Drinking It Young

Spring is here at last, a time for new beginnings and a new flurry of activity on the blog. It might still be freezing but the evenings are lengthening and I've been clearing the freezer of all last season's fruit to make way for this year's harvest.

There were a lot of blackcurrants in there. Since I last updated the Rough Enough Guide I have started 11 gallons of wine and six of them have been blackcurranty. Two plain old blackcurrant and the remaining four blackcurrants mixed with,

1. blackberries
2. damsons
3. apple
4. strawberries.

Way back in August 2011 the first wine I made was blackcurrant and it disappointed me. Dry, dry as a bone. I think that was why it took me two years to attempt blackcurrant again.

Then Jazzer presented me with the entire crop from her solitary blackcurrant bush and we had another go. We started it together and I continued the racking process myself. We used less sugar and Young's Super Wine Yeast Compound. It finished really quickly and, needing something bottled and Jazzer very keen to see it in bottles, we went ahead. We bottled five and polished off the last bottle from the flagon. It was surprisingly delicious considering it was only 6 months old. Jazzer wanted to get stuck into another one but I explained to her that it would not really be properly ready until next August.

Can I take it home with me?

You can take your two bottles if you think it's wise. 

Two bottles? But...

Her face fell.

Did you think it would be all yours? The deal is, and I do this for anyone who provides me with ingredients. If there are six bottles I keep three. For I do all the sterilising and racking.

She saw my point and she got her two bottles.

You know you should really keep them six months.

I'll drink one and keep one.

She drank them both and now she has the wine making bug, rang me tonight looking for a bit of advice on her first batch which she is making using frozen blackberries and raspberries from Tescos. Interesting. If she keeps this up she'll be in rehab before long.

I'll try to keep my three bottles of the Jazzer Blackcurrant until August but it is rather good. No doubt, next time she's here we will fall to it with gusto.

 Blackcurrant & Apple

Blackcurrant & Strawberry

Rhubarb Wine Update

The 4 pounds of chopped frozen rhubarb and the handful of blackberries were marinaded in 3 pounds of sugar and left for 24 hours. Last night I added around 7 pints of boiling water and gave it a good stir. This morning, when it was cool, I added a heaped teaspoonful of Young's Super Wine Yeast Compound. No need to add nutrients and it is supposed aid fermentation and clearing. This will be my first time using it so it will be interesting to see if it is an improvement.

Catching Up, Drinking Japanese Knotweed

I am afraid I have been very neglectful of this blog and up until very recently I have also been neglectful of my wine. You see Bert had made me a lovely cupboard to store my flagons in and when the cupboard door was closed I almost forgot they were there! I had quite the flurry just before I went to visit my brother in Vancouver but since returning had barely looked at it.

Until a few weeks ago. As I wrote in my other blog...

In the past three weeks I have bottled 5 gallons of wine (30 bottles), racked 21 gallons, poured one gallon down the toilet and started one gallon. It is almost like having a job. I also drank some and gave some away to delighted and grateful  recipients.

The minute I poured the last of the beetroot down the toilet I regretted it. The reason was it had flakey, cruddy bits floating in it. As the last of that strong, ruby red liquid disappeared around the U-bend I realised it was probably just a bit of dried stuff from its neck from when it was at the height of its fermentation. Oh well. Live and learn. It did free up a glass flagon for the start of the racking process. Most experts advise regular racking, but some of the stuff I had on the go hadn't been racked for 5 months!

I bottled everything I could. A dozen each of rosehip and orange and six of carrot and sultana. The rosehip is a bit on the sweet side, the orange should be good for mulling at Christmas. The best was the carrot and sultana. So all is racked and in shiny clean flagons and I don't have to go back to it for at least a week.

I started a batch of carrot, parsnip and raisin a couple of weeks ago and tonight I started a rhubarb. It is recommended that rhubarb should be chopped and frozen for at least 24 hours before freezing. It had been thrown it in the freezer unchopped several months ago. Tonight I let it partially defrost then cut it with the kitchen scissors. There are 4 pounds of it lying in a nice clean bucket and I've added 3 pounds of sugar and a handful of frozen blackberries that had fallen out of their bag. Lid on and that will be left for 24 hours then I'll add a gallon of boiling water and who knows what else? I'll check my various recipes and do what takes my fancy.

Tonight we are having a glass of Japanese Knotweed.  I made it in May 2012 and bottled it last January. We drank some in the summer time. This bottle has been lying around since then. It is actually very good. Note to self. Japanese Knotweed improves with age. Second note. Make some more in 2014. It is not as if it is hard to get and it is completely free!

Making Blackberry, Drinking Parsnip

I have been remiss. Almost two months since I updated this blog. This is some of what I've been up to.

Making a vegetable garden.
Learning to make curry.
Saying goodbye to my darling Bonnie dog.
Watching Game of Thrones.
Reading.

And a little bit of wine making.

Since last updating I started Peach & Banana, Carrot & Orange, a Dandelion and a Rhubarb. The Peach & Banana was made from some frozen fruit languishing in the freezer. The fruit for wine I'm starting tonight also comes from the freezer. There were 4 pounds of blackberries taking up room and a little peck of raspberries. I'm aiming to get a dozen bottles out of it.

The method I'm going to use is roughly based on a Beech & Pollard recipe. It is supposed to be a dry rose.

4 lbs (1800g)blackberries + handful of raspberries, completely optional
Tsp nutrients
Tsp enzyme
2 Campden tablets
4 and half lbs (2 k) white sugar
Yeast
Water

The fruit is frozen so I have started by adding 4 pints of very hot water. When that cools I shall squish the berries with my very well-scrubbed hands. Then I shall add 6 more pints of water, nutrients, enzyme Campden tablets and sugar.

Tomorrow I shall yeast.

On the fifth day I'll strain it and make the volume up to 2 gallons (8.5 L) then I'll decant it into two flagons. After that I shall see how it goes. This is a rough guide after all.

And in other news, wine making means wine drinking. We finished the very first parsnip I made last night. It was yummy. I need a field of parsnips. What I don't use for wine, I'll roast and what isn't roasted will be given to the pigs. What a marvellous vegetable the parsnip is.

Not Fit For Pigs

The nettle wine is over a year old and I have been loath to sample it. The reason being that it has been over sweet at every tasting. Sweetness is a problem that is not going to improve no matter how long the wine is left. I am not sure what went wrong. My notes tell me that if was very frothy and exuberant to start with so I expect it fermented out before the sugar was used up.

Perhaps I should give it to the pigs but that would be against the law. It is not that pigs are not allowed to drink alcohol - it is that they are not supposed to eat or drink anything that has passed through a kitchen, just in case it might have become contaminated by pork products. And I make my wine in the kitchen. Of course no pork product will ever gave tainted my wine as I am scrupulous about hygiene. But the law is the law -  not that pigs care.

If I ever take up making cider using the old-fashioned method I shall definitely have to take care that the pigs never get wind of it because it was not unknown for the traditional cider makers to throw a lump of bacon (or a dead rat) into the brew to give it body. I'm sure that would never be allowed now. Bit of horse maybe - for sure isn't that in everything!

Blackcurrant, Birch Sap and Rhubarb

We drank the last bottle of blackcurrant during the week. I started it in August 2011 and it had been in the bottle exactly one year. The colour was gorgeous, it was strong and it had legs. It also had flavour - but, unfortunately, that flavour was rather acidic. Sadly the birds ate all my blackcurrants last year so there was none made in 2012. I found a pound or so of currants in the freezer so I might try again soon only this time I'll add blackberries and use a very different recipe. this time i don't care if it is a bit on the sweet side as long as it doesn't have that vinegar thing going on. No prizes at the county show for the 2011 Blackcurrant.

Dave came up trumps with the birch sap. We started it last week. I got it into the flagon and it is fermenting away nicely. there was an extra half gallon and as I don't have a half-gallon jar I plunged into the depths of the freezer and came out with a bag of rhubarb and another of crushed peaches. that should do nicely. They'll be started of and I'll add the birch sap to it. I told you I was a rough vintner!

Tonight we are drinking rhubarb. It was only bottled last month but had popped its cork. That's God's way of telling you to drink it. It's pleasant enough. Lacks interest.

Birch Sap Wine

It was Dave's idea that we should try birch sap wine and he sourced the birch sap. Being a responsible sort of chap he took very great care not to damage any trees and he plugged up all the holes he had drilled.

Andy Hamilton writes on birch sap wine, "Any birch tree can be tapped, but ensure you tap an older tree of at least 25–30cm in diameter: any smaller and you risk damaging the tree before it has had a chance to grow."

The recipe was very simple. Boil the birch sap, let it cool down, add the juice of two lemons, sugar, a pound of chopped up raisins, a cup of strong black tea and the yeast and nutrient.

It went into the demijohn at the beginning of April 2012 and I bottled it last November. Dave and I split the bottles between us, three each. Unfortunately a couple of his bottles popped the corks. Possibly because they were stored in the kitchen and it was too warm. He lost a bit but drank what remained. I gave him another bottle at Christmas to make up for his loss. That left two bottles and we drank one tonight.

To start with it was fizzy. Why it hasn't popped I do not know but it is  delectable and, by far, the loveliest wine I have ever made. I wish I had a crate of it. Two crates even. It is a wine so delightful that you wouldn't even care if it wasn't alcoholic.

I can only hope that the late, cold Spring means that the sap has yet to rise so that I can make some more. And I think Bert should plant a birch wood.