White Wine

I have recently deviated from my usual deviation of making wine from anything but fruit by making a batch with green grapes to make a traditional white wine! I didn't follow a recipe as such and just "winged it". The grapes were acquired from an abandoned allotment near my fathers. Here is a rough idea of what I used.

• 1.5(ish)kg of grapes
• 1.5(ish)kg sugar
• 1 teaspoon of yeast
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient
• 1 teaspoon of pectolase
• 1 tablespoon of citric acid
• Enough water to make upto a gallon

My method was as usual from making from frozen fruit. I put the clump of frozen grapes in a bowl with the sugar and covered in boiling water. Then when the water was cool enough to out my hand in I added all the other ingredients and covered for a few days. I then strained it all through a muslin square and put in a demijohn. It is now happily bubbling away. I have no idea how nice this will taste but at the moment it smells like white wine so I must have something right!

Once I'd finished this wine I made another batch of elderberry wine but as there is no difference in then recipe and method I've already used then I won't repeat it.

Green Grapes

A few days of fermenting and a little squeeze to release some juice

Getting ready to put in a demijohn!

Rhubarb Wine

The time of year has come again when in my dads allotment there is a ridiculous glut of rhubarb. He has about 3 large plants and possibly a couple more smaller ones and each can produce a good amount each week. Within quarter of an hour I'd managed to pick all the stalks I needed to make a gallon of wine with plenty left over to eat and give away. The recipe I used was the first that came up using a google search and can be found here. I took pictures along the way so you can see what I did.

Rhubarb growing in the allotment; this is a tiny portion of what my dad grows.

Just over 1.5kg of rhubarb

Exactly 1.5kg of rhubarb once the ends are trimmed!

Cut into pieces; the recipe says about 6mm but I didn't measure!

Add 1.3 kg of sugar

After a short stirring the rhubarb is already breaking down in the sugar and releasing juice.

Cover and then leave for 3 days.

Each day I took the cling film off and crushed it to release more juice

On the third day I had loads of juice.

Using a new cloth and sieve combination I started straining the juice away.

The juice was collected in a food grade bucket.

What was left over when all the juice was squeezed out of the pulp.

250ml of grape juice was added.

Finally using cooled boiled water filled up a demijohn. I added yeast, yeast nutrient and pectolase enzyme at this stage and it is popping away nicely!

All that remains now is to leave it a few weeks then rack it away from the sediment at least once, maybe twice, then bottle it up to mature or just drink! I'll let you know how it tastes!

Raspberry Wine From Frozen Fruit

I have started a new batch of raspberry wine, mainly to free up some space in the freezer but also because I like wine!  This will probably taste different to my first batch of raspberry wine (which can be found at this link) for a couple of reasons; the first reason is I didn't use the same technique to make the wine and secondly (and more importantly) the alcohol content will probably be much higher, I'll explain why later.

The method I used for this batch was as follows....

Firstly I defrosted a large bag of berries; they had frozen into a large block and when defrosted a lot of juice had already been released. I didn't weigh the berries but have an idea in my head of how large the bag was, slightly smaller than a bowling ball!

The next step I did was to pour a kettle of boiling water over the berries, approx 1.7 litres, to encourage more juice to be released. Then I poured the mix through a sieve in an attempt to catch any seeds and reduce the amount of pulp going through. With the pulp that was left over I poured the same amount of boiling water again and repeated the last step. Satisfied that I had got a good amount of juice from the berries I discarded the remaining pulp, it had lost most if it's colour anyway.

The pulp still full of juice.

Below is a video of me shaking the juice out!

When the mix had cooled enough I added a teaspoon of pectolase to further help break the fruit down and covered the bowl to leave it overnight. The next day I added the sugar, this is another area that I differed from the previous raspberry wine; instead of measuring the amount of sugar that went in I just measured the gravity and stopped adding sugar when I was happy. It was roughly 1.75kg of sugar but the main point is that the SG was 1.111 which will give a much higher alcohol level if all this is converted. For example, if the final gravity is .99  then alcohol level would be over 16% which I'm more than happy with!

When all the sugar was dissolved I moved the mix into a clean sterilized demijohn, again passing it through a sieve to collect any pulp. Once it was in the demijohn I added a teaspoon of yeast before putting an airlock on. The demijohn was then put to one side in the kitchen with plenty of kitchen roll underneath, just in case it overflowed like my plum wine did!

While I was waiting for this wine to start working I racked the plum wine. It seemed to have stopped bubbling and has been fermenting for about 3 months. There was a think layer of sediment in the bottom of this demijohn, partly from the fermentation and partly because I left a lot of pulp in the juice. This seems to have formed into small balls and sunk to the bottom. Now it is in a fresh demijohn and its clearing nicely. I had a small taste of the wine and am impressed with the flavour so far. Give it some time to mature and it'll hopefully taste great!

The debris in the bottom of  the plum wine.

Once a couple of days had passed the raspberry wine was bubbling away very happily. It has got an amount of pulp that has formed into balls, similar to the plum wine and due to the strong fermentation these are all floating at the top. Luckily there isn't as much as was with the plum wine so haven't had a eruption like before.

The raspberry wine at the front and plum behind

Raspberry Wine

As there was a huge glut of raspberries again this year, along with jam, we decided to do a batch of raspberry wine. I did a quick Google search and came up with a recipe found at this link. I didn't fully follow the recipe but used it as a guide.

A small section of raspberries, there is about 30 metres of them!

8 kilograms of berries!

We started with a huge container of raspberries and started straining the juice out for use in seedless jam. First off we filled a muslin square with berries and once a knot was tied in the top we started squeezing the juice out. When we had 3 kilos of juice we put that to one side and used that to make the jam. What was left in the muslin was then squeezed out into a bucket along with 7 pints of water, a crushed campden tablet, a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, half teaspoon of pectic enzyme, half teaspoon of citric acid and about enough sugar to bring the mix's starting gravity to 1.092. I then left the mix over night and then squeezed the bag before adding a teaspoon of wine yeast. After 5 days the mix had reached a gravity of 1.020 so I squeezed as much juice out of the bag as I could and then racked it into a glass demijohn and added a airlock. I will now leave it a few months before racking again.

The mix in the fermenting bucket with the hydrometer to measure the gravity.

The wine in the glass demijohn.

Dandelion Wine

Inspired by comments on one of my earlier posts I have decided to have a go at making dandelion wine. In the comments on the post I was given a recipe which I have mostly followed but with slight deviation; This was mainly due to being unable to find one of the ingredients but fingers crossed it'll be ok.


The first step I took was to collect the dandelion heads. Due to the time of year and the abundance of them on my lawn, this step didn't take too long. The recipe asks for 6 pints of dandelion heads but I only managed 3 pints, although they where packed quite tight into the pint glass so will assume I have picked enough for the recipe. If I haven't picked enough then the only downside I can see is that it won't taste as much of dandelion as it's supposed to; Having no base for comparison, due to not having tasted dandelions, I will continue with the recipe as normal.

Lawn covered in dandelions

The next step (once I had washed my pollen stained hands) was to pour boiling water (7 pints approx) over the dandelions and let them sit in a cupboard for 48 hours out of the way. At this point they started to have a not entirely pleasant smell about them.

After leaving them for 48 hours they really had a smell to them, again not pleasant. The next step was to peel 2 lemons and 1 orange, trying not to get the white pith in. The peel was placed in a large pan along with the dandelion mix and 3lbs of sugar then brought to the boil for 10 minutes (it took about 15 minutes to get to boil). After taking it off the heat I squeezed the juice from the peeled lemons and orange in and added 1 litre of red grape juice (this is where I deviated from the recipe provided; The original recipe asks for white grape juice not red). It was then left to cool.

Pan of dandelions and peel (pond water)

Upon returning from a rather unsuccessful walk, the baby cried for most of it, I carried on with the next step. I added a heaped teaspoon of pectolase and a heaped teaspoon of yeast nutrients then gave a good stir. Pectolase helps breakdown plant matter and clear the wine and nutrients are to give the yeast food to help it get going better. After I had given it a good stir I added the wine yeast and covered with cling film. It now needs to be kept covered for 4-5 days, stirring daily. After 4-5 days I will transfer the liquid into a demijohn with airlock to ferment.

Garden after dandelions were picked

When I left for work this morning it looked as though fermentation had started but only slowly at the moment.