Bittermelon Wine & Vinegar

Well, well, well… It seems I’ve forgotten to blog through the summer. Rest assured, I have not stopped fermenting. If anything, I’ve fermented even more.

As spring turned to summer, I began dipping my toes in alcohol production. No, I’m not squishing grapes with my toes to make wine, if that’s what you’re thinking.

I turned some of those Burris county strawberries into a strawberry country wine. I’ve also done a few different meads. But that’s not what we’re here for today. Today we’re talking about one of my favorite weird fruits… BITTERMELON!

If you’ve never had bitter melon before, I encourage you to find your nearest supplier (most likely an Asian market!) and trying it. It’s ungodly bitter but delicious in its own way!

Normally, I cut the bitterness by juicing the melon with lemons. But, to be honest, I just love the bitterness too. Maybe it comes from having a bitter soul, who knows?

Last week, I decided it was time to dance the dance and begin fermenting with bittermelon. I’ve experimented a bit with basic wine making but haven’t tried vinegars yet.

To start, I bought an unspecified amount of bittermelon and cut out the seeds (like a cantaloupe).

From there, I juiced the rinds with a few lemons. I added sugar and shook the contents together in a mason jar. After the sugar dissolved, I added in ale yeast. After a few gentle shakes, I added a water lock to the jar and set it in the pantry to begin cooking!

For the vinegar, I took the pulp from the juicing and blended it with water. I then wrung the mixture through cheese clothe until I had about 3/4 a large mason jar’s worth of liquid. I added some sugar, apple cider vinegar, and wine yeast. Shook to combine.

I added an elastic cloth over the rim to keep out the bugs. Each day, I stir the mixture to aerate. The first few days it was frothy but now it smells alcoholic and slightly sour.

Unfortunately, it’s been a few days and the bitter melon wine did not take off. My guess is that I over acidified the mixture with the lemons and it made the yeast unhappy.

But sometimes that happens with experimentation. I’ll give it a few more days before deciding what to do!

As a bonus, today I started a strawberry scuppernong vinegar. I just juiced the leftover fruit I had in the fridge (<1.5 lbs fruit) and added water to bring it up to 5 cups of juice/water mix. I followed the same procedures as above.

We’ll see where everything goes over the next few months!