“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer in a bottle… Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, take a great sniff of the wine and change the season in your veins by the simple expedient of raising the glass to your lips and tilting summer in.” -Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine.

Now, doesn’t that make you want to brew some dandelion wine? Oh, yeah!

Our first batch of dandelion wine (and our first wine made from flowers) didn’t get off to a great start. One morning, two weekends ago, we picked a whole bunch of dandelion heads, then left them in the kitchen and went off to do some other stuff.

Returning to the dandelions in the evening, we noticed they had started to close their sunny little heads. Which meant it was a bit of a bugger to pick the petals off. (Using any green bits apparently imparts a resinous flavour, and we wanted to avoid this by using just the petals). Undaunted, I picked the petals off, measured them (2 quarts, by volume), and started the brew by putting the petals and citrus rind in a hop bag, then in a fermentation bin, and pouring over boiling water. This was meant to sit for a few days before the other ingredients were added.

Except that shortly thereafter, the mixture started to turn a rather unappetising shade of brown. By the next day, it was really brown, and definitely didn’t look like it would be “summer in a bottle” by the end of the process. More like “mud in a bottle”. Irk. So I decided to start again.

This time, I picked the petals straight from the flowers. I measured them by volume when picking, but then double-checked the amount by weighing them after. (If you’re using a big container to pick the petals in, they will compress as you’re picking them, which will make the amount inaccurate.)

I also altered the technique somewhat, simmering the citrus rind in water to extract more flavour, and adding the citrus flesh to the hop bag with the rind and petals.

Success! The mixture stayed a lovely yellow colour instead of turning brown. After five days, I squeezed out all the goodness from the hop bag, and added a litre of white grape juice, a kilo of sugar, half a packet of yeast (Gervin GV3) and a quarter cup of strong tea (for tannin). It was then transferred to a demijohn for fermenting. As I write this, it is happily bubbling away, turning the sugar into alcohol, and making us a batch of “summer in a bottle”!

So what caused the first batch to turn brown? I don’t know for sure, but have a couple of ideas:

1. I used too many petals (this was suggested to me by someone at a homebrew shop). The weight of the petals the first time around was 340g (12 ounces). The weight the second time was 180g (6-1/2 ounces). Big difference.

2. I didn’t have enough water in the fermentation bin to start, and with part of the hop bag exposed to the air, the petals oxidised and turned brown. I don’t remember much high school chemistry, but this sounds plausible.

3. The little people, who love messing with my mind, also messed with my homebrew and did something nasty to it without me noticing. (The paranoid answer.)

Any other ideas?

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the process, but we’re going to try and pick some more petals to make another batch (a lot of them have gone to seed already), in which case I’ll take pictures of the whole process.

Is anyone else making any wine right now?

A few weeks ago, we started some wine which turned out to be the best wine EVER, even better than the blackberry and elderberry wines we’ve made previously. We were both surprised at how smooth and delicious the wine was.

We collected the raspberries from our own bushes as they ripened, then froze them in single layers on parchment-lined baking sheets, before transferring them to freezer containers. As I’ve mentioned before, freezing the fruit eliminates the need to either use chemicals or boiling water to sterilise the fruit.

Let me just do a little aside here and highly recommend the variety of raspberries that we bought in spring 2007. Joan J is a primocane variety (meaning it bears fruit on first-year canes) which produces heavy crops of sweet, delicious berries. BTW, you can get TWO crops per year from primocane raspberries by not cutting down the canes after they have finished fruiting (which is the usual advice). Instead prune just the tips of the old canes and the following summer you will get an early crop from these second-year canes. The new canes will also bear a crop starting in mid-summer. This year, we picked around 6.3kg (14 pounds) from the second-year canes, and about the same again from the new canes. (The row is about 4.5 metres / 15 feet long.) Two crops for the price of one, gotta love that!

But back to the wine. I used slightly more fruit than I have in past batches of wine, including some freshly frozen grapes. I also used a litre (quart) of white grape juice. The yeast used was Gervin varietal A. I’d read somewhere that putting the sugar in at the same time as the yeast can kill the yeast. Although I hadn’t had this problem with the other batches, I decided to add the sugar syrup a few days after adding the yeast (just before transferring from fermentation bin to demijohn), instead of at the same time.

Next year we will be using a lot more of our raspberry crop to brew this fine wine!



Raspberry wine

1. It’s best to start with frozen fruit. Freezing sterilises the fruit without having to use chemicals or boiling water. Freeze raspberries in a single layer on parchment paper-lined baking trays, then transfer to containers once frozen. Halve grapes, removing pips if they aren’t seedless, then transfer to containers and freeze. Freeze fruit at least two days ahead of time.

2. Put frozen fruit into a muslin hop bag, then into the fermentation bin, and add two pints (38 ounces) of filtered water. Cover and let stand 24 hours, or until the fruit is thawed and the whole mixture has come up to room temperature. Add juice to bin.

3. Start yeast. Sprinkle yeast over 50ml (2 ounces) of warm water to which 1/2 teaspoon sugar had been added, then leave to stand for 20 minutes. After this time it should be foamed up. Stir and add to the bin, then stir again. Cover.

4. Put bin in a warm spot (around 20C/70F), or if you’ll putting it in a cooler location, use a heating strap around the bin.

5. Every day or every couple of days, stir the mixture in the bin, mashing the hop bag to help break the fruit up.

6. After a week or so, the wine will be ready for transfer to a demijohn. After giving your hands a really good scrub, squeeze the hop bag to remove as much juice as possible. Feed pulp to the compost bin if you have one.

7. Dissolve sugar in one pint (19 ounces) water over low heat. Let cool to room temperature, then add to the bin.

8. Pour into a sterilised one-gallon glass demijohn. Don’t forget to also sterilise any equipment that will be used in the process, such as the funnel and bung/airlock. For sterilising, we use a chlorine-based agent for the demijohn, and boiling water for anything else. Fit a bung and airlock. Put the wine back into a nice warm spot (or cooler spot, with heating strap).

7. The wine will continue to ferment, and the sediment will start to settle to the bottom. A week or two later, syphon the wine into a second sterilised demijohn and then let it stand again. When the wine has cleared and fermentation has finished, it is ready to transfer to bottles (which also need to be sterilised). We use old screw-top wine bottles, that way we don’t have to bother with corks.

This wine was ready to drink as soon as it was bottled. There was almost no sediment in the second demi-john, so we got over six bottles of wine.

Cost was a bit more than last time because of the fresh grapes we added: one gallon (six bottles) of this wine cost about £4.25 ($6.50), which works out to around 70p ($1.07) per bottle. That’s still much cheaper than the cheapest supermarket wine. And much finer tasting!

Our second batch of wine was elderberry raspberry. Nigel Deacon recommends adding raspberries to elderberry wine for an improved bouquet (hoity-toity as that may sound).

The wine has now been fermented and bottled, and happy days, tastes great! In fact, we’ve gone through four of the six bottles already (we’re keeping the other two for awhile to see how the wine matures).

My FIL (who used to be into homebrew) was very impressed, said it was difficult to distinguish from grape wine.

The elderberries were in the freezer from last year (or was it the year before?). Elderberry trees are quite common here, but sadly we didn’t pick a lot of elderberries this year. Knowing how excellent this wine is means we will be sure to pick a lot next year!

When we made this wine, there were not quite enough elderberries to make up the required 1.6kg (3-1/2 pounds), hence the addition of a few blackberries and sloes.

The procedure is the same as for Blackberry pineapple wine. Instead of pineapple juice, we used 100% blackcurrant juice blend by Ribena (this is a new product, not the same as regular Ribena, which has sugar in it). And OMG in looking up that link I’ve just discovered that Ribena is owned by GlaxoSmithKline, well that is the last time I am buying that! Red or purple grape juice would also have a complementary flavour. We used Gervin wine yeast no. 2.



Elderberry raspberry wine

1. It’s best to start with frozen berries. Freezing the berries sterilises them without having to use chemicals or boiling water. (The former of which is undesireable for obvious reasons, the latter because it makes the wine more difficult to clear.) Put frozen berries into a muslin hop bag, then into the fermentation bin, and add two pints (38 ounces) of filtered water and the juice. Cover and let stand 24 hours, or until the fruit is thawed and the whole mixture has come up to room temperature.

2. Dissolve sugar in one pint (19 ounces) water over low heat. Let cool to room temperature, then add to the bin.

3. Start yeast. Sprinkle yeast over 50ml (2 ounces) of warm water to which 1/2 teaspoon sugar had been added, then leave to stand for 20 minutes. After this time it should be foamed up. Stir and add to the bin, then stir again. Cover.

4. Put bin in a warm spot (around 20C/70F), or if you’ll putting it in a cooler location, use a heating strap around the bin.

5. Every day or every couple of days, stir the mixture in the bin, mashing the hop bag to help break the fruit up.

6. After a week or so, the wine will be ready for transfer to a demijohn. After giving your hands a really good scrub, squeeze the hop bag to remove as much juice as possible. (We compost the pulp.) Then pour the wine into a sterilised one-gallon demijohn. Don’t forget to also sterilise any equipment that will be used in the process, such as the funnel and bung/airlock. For sterilising, we use a chlorine-based agent for the demijohn, and boiling water for anything else. Although you can get plastic demijohns, we always use glass, being wary of plastic for a variety of reasons. Glass demijohns are available from homebrew shops, Wilkinsons stores, charity shops, eBay, etc. Fit a bung and airlock. Put the wine back into a nice warm spot (or cooler spot, with heating strap).

7. The wine will continue to ferment, and the sediment will start to settle to the bottom. A week or two later, syphon the wine into a second sterilised demijohn and then let it stand again. When the wine has cleared and fermentation has finished, it is ready to transfer to bottles (which also need to be sterilised). You’ll know fermentation has finished when there are no longer any tiny bubbles forming at the top of the wine, and no more bubbles going through the airlock.

How long you let the wine mature is up to you. Some sources say the wine is ready for drinking when you transfer to the bottles, other sources say to let the wine mature for some months or even years. We drank some bottles very young and plan to leave others to mature.

As for the cost, one gallon (six bottles) of this wine cost about £2.80 ($4.20), which works out to less than 50p (70 cents) per bottle. That’s about 1/6 the cost of the cheapest supermarket wine.

The blackberries and sloes may be a big disappointment this year, but there are still LOTS of apples and crabapples in these parts. A few weekends ago, Mr Thrifty and I collected apples and crabs from around 10 different trees, with the goal of turning them into cider. (For any American readers out there: What we call cider in this country is what y’all refer to as “hard” cider in the US of A, ’cause of its alcoholic content and all. That be the stuff I’ll be instructing you on today.)

First the apples were juiced with our Champion juicer. It took a lot of hours to juice them, over a period of two days, and frankly by the end of it I wished not to see an apple for quite some time. Happily, a marathon showing of Only Fools and Horses happened to be on telly, so this alleviated the monotony somewhat.

After we juiced the apples, the specific gravity of the juice was tested with a hydrometer. It’s meant to be between 1.050 and 1.055. Ours was around 1.045, so we added a bit of organic granulated sugar (dissolved first in water), to bring the SG up to 1.050.

The juice was poured into two cleaned and sterilised one-gallon glass demijohn jars. Then the yeast was added. No cider yeast in the house (oops!), instead we used Gervin wine yeast no. 3, which is what was on hand. The packet was divided in half, with each half being started (separately) per the packet instructions (in 50ml warm water to which 1/2 teaspoon sugar had been added). After 20 minutes, the yeast was added to the demijohns of cider.

By the following morning, the cider in one demijohn had fermented so vigorously that foam had bubbled up through the airlock and across the tabletop, making its getaway for the carpet. It was foiled in its nefarious quest, however, and the airlock and bung were cleaned and reinserted.

A sediment quickly formed at the bottom of the demijohns. After two weeks, the cider was racked into another set of cleaned and sterilised demijohns, and the level topped up with more apple juice (which had been left over from the initial juicing and stored in the fridge).

You’ll notice in the picture above that one demijohn of cider cleared much quicker than the other, I suppose because one had more “sludge” from the bottom of the fermentation bin when the demijohns were filled. The cloudy and clear batches were distributed half and half into the second set of demijohns, and both ended up clearing the same.

After another two weeks, the cider was sampled and found very fit to drink. The yeast had finished consuming the sugar! It was completely dry (i.e. unsweet), but we decided against sweetening it at this point. It was syphoned again into cleaned and sterilised 2-litre glass jars (former Westons Scrumpy cider jars).

A very successful first try at cider making! Since the apples were foraged for free, the only cost was the yeast (£1.15, which did two gallons) and a bit of sugar (only about 15p worth). That works out to £1.30 for four two-litre jars of cider, which would cost £16 at the supermarket, or £9.60 from a local cider farmshop.

I like to mix a bit of sugar into each glass of cider immediately before drinking it, as I prefer cider on the sweet side.

Since then another gallon has been started, in much the same way, except the apples were juiced as they were picked, the juice then frozen in glass jars (former 700g passata jars)  until enough was collected for another gallon. (This turned out to be seven passata jars.) Also, proper cider yeast was used. Tasting remains to be done on this one.

So here’s to a little less tax being handed over to Gordon & Co. Cheers!

After reading up on home winemaking (somewhat obsessively, I must admit) , it was time to brew our first batch of wine.

Some blackberries had been languishing in the freezer from a most successful 2006 forage, when said berries were huge, abundant and juicy. (As opposed to this year’s berries, which disappointingly seem to be diminuitive, seedy and scarce.)

We followed (more or less) the instructions on Nigel Deacon’s Winemaking Notes page (note that if you’re using Firefox browser, it messes up the format of the page somewhat). I like his simple approach which minimises chemicals. No testing pH, specific gravity or sugar levels, just bung it all in and let the would-be wine get on with it!

Our first batch was a gallon of blackberry and pineapple. This combination is suggested by Nigel Deacon, and is said to give the wine an “excellent bouquet”.

Nigel suggests freezing fruit to sterilise it (the other two methods are boiling and chemical sterilisation, the latter of which is not recommended). Since the blackberries were already frozen, that part was a no-brainer.

I’ll leave the basics of winemaking to those who can speak more authoritatively than yours truly, but a couple important things to remember: germs are NOT your friend (or at least, not a friend of your wine), so ensure everything is well-cleaned and sterilised; and heat (but not cold) will KILL your yeast, so don’t ever add yeast to overly-warm liquid.

Blackberry pineapple wine

First we sterilised our fermentation bin with a chlorine-based agent called “Chempro”. This brand does not appear to be available anymore (ours was donated by my FIL), but ones by VWP and Young’s brew are other chlorine-based agents that are available. We followed directions on the packet, and rinsed out the bin thoroughly with tap water afterwards.

We then put 1.8 kg (4 pounds) of frozen blackberries into a muslin hop bag and put it in the bin. (Using a hop bag means not having to strain out bits of mashed-up fruit later.)

Next we added 3 pints of filtered water to the bin, as well as one litre of pineapple juice (“not from concentrate” juice from the supermarket’s chiller case, £1.39). Then covered with the bin lid and let the fruit thaw for 24 hours or so.

Now we added the sugar… one kg of organic granulated sugar, Billington’s brand from Sainsbury’s (£1.29). I though it would save a lot of stirring if the sugar were dissolved first, so I added it to 1/2 pint of filtered water and heated it gently until the sugar dissolved. This sugar syrup was then added to the bin.

The yeast went in next. The packet of wine yeast we used was Gervin wine yeast no. 2 (GV2), which is “especially suitable for red wines based on autumn fruits such as blackberries, elderberries and sloes”. Actually we used half a packet of yeast, since one packet will make up to five gallons and we were only making one gallon. The other half of the packet was wrapped in clingfilm and put in the fridge to await another batch of wine. Per the package directions, the yeast was sprinkled in 50ml of warm water to which 1/2 teaspoon sugar had been added, then left to stand for 20 minutes. After this time it had foamed up nicely. It was then stirred and added to the bin, which was also then stirred to distribute the yeast.

At this point the level in the bin was a bit over the five litre mark.

Then the waiting began. We put a heating strap around the bin, but not at the level of the liquid, since we were afraid this would make it too hot. Instead the strap was placed higher up the bin.

Some sources say to stir the mixture daily, others don’t mention stirring at all. We stirred the wine twice during the week it was in the bin.

After one week, the hops bag containing the blackberries was well-squeezed to remove as much juice as possible (the pulp was composted), and the fermented juice was poured through a funnel into a cleaned and sterilised one-gallon glass demijohn. A rubber bung with airlock was fitted, and we watched as the wine continued to ferment and bubbles passed through the airlock (very exciting, well at least if it is the first batch of wine you have ever made it is exciting, maybe not so much if you’re an old hand at it).

Another week later the wine was racked into another sterilised demijohn using siphon tubing, leaving the sediment behind. The wine was surprisingly clear at this point. Of course we had a tiny tipple, and were amazed at how good this very young wine tasted. The pineapple really did add something special to the blackberry flavour.

So now we wait and will rack again further at some point, and eventually transfer to wine bottles.

We are no longer homebrew virgins!

We are finally on the winemaking and cider-brewing bandwagon! Having collected demijohns and other assorted brewing equipment for months, our first batches of wine and cider are at last being fermented. (Beer is currently a glimmer on the horizon, but its time in the sun is coming.)

A lot of the necessary equipment was acquired in Thrifty fashion. The demijohns were purchased from a charity shop (a bargain at £1 each), and various bits and bobs came from my FIL, who has given up making his own alcoholic beverages (and given away most associated equipment), but still had a hydrometer, sterilising agent (Chempro) and heating straps. The biggest purchase was a plastic fermentation bin, from a winemaking shop for around £8.

Part of the appeal of homemade wine for me is the variety of wines that can be made. Never mind Corbiere, Shiraz, Merlot… how about blackberry, elderberry, crabapple or sloe wine (mmm, slurp).

My FIL still has some homemade wine left from his winemaking days, and his well-aged blackberry and sloe wines are so smooth and delicious, well I could wax eloquently, but suffice it to say they’re the cat’s pajamas (hmm, I’d like to see my cats in pajamas…)

And of course, NOT contributing to the coffers of Brown and Darling, that mad-cap duo who haven’t quite gotten a handle on how the average Brit lives, has major appeal as well.

I’ll be sharing my winemaking triumphs (hopefully disasters will be nowhere to be found) in the coming weeks with all of you out there in cyberland… Cheers!