Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Bolsward, Netherlands.


Saturday, October 8, 2016

Stocked up on wine!

Gorgeous sunny day yesterday...possibly the last really nice day of 2016 as the temperature here in Ottawa soared to 25C (77F) with sunshine. Normal highs are around 15C (60F).

So, we tried to spend as much time as possible outside. But, we did have to go out for a drive to the nearby village of Manotick, which is now actually a suburb of Ottawa.

Lindsey had went to a "brew it yourself" place last month and got a batch of white wine and a batch of red wine started for us. Total cost for 45 litres of wine (60 standard 750 ml bottles) was $222 CAD ($168 USD)...or about $3.70 CAD ($2.85 USD) per bottle.

And yesterday, it was ready for bottling.

Or in our case, bagging!

Except, I forgot to take the camera.

Really simple procedure though. They wheel out the two carboy containers, and bring four empty plastic bags. These are the same bags that the concentrate comes in, and we had called them ahead of time and asked them to save some for us. They had then been sanitized, and we siphon the wine from the carboy container and into the bags. Get as much of the air out of the bags as possible, and put a cap on them.


Then, when you want wine, you have a separate cap that has a pour lever on it. Put that cap on, and pour out what you need as you need it into a one litre container.

I'm sure we were only in there a half an hour and we were done. Now, we're stocked up on wine and will have enough left over for when we return here for two weeks at Christmas time.

Then, made a quick stop at the bank and then back home to Lindsey's.

They were playing in the backyard and Lindsey was babysitting for a friend so there were two extra little ones.

Cameron's "Angry Birds" imitation.

And Sadie. She said she wasn't angry though!

I had a short nap in the afternoon, then took on the big job of scrubbing all the bugs and crap off of Sherman's front end from all of our driving over the last two weeks. Much better!

Not sure what's on the agenda for today. Justin has gone to work a side job for the weekend insulating a friend's cottage, and Lindsey works a 10am to 5pm shift at the restaurant. So we're on grandparent duty looking after the kids! Supposed to rain this morning, but we'll find something interesting to do.

Oh, almost forgot...we received a couple of packages in the mail. We'll tell you more about them another day!

Pretty packaging from www.sudiosweden.com

The # 1 best selling bathroom digital scale is on sale again....dirt cheap!

And in Canada...


  1. What happened to the Sat. swimming and dancing lessons?

    1. They don't have that today as its thanksgiving weekend the city cancels everything for this weekend.

  2. I'm certain you will have a fun day with the kids. Are you staying in the RV? Wondering if Cameron will want a sleepover in it?

    Colin did a wedding once for a You Brew It company in Vancouver. The bride kept adding and adding photos as the day and evening went on. In the end they were $3000.00 over budget and paid that portion in wine. We had a lot of wine, so much so that when we moved and had a garage sale we were selling it at $5.00 per bottle and had people coming back as it was so good. Some had been ageing for 2 - 3 years. I could never drink it just made. Hope you enjoy yours.

    1. We had a great day with them both! :-) Yes, we are staying in the motorhome home while we are here and Cameron already stayed with us on Friday night. He was so excited about it but unfortunately part way through the night he got sick and wanted to go back into the house to be with his Mom so we will have to try it again another night. Sadie wants to stay with us in there as well so we will do that another night.

      We have never had a bottle of wine in our house that has EVER sat that long without being opened. ;-) We will drink some of the wine now and the rest will be "aged" and ready for when we come back in December. Good thing we aren't wine connoisseurs!

  3. I not know that 'You Brew It' offered wine fermenting, just beer brewing. Adds a new meaning to our '2Buck Chuck' wines.

    1. Here, the "You Brew it" kind of stores originally did wine, in fact I am not sure if you can do beer in them or not. I know you can buy the beer kits to take home and make though.

