'm going to tie it around the neck as tightly as I can so that they can't escape. And then just, you know, do a little slipknot type of deal here. Do you want to tie that as well to make it smaller or do you not want to mess with it? No, I think we're good. This is part of the frustration of using bags for me. I'm just going to have to actually tie it. I don't like to do that because it's going to be so hard to get it off later. But it is what it is. Sometimes you got to do what you got to do. All right. I'm going to fold it up. Wish me luck. Now, if you had a tea bag type situation that was big enough to hold all of that in there, you could totally use that as well. Next, we're going to put in the grapes. And it's at this point that I wished we use a two gallon bucket. We have... Oh, we didn't weigh the grapes. I did not weigh the grapes. I just prepared all the grapes for the bag. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to just weigh this here. I'm going to weigh this. We're going to dump in the grapes. Then I'm going to weigh the bag. You got to wait for it to tear up before you put it on there. I'm impatient. That would be rain. Yes. 2.22 pounds. All right. Two pounds, 2.2 ounces. But the bag has some weight to it. So let's put these in and then I'll weigh the bag. Oh, okay. And then it's about two pounds. Are you ready? Yeah. I can't see anything that I'm doing. Oh, yeah, that's nicely full. Yeah, that's going to be great. Beautiful. Uh, yeah, two pounds. Almost exactly. Whoa, it is really coming down out there. Goodness gracious. Maybe we aren't going out for dinner. It'll stop. One thing about Florida is if you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes. It'll change. Okay. What I want to do now, though, is kind of push some of this down. Yeah, I have some bad news for you. What's that? You wanted to put a tilt in that. That's not going to happen. We're not putting a tilt in this. And the reason why we can't put a tilt in it, a tilt is the digital hydrometer. If we try to do that. It's not going to work. Yeah, it won't actually tilt. It needs to be free. It needs to be able to float around. They need to float. And that's part of their system. But wow, that's a lot. Volume wise, it actually worked out well, I think. It's close. If this gets wild, it's going to overflow. We will be putting this on a tray. Yeah, this one gets extra special. All right, let's go through our ingredients list to make sure we got everything that we wanted in there. Apple juice, pear juice, two pounds of grapes, tablespoon of rose petals, three tablespoons of elderflowers, half teaspoon of pectin enzyme. Now we're going to be using Lalvin 71B yeast. And you might be wondering, haven't you guys like kind of shied away from 71B? Here's the thing. 71B is really good for fruity wines. Right. This is fruity. It's still working in this new environment. It's just taking longer. And you know what? We're okay with that. Yeah. Plus, this is a very new packet. Yep. So it's very fresh. This doesn't expire until 2028. I'm just going to use half the packet. Eyeball that. A little more, a little less than half really doesn't make much difference. That's a question that comes up a lot, actually. And then I'm going to fold it up. But by doing that, I just do this, fold it over like that. Crease it to seal. Fold it to form a point. Crease it to seal. Fold that point over. Crease that to seal. Put a piece of tape on it. Stick it in the fridge. And it'll last even. Tape. You've got two types of tape. I have two types of tape. I have tape aplenty. And you stick this in the fridge and it'll last longer than that 2028 date, though. It probably won't. This is the mystery of the half packet. Properly use it. This is why we have them. Soon. Okay. I am bothered. You're bothered? Yes. Because of the grapes are holding it back. Grapes are holding the yeast up. So I'm just gonna. He's moistening. I'm moistening. His yeast. Yeah, that's what. The reason why we don't stir at this time frame. Juncture. Thank you. Is because they're going to stick to everything and not fulfill their destiny. And that will make us sad because it's going to make them sad. They're all in the bag too. Brian's being aggressive with his baster there. I'm allowed. Okay. You've got yeast in your baster now. Barely any yeast in the baster. There's barely. There's barely any. What's going on with this grape? I don't know. All right. You got it. You're good. All right. So we got our reading. We got a lid. Stick an airlock in there. Nope. It's a jar. I would also like to say something. Before anybody freaks out because those grapes were still frozen. We know. That may slow fermentation starting up because this feels colder. It's cold. But you know what? In about a day, it's going to warm up to room temperature and it doesn't really matter. If we had tried to defrost those grapes, which we could have. I mean, truth be told, we forgot. If we had defrosted those grapes in there, then we'd have to rinse out the juices that are in there. So we didn't add any water. Notice there's no water added here. The only water was what's in the juices and in the grapes. So technically this is a no water shimmer wine. Shimmer wine. That's what I just said. It sounded weird. Shimmer wine. Sounded like you said shimmer one. Shimmer wine. Make fun of the way I talk. All right. So what are we going to do now? I don't know. What are we going to do now? We're going to get a tray. Cause I have concerns. Yeah, me too. I think this is going to overflow. Our head space is very minimal. Yeah, that's worrisome. When fermentation does start up, there's a possibility. And because of our dried ingredients in there, I'm thinking it's a strong probability that this is going to be an active fermentation and all the gases and all the bubbles and all the particulates are going to just force its way out of the airlock and cause a volcano. So if we have a tray that's lipped, all the stuff that flows out will be captured in that tray and won't end up all over our glorious studio. Yep. Instead, we're going to do it in the kitchen. So we're going to let this do its thing and we'll see you in probably about two to three weeks. Three, I'm thinking three. Well, three weeks because of fruit. Yeah, we like to let fruit extract fully for about three weeks, herbs and all that kind of stuff. However, if anything weird and unusual happens, we'll make sure to do an update as soon as that happens. We'll let you know. So see you then. It has been three weeks. Let's see how it's doing. And to do that, what do we do? Well, we're going to take a reading. With? A graduated cylinder and hydrometer. Triple scale, if you please. And we're going to use a baster to take a sample. Did you smell that? It smells lovely. I'm going to try to get down past all the, they look like olives to me, but they're grapes. They look like olives though. The grapes did an interesting thing. Because we sliced them in half, we could actually look into their interior and I would guess that the process would be similar to pickling. Yeah. Because of the alcohol, they got kind of funky looking. I'll show you. They look like olives. I think we're done. 0.994. That's dry, dry, dry, dee, dee, dry. Before I pour this back in, we're going to talk about this, but I'm going to show you what the olives look like first. When you look at that, do you see grapes or do you see olives? It's the interior. I see olives. And when you go to the bottom, you can see the interior of it. See, it's getting like a little fibrous-y. Yep. It looks more like an olive than a grape. That's his story and he's sticking to it. At this point, we may wonder, why do we put our flowers in the bag and not the grapes? Why do we do anything? Do you want to take a sample taste? Smells pretty fantastic. It's going to taste very, very dry. Well, yeah, because all the sugar is gone. Oh, how about the fanciest glass ever? Do you want me to sanitize it real quick? Sure. Sit on the shelf, dust, stuff. These are clean, but they may be dusty and that is an issue. We don't want- I have a mint-free cloth. Yes, thanks to CJ. Yep, one of our VIPs. Fancy looking tasting glass. Holds all of about a mouthful. Which is all we need. Yeah, this one's really dry. It's pretty. It's the color that I wanted. I'm actually surprised that there's no- Oh, smells very fruity. I'm going to just shut up for a moment. You'll never hear me say that. Actually, that's not true. I've said it. I don't do it, but I've said it. That is a complexity. It's very dry though. It's very dry, but it's the complexity that works for what I was envisioning this being. Okay. Which is making me happy. I always questioned from the very beginning, after we were done filming, did we actually put the rose petals in there? Because I don't see much pink. Do you see much pink? We did. We just didn't put a lot. I don't see much pink. But as soon as I stick my nose in there, I'm like, hello, there's the rose. And that's why I decided to shut up. Yeah, it's rose petals, elderflowers, pectic enzyme, yeast, sugar, grapes, and pear and apple juice. Yes, yes. Anyway, so let's calculate the ABV of this using the calculator teacher said would never be handy. 1.074 start minus 0.994 to finish gives us 0.08 times 131.25 equals 10.5%. All right. So here's the good news and the bad news. The good news is I'm really pleased with the complexity of this, which is what I wanted. I want it to be light and complex. This should be elevated. This should just should entice the palate because it's shimmer wine. This is the uppity stuff that the uppity people drank, right? Yep. Which I'm so not. But that's what I was trying to replicate. The other news, which may be bad to Brian is that this should be champagne like, meaning it should be carbonated and dry. So Brian will not like this when it's done. Okay. But I probably will because I don't know how to make it sweet and carbonated. We're not even going to attempt it because that's. Thank you very much. So we just need to make it. So we need to make it carbonated. Okay. For that, we can do natural carbonation or we can do keg carbonation. I was thinking natural. Okay. We talk about this all the time. And the main difference is if we keg carve, then this might be our personal problem. If we keg carve, it takes up a space in the fridge and must be consumed before we can do something else in that space. Now, if we were not YouTubers and we're just making this at home, I would probably just keg carve it because it's convenient and simple and easy and efficient. But I want something that I can store so that if we want to have a bottle of it today and another bottle of it in three months, we can. And a bottle in a year. Right. Rather than taking up space. Because if we keg carve, we can't do a one-year tasting. So there's a problem. So we need to rack this. Yep. We need to let it settle. Yep. And then we can bottle it. Right. So we'll rack it today. And there's one more complication because this is my recipe and I wanted to be as complicated as possible. And that complication is this. Edible glitter packets. All right. So this particular packet has two different colors, five moonstone iridescent and five champagne rose gold. To me, this should be champagne rose gold for shimmer wine. So it is telling you to pour, stir and enjoy. So I don't know if this is supposed to go in. The glass. Oh, that's cheesy. No, put it in the bottle. Add edible glitters, glitter to beverages, bubbly and cocktails. See, they're not expecting you to have made the thing. Choose a color and pour half of the packet into the beverage for a brilliant sparkly transformation. All right. If this needs, see, and now here's another problem to overcome. If you want this to be sparkling and then you want to add glitter, if you add the glitter in the glass, to me, that's kind of cheesy, but it works logistically. If you add it to the bottle, now you're expected to upend that bottle before you pour. And if it's carbonated, you could just be making a geyser. It's saying one packet makes two glittery eight ounce drinks. I really wish I knew that before. Well, this is what happens when we don't pay attention to the instructions when we buy something. So what do you want to do? I would like to consult the Oracle and the Oracle of choice for this particular thing is our admin, Sarah, because I know she has done some glittery stuff in a brew and I want to see what she used and how she used it. Okay. So once I gather that information, I'll make sure to get back to you. But for now, we're going to, we need to rack this. And so I think due to our volume, we probably want to rack it into a similar vessel as this. Well, keep in mind, we have a bag and we have all that fruit. I think it's going to be one gallon. One gallon. Yeah, it's going to be one gallon. All right. So just a straight up one gallon. We'll be right back. I have some bad news for you. I know we have to, we have to bottle something. Okay. All right. So we got a one gallon container. You don't, you don't want to know what we had to go through to get that. We had to bottle something. If I look flushed, there's reasons. We just, we just had to bottle something because we didn't have any open containers. And by just bottling, we mean find, sanitize, bottle, put away, cleanse, re-sanitize. And now we're here. The joys of home brewing. All right. So that is our sample. Ryan, carefully put it into our sanitized new vessel or destination, if you will. Are we doing lap racking? Let's lap rack. What the heck? We're going to lap rack. Go back to old school. This is going to be nuts. All right. So we got. Auto siphon. And a rumble jar. Oh yeah, right. Both of which have. I'm leaving the cap. No, no, I can take the cap off. The joy of the rumble jar. Okay. Rumble jar. It is actually meant for making cold brew coffee. It's just a very fine mesh sieve or filter, if you will. I'm going to put the auto siphon inside it. Very carefully. Do we want to remove the bag first? I don't have a bowl and I don't have a hand. That would be no. And I'm going to carefully insert this below the level of the fruit, hopefully. So what the rumble jar does is it pushes away the gross lease, as Brian likes to call it, the big chunks. GROS. Out of the way. So that way the liquid can get to the auto siphon and not gunk it up. So here you can see the top. The auto siphon is in the rumble jar and it goes down below the surface of the fruit and down to about there. And I'm going to treat that as the bottom of the auto siphon for the sake of this racking. I just did all that with one hand. Okay. And what I mean by that is I'm putting it to the bottom of the rumble jar because if I don't, I won't know where it is. So I'm going to carefully get things started. It is started. We are started. And now I just want to kind of keep the rumble jar at a relatively stable height, not move stuff around to too much and let the racking process do its thing. Now he will have to tilt it to the side because we have a lot of things going on in there. There's a lot of stuff going on. And I will have to pay attention to the destination to make sure we didn't underestimate our volume. I think a gallon is all we're going to need. I don't even think it's going to be a gallon. Yeah, I think we're fine. I just don't. I may have had beverage in my lap before by not paying attention. So I want to avoid that. She had a bad experience. I'm not sure that a bag with the grapes in it would have helped in this instance because the grapes didn't fall apart. They didn't turn into mush like some fruits do. They're just complicated, but it's a complicated beverage. It's okay. But I think the flowers was a good idea because it kept them from just disintegrating. Because they are minute particles. Yep. They're tiny. They look like little pollen beads in the bag. Now the big advantage with the rumble jars, it keeps all that big stuff from getting in. But also I can go really deep in there because the bottom of it is totally flat. There's no holes. So it has like its own little built-in cap. Like the cap protects you from going all the way in the leaves. Same idea with this. So I can go right to the top of those grapes and not really worry about a thing. And even as I tilt. It's interesting. The grapes are making kind of a little cushion area. So you don't actually get into the leaves part. They work like gravel in a riverbed. Very bad. They're filtering almost. And we are. We're getting there. I wasn't straight. All right. We have to think about things here. I think we're just about done because it's starting to get clouded up. There we go. All right. We lost maybe a cup of usable. But it was so hard to get to. And we got a full gallon of shimmer wine. Pre-shimmering wine. Well, it's shimmer wine in the making. Shimmer wine junior. Pre-shimmered. All right. So I have my cap and earlock all set. They're dry too. Why'd you do that? Because I'm magic. I almost did that with a straight face. Sure. So today we racked. We racked. And now I must consult to the Oracle. So it's been one more week. We got some words. What we have in here is a failure to communicate. And this happens more than we probably would like to admit. And that's because Brian and I are so in sync that we're like, we'll think of something. You're like, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. And we assume that the other one knows exactly what we're talking about. We know. We know what we know. We know. And we know. And then there's occasions like this where we don't know. Yeah. I have no idea what she was going to do with this. So I said I wanted to make a shimmer wine based off of the episode for Firefly. Brian said there's really no information about that. Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. He said, cool. And that's as far as he went. So he was just focusing on, we're making shimmer wine. Where I was focusing on all the little details and nuances that. Duances. No, you were about to. I just combined them. Nuances and details. Duances. I do that all the time. That's a word now. That's canon. So I had a bigger picture of what this was going to be, where Brian was just stuck at shimmer wine. So this should ultimately be a carbonated sparkly. Yeah. She told me that last week. We started this three weeks ago. So it should be champagne esque. Yeah. Okay. All the other stuff is just other stuff. Its ultimate goal is to be champagne esque. So I was trying to go for light floral flavors and then have it carbonated. So the shimmer part is what's throwing us a curve ball. So last time I mentioned, I was going to contact or consult with the Oracle, who is our friend and admin, Sarah, who has. She did contact her. Who has done with her husband, Chris, a edible glitter concoction that they named health potions or menopotions. They used it for D and D. And so basically you'd swirl the bottle and it was like magic, right? And I said, okay, but I want it carbonated. And that's where she's like, oh, well, that might be a problem. Actually, I said that too. So we all agreed that putting this in the bottle and then trying to carbonate may be an issue. We also agreed carbonating and then putting this in your glass could also be an issue. So we have a whole bunch of these little packets and one packet makes two glittery eight ounce drinks. So then we started talking about it more and we've decided we're going to put some packets of whatever we're going to figure out number into one bottle and carbonate that. And then the rest we're going to carbonate without the glitter. And if we have any glitter left over, we might try pouring it in a glass. Maybe see how it goes. Maybe in a pot. So that way when it foams over, it's. That smells so good. Yay. This is 994, 0.994. It should be like dead smelling, but it smells really good. So we're going to rack this. Yeah. Hopefully that babble made some semblance of sense. Probably not. Wrong way. I'd just like to point out. Yeah. There's no way that was going to rack. Wrong way. It's okay. We now have the. I'm befuddled. The step of levitation or the soul of the show. Oh. I just made that up literally just now. All right. So we sanitized all this stuff. Yep. Brian wanted to put the soul in the in Turbos as well. And I said, no, please, please don't. Because there's other stuff in there. But it has been thoroughly cleansed. Yes. So our source is elevated by the soul. Our destination is just sitting here on the table, but you can see it now because it's not in my lab. We let the cap on because there is a little bit of sediment in the bottom and we don't want that. All right. And after racking, we have some milky stuff. It's just gross, but not much, like maybe three ounces or so. Not, not much at all. This is my favorite part of the soul. That, and he has a little Heidi spot. It fits perfectly. I'm happy now. All right. So we don't have exactly a gallon, but it's close. We have 120 ounces. Poor government work. So we're going to go ahead and stick with our 42 ounces. Also known as one and a half. No, 42 grams. I always say that wrong. Yeah. We have 42 grams of sugar, also known as one and a half ounces. And this is just plain old white sugar. Could you use corn sugar? Yes. Yes, of course you can. And we're going to be getting some to try that out. Maybe do a test. See if one carbonates better than the other. I don't really know. This is totally bone dry. That's why we can do this. But this is just carbonation sugar, because if you didn't know carbonation, natural carbonation, like in the bottle, carbonation is a controlled fermentation. What she said. And we use 42 grams because it's a nice general number. There are charts online. You can look it up to, you know, gauge it to exactly the style of beer or wine that you're making. Right. And since we are striving for a champagne like thing, we probably could have found it to be slightly more. But yeah, I'm not worried about it. We have another catch in our system besides the glitter. And that's, we don't know 100% what rate our bottle system is. Like, I don't know if we have a champagne rated. Oh, that's true. It may not be rated for champagne. That's true. I think we are mixed though. So next we're going to start putting it into the bottles. But first I need to grab something. All right. So our fancy schmancy bottle is going to be this bottle. And why is it this bottle? Because. It's a fancy schmancy bottle. This is the new and improved design of the Swing Top bottle by North Mountain Supply. And it feels real good. It does. Thanks for that demonstration, Brian. No problem. This has one of those stupid violets. Violets is the answer. Everybody wants to put those round seals on everything. And I would like to know why. All right. So if one packet makes two eight ounces. This is a 750 ml bottle, which is about 25.5 ounces, which would mean three eight ounces plus an ounce and a half. So three of those. So, but one makes two. Oh, so one and a half. Ha ha. We didn't think of that. I thought it made one each. So we have two colors. Oh, geez. Champagne Rose Gold, which was what my original thought was. I have an idea. And Moonstone Iridescent. I have an idea. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing by a little bit. Because honestly, to do two eight ounces means it would need to be 32 ounces in total, which is almost a liter. We don't have a really good carbonation for a liter. Right. This is 25.5. It's close. So if you were to use one of each in this, you have over shimmered. Okay. And used both. How's that for compromise and solutions? This pleases me. Problem solving. All right. So our bottle is sanitized, which means it's moist. And now we're going to try to put glitter in it. It's okay. It does, it does have. Oh, it has a little tear tag. I was going to use scissors. It's a terrible packet. Look at that. And they're tiny enough. Yeah. Don't breathe it. Oh, it's like a glitter project. This is why I don't do glitter. Yep. Just remember this was your idea. Why, why, why? Okay. Now I'm just going to take the whole thing and stick it in there. Oh my goodness. Oh God. It's a snow globe. Yay. Instant regret. There's glitter in the air. It's probably going to be on film. Just don't drop it in. Perfect job. But I do think that the two colors are going to be. Sure. Lovely. Wonderful. I think Brian actually despises glitter more than I do. Yes, I do. And I don't really like glitter. I was a wedding photographer for a very long time. Oh my gosh. I got glitter in my cameras, glitter in my lenses, glitter on me, glitter in my shirts, glitter in my socks. And then the face. Then I moved to Florida and got sand everywhere. I'm going to just stop talking because. What? It'll, it'll erupt into a volcano of hatred towards glitter. It's already, I already hate it. I know. It's not going to get much worse. But we need to expel that hatred. Keep it inside. It keeps us warm. How did you open this? I did it. Horrible. My god. Whatever. We got it. It's done. Done. Done and done. Okay. Something else that I'm going to put in here is a little bit of insurance yeast. Yeah. It's everywhere. Thankfully, this is edible stuff, so it'll dissolve. Not like real glitter. Now, insurance yeast. This is not technically necessary because we probably have enough active yeast in our brew already. But, you know, we call it insurance yeast for a reason. This happens to be Premier Classique, but anything that is over the tolerance of your anything that's the tolerance of it is above the alcohol content of your brew is fine. And our brew is at 10.5% or so. So this should work just fine. Okay. So bottling is like mini raccoon. Yeah. Except that you use this, which is called a bottling wand. It's a plastic tube with a springy thingy on the end, also known as a stem valve. And you just stick it on the end of the tube a little bit. Just an FYI, not all bottling wands have the springy thingy. Yeah. Some are loose. They don't have a spring. You don't want the loose ones. They suck. Okay. So put that in the bottle. Watch the microphone. I'm watching the microphone. And I don't need the cap on this because there's nothing in the bottle. Guess what? What? There's going to be glitter in some of our other bottles too. Yep. This is just weird. I'm sorry. I know this is what you wanted, but this is weird. I may have made poor choices, but look at how pretty that is. Yeah. Let me show them. That is actually kind of cool looking. Oh, it looks like it's slow-mo. All right. Get another bottle ready for me, please. So if after it's all said and done, it kind of looks like that. Yeah. Then you made shimmer wine. I made some shimmer wine. Yep. I'm going to agree with you. I'm not sure I want to drink it, but I agree with you. That, I would have to say you made shimmer wine, babe. All right. I sanitized my finger because there's little glitter bits on the top. And I don't want that. It looks like shampoo. It does look like shampoo. No! And we're using these other bottles that are crown cap bottles for the rest, just because it'll be a lot easier to ensure good carbonation. We're going to be filling the rest of these bottles and we'll see you when we're done. Okay. So we got all of our bottles full now. And we're using a couple of swing tops and a couple of crown caps. Because we're chaos people. Yeah. You know, chaos monkeys. There's glitter residue everywhere. There's going to be glitter for weeks in here. Congratulations. So I am going to add just a little bit of insurance yeast to each of these. Remember we put insurance yeast in this bottle, but these guys didn't get it. So they're getting it now. Yeah, just a little bit. I mean, the worst case scenario is it didn't need it and you just get a little tiny extra bit of debris in the bottom of your bottle, but you're going to get some anyway, if you get any carbonation. So, you know, you win some, you lose some. I'd rather have carbonation and an extra little tiny bit of stuff in the bottom of the bottle than no carbonation. So the swing tops, we're just going to seal up. And then the crown caps, we're going to cap. With Derek's favorite toy. Ta-da! It's our bench bottle capper. Yeah, this is her favorite gadget that we have. I love this bag. Now, the way this works, just line it up with the yellow line on here. Put your bottle cap in there. Somebody told me that they don't use the magnet because they just leave the bottle cap sitting on top of their bottles until they're ready to go, which that could work too. I think the magnet helps to align it properly though. So be careful. And then you just get it in there. Two fingers. And then I like to just give it like a 90 degree turn and hit it one more time. If you don't have it affixed to your bench, then you will have to have your lovely assistant holding the bottom. I would never call you my assistant. She's not my assistant. My partner in crime. My PIC. There's an unusual movie reference. I wonder how many people are going to get that one. One of my favorite movies. My favorite line of all time comes from that movie. Congratulations, you're stupid in three languages. Oh, that's so awesome. All right. And these little weird bottles. I don't think they even put that one on the list. I don't know why. Wow, I quote that one all the time. I don't know why we filmed all four of these getting bottle caps. We said we were just going to do one. Super exciting. It's just what we do, you know. So what are we going to do with all these bottles now? We're going to put them. Yeah, because one of them might not fit. We could just put something over it to protect it. Normally, we put these in what we call the bomb shelter, which is really just a big plastic tote tub from Lowe's or Home Depot. That is designed for beer bottles. Well, it's not designed for it, but it's the height. To stand upright. Yeah. This guy. Probably not going to stand up in there. Not going to stand up. So he's not going in there. I don't know where he's going. We'll just wrap it in a towel or something and stick it in a corner away from everything. Put it on the back porch. All right. So we will see you in three weeks when hopefully they're all carbonated. Yep. Okay, so here's what we did. Both these bottles have been refrigerated. This one has the glitter already in it and it's been stored upside down. And then today I brought it out this way and some of the stuff stays in suspension. It looks like shimmer wine. It actually looks pretty cool. This one has no glitter in it, but we're going to add it in the glass. So now that means I got to open this and then pour it in the glass first. What color do you want? I don't really care. Do you want champagne rose gold or moonstone iridescent? I'm going to let you choose. I'm going to say champagne rose gold. But first I got to... This is a combo. I got to get these into the glasses first. So let me do that. First we got to open this. Towels are at the ready. Whoa, it definitely carbonated. That's cool. Now I got to set up a camera so I can get the pour. Oh, it did the delay. Oh yeah. That's why I closed it back up. All right, so time for the pour. And I'm going to do this quickly so that it doesn't just go everywhere. Well, sort of quickly. I don't want it to... That's pretty cool. Yeah, it is fancy. It worked. Now let's open the other one. All right, here we go. Did it carbonate? It totally carbonated. I know, they both did. And in we go. That looks like champagne. It just totally looks like champagne. Yeah, it does. And now you need to add the glitter. All right, so I think we only need like half. Yeah. Yeah, you don't need much for this. Just a little bit. I think they're going to have completely different effects though. Yeah. Hopefully we never have to do glitter again. Well, just remember this was your choice. I know, but I was dedicated. Okay, that's good. Dedicated. And a little swirling. Yeah. See, that's fancy. That's pretty cool. That's totally fancy. It worked. All right, now I would say adding it in the glass. Is the way to go. Yeah, because this just... I mean, I can do this. What is occurring here scientifically is adding the particulate of the glitter into the pre-carbonated beverage has created nucleation sites. So therefore, the gas is doing a rapid release, which is agitating the liquid, keeping the sparkles in suspension. Yeah, whereas that one, it's just like a swirl. It's like lava lamp versus active glitter. Yeah, I would say. I got to show you what this looks like. See, look at that. That's just cool. It's like continuously active. Pretty awesome. All right, so these are cold, and that is why... Yeah, it's clouding up. I think mine isn't as clear as yours, just because... Because of the glitter. The glitter probably interfered. Because it's edible, it probably can dissolve slightly, maybe. Maybe there's a... Oh, I don't know. Oh, that's possible. It might dissolve, yeah. That creates a cloudy beverage. There's a difference in smell. There's glitter everywhere. Yep. Super angsty. We have glitter hatred. We have glitter phobia. Not phobia. I'm not afraid of it. I just hate it. Glitter angst. Yes, glitter angst. They smell incredibly similar. I would imagine they're going to taste much the same. Yeah, I don't think the glitter would create an aroma difference. All right, you ready to try these? So I have the added glitter one. You have the pre-glittered one. That's the way to go. All right. It's not bad. It's not my kind of thing. No, but since I was going for a dry champagne-like beverage. Absolutely nailed it. With some floral sophistication. Yeah, it's got a little bit of apple notes to it. It's got the floral notes. Apple notes, a little floral. It's got the young funk too, though. So I think in a year this will be really interesting. And this is a prediction. When I stored this upside down, all the glitter fell to the bottom. So I don't think I'd store it that way. I'd want to make sure that all the glitter got in there. And then tip it the last couple of days just to. Honestly, don't put the glitter in it. Yeah, well, this one's already done. Right. Oh, we're going to have to drink that. Yeah. Our one year is going to be sans glitter. And we're going to add glitter. That is so much better. It's fantastic. That is what I wanted, not this. So learn from our mistakes. Even though I wanted it to be in the bottle and prepackaged, I think visually adding it. Visually, this is superior without a doubt. See, you're still glittering. Just trying to put the cap back on. Keep some of that carbonation. So I no longer have to be waiting for the boy with the shimmer wine because we made it ourselves. Yeah, it's not bad. It's like I say, it's not really my thing, but it's not bad. It's an interesting tribute to Firefly. Absolutely. I normally would not go for anything that has glitter in it. I will be totally honest, though. When she told me about this, I was like, do we really have to do that? I felt like it needed that. I agree. And the effect is really cool. I thought that was pretty neat. So we got to start thinking about numbers. That's right. On our screen right now. I know where my towel is. It was on the floor. All right, say it again. On the screen right now, you should be seeing our scorecard. Ours goes from one to 11 because that's right. Ours goes to 11. What you're not seeing is a super secret zero for things that absolutely suck. I am going to go out on a loom based on some of Brian's tasting notes and say this is neither a zero nor an 11, but definitely above a five. OK, I am going to base this on the full effect, meaning the special effect of it as well as the nostalgic effect from the firefly thing. Yeah. If I was to base this just off of taste alone, it would be a lower score. Sure. Because this isn't my thing and it tastes kind of young. And now he has shimmery lips. Yeah, of course I do. We're going to have to like... This is our first video dead. I know, now we're going to have to clean everything. Oh, that's a timer. Never mind. I have a timer going for a reason. Do you have a number, though? I do. Do you? I do as well. All right. One, two, three. 7. 8.5. I couldn't go to great. The only thing that made it a seven is the shimmer. The shimmer? Wasn't for the shimmer. This is a five. It's fantastic. This is just a fun beverage. And if you want to, if you're Team Brown Coat, and you just want to celebrate that sadly, shortly lived... Actually, I'm not sure that that would be Brown Coats that would have been drinking this. I'm pretty sure that was a... That was a... Yes, but this is the only beverage that we had to... Yeah, I know. I know. He's being pedantic. Other than the stuff that Kaylee made in the engine compartment, which they never said what it was. They didn't. They didn't give you any suggestion. Yeah, kind of like on the Matrix. They just had this stuff that they made. They never said if it's distilled. They never said if it's fermented, nothing. But, you know... The Matrix books... They were books, weren't they? I don't know. Probably, maybe. I don't know. I think it was a movie. I'll... I don't know if it's a book. I'm going to read it. Okay. So, if you want to make some shimmer wine, make it. Yeah. Just add the glitter. And we will see you in one year from approximately the time that we drank this, which will be like next, the end of next May, for a one-year tasting to see if it improved, see what changed, that sort of thing. And that'll be on the Citysteading tasting room. But, as always, guys, thanks so much for watching. Have a great day. Bye-bye.