Racking and Bottling

The Banjos came over on Saturday night. Mrs Banjo brought her first ever wine for racking. It was a raspberry made from Asda's finest frozen fruit. To be honest I wasn't expecting much from it but it is coming along very nicely. A good ruby red colour, clear, tasty and alcoholic. Of course we judged this on the merest sip during the racking process but I will be looking for the recipe. I might need to use frozen fruit as we replaced our raspberry canes this year, and thanks to the very wet Spring they were late in getting into the ground.

Tonight I racked one of my elderflowers and a rhubarb. The elderflower was made from fresh flowers. I'd previously used dried flowers. The flavour is good but it is rather too sweet for my liking. I'll try it again this year but will go easy on the sugar.

Rhubarb. What can I say? It never disappoints me but looking back at my notes I see I was very adventurous with this one. I started it in February 2013 and used a pint of pineapple wine as a starter. Then, racking it in October I seem to have lashed a bit of birch sap and rhubarb into it. It didn't clear that well but is strong. Not one for entering in the County Show.

Carrot and Apple Wine

	Started	Bottled	NOTES
Carrot	28/10/11	19/05/12	still very sweet on 3rd racking/ bottled – sweet and  clear, good colour, cork popped Sept, 12/1/13 drank 1 bottle, very fizzy, sweet but pleasant
Carrot and Orange	10/05/13		2nd R -heavy sediment/3rd R: Heavy albumin bloom decanted out topped with cider and water
Carrot and Raisin 1	28/11/12	04/05/13	Added nutmeg, cinnamon and pinch clove, needed a lot of topping up (water) when going into demijohn, 2nd R: dry, great flavor, Bert loves it
Carrot and Raisin 2	28/02/13	24/02/14	some parsnips in mix, used demerara sugar 2lbs, nutmeg and cinnamon. Bottled 5. Yummy.
Carrot and Raisin 3	03/12/13
Carrot and Sultana	13/12/12	06/11/13	using plastic container, 2nd r decanted into glass – light flavour 3rd R: dry, clear topped with nettle
Carrot, Parsnip and Sultana	24/10/13	02/03/14	made with Tam veg. Topped with young rhub at 2nd rack

That's a little section of my wine-making spreadsheet and it's all about The Carrot. As can be seen I've made wine from carrots 7 times. Two are still on the go and 5 have been bottled. Bert and I shared a bottle of carrot and raisin (2) last night and it was rather tasty.

The first time I used carrot I stuck closely to a recipe. There must have been a lot of sugar because it was almost too sweet. It was also fizzy which means it carried on fermenting after bottling. Not a good idea! Carrot and raisin (or sultana) and less sugar produced a far more drinkable wine. I also started using pinches of nutmeg and other spices which added flavour. By the time I was on my third carrot and raisin I had stopped using recipes.

Carrot (and parsnip) wines are made with the liquor from the chopped and boiled roots. The actual vegetable is discarded. Some recipes suggest they can then be used in cooking but as I don't like my vegetables with the life boiled out of them, I give them to the pigs. Using dried fruit means that chemical nutrients aren't needed. I rarely use additives now. Just bananas or raisins for added nutrients, lemon juice where acid is required and strong tea where tannin is recommended.

Rough Recipe for Carrot, Apple, Raisin and Date Wine

Roots are easy to prepare for wine but chopping the raisins is a bit of a fiddly chore. And that is where my new Veto slow juicer comes in. I found a recipe for carrot and apple wine on-line and adapted it. I boiled the 4 lb of carrots as always then made a litre of juice using apples, carrots, all the raisins I had in my baking cupboard and a few dates for good measure. I put a bag of sugar in my sterilised bucket and added the pulp from the carrots, apples and dried fruit. Then 2 litres of boiling water and stirred it into a thick sludgy brown syrup. Time for the carrot liquor which had cooled down quite a bit. By the time I added my litre of juice and topped it up to a gallon it was exactly the right temperature for the yeast. Quick stir, lid on and that was that. Did I mention that it looked like liquid manure? Smelt better though.

So there you are. Another rough enough recipe from Nelly.  I'm sure I must be annoying somebody out there by alternating between imperial and metric measures. If anyone wants me to make it more exact I will. But perhaps better wait a few months to see how it turns out.

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!