| TRAVELS OF DURSMIRG VOLUME IV THE ROGUES OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND OTHER SOCIAL MISFITS Chapter 34 |
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Jane made her own beer at home, aboard our boat using Blue Ribbon Malt ® extract which came in quart sized cans
that weighed about three pounds.
This black syrup thick as molasses and smelling like something you would like to spoon right out of the can and eat
was available in either light, dark and hopped. You would also find boxes of bottle caps to put up your finished beer
next to the Blue Ribbon Malt extract.
One can of the malt extract would produce five gallons of beer and only required some yeast and sugar to get it
kicking. Jane and I always had several five gallon glass water jugs fitted and sealed with vapor locks aboard our
Dursmirg. The aromas of fermentation made our vessel a heavenly intoxicating home with the yeasty essences of
beer commingled with the many pungent fresh fruity fragrances of Jane’s homemade wine.
(The vapor locks we used were designed to let the CO² gas escape and at the same time keep out the outside air
that could contaminate the product with the chance of turning it to vinegar. The vapor locks all use a water trap and
several varieties are available or you can even make your own as I have done in a pinch.)
The gentle rocking of the boat made our beer brewing and wine making procedure even more productive and the
beer was usually ready to bottle in less than a week.
This is where the expertise came into this procedure; if the beer or wine was bottled too soon the result would be
explosive when the CO² generated excessive pressure. If the beer or wine was totally done kicking the finished
product would be flat…exactly what you wanted for wine but not at all what you wanted for your beer that required a
good head of foam and lots of sparkly effervescent bubbles when you uncapped the finished product.
Along St. Augustine’s waterfront on the shore side of the Bridge of Lions two of these impressive
pedestal mounted lions showcase the approach to the west end of the bridge.
April 12th 1975 this story appeared in the weekend edition of the St. Augustine Record. In the photo
taken in the galley of our anchored boat Dursmirg Jane is corking her homemade wine with a corker that
I designed and made. A dear friend of ours jokingly referred to us as the stone boat people because we
lived aboard a Ferro-cement boat. Jane liked the analogy so well that as you can see in the photo she
even painted “Stone Boat Wine” on one of her wine bottles.
Also depicted on this page from the newspaper in the lower left are prickly pear cactus fruit which we
harvested in the fall along the waterways of Florida where they were found in abundance. Below is a
bookshelf end I carved for Dursmirg.
Here you can get another look at my talented wife Jane from that feature newspaper article about her
wine making. In this photo taken in the galley of our boat Jane is securing a vapor lock or fermentation
lock to a gallon jug that she is making wine in. As a rule Jane would make five or six gallons of a type of
wine at a time but occasionally a small batch of a gallon would be made if fruit was in short supply. Also
another reason for a gallon sized batch was that we would make prickly pear wine and bottle it young so
that it would continue to ferment after we bottled it. The reason for this procedure was to make a
sparkling wine.
Prickly pear wine is one of the very few wines that is especially excellent drunk young and when it is
still actively sparkling it is a treat well worth the effort.
Aged still prickly pear wine should be over three years old in order to be at the height of its perfection
and then it completely looses its bright magenta color and the flavor picks up a sherry type of body and
aroma.
This is page three from that St. Augustine Record weekend edition on Jane’s wine making. Free Florida
fruit inspired this article and as you can see prickly pear, orange and coconut wines were featured.
Jane and I on the back deck of our shrimp boat Secotan in the 1980s.
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