Recipe (2 Gallons)
4.5 Litres Hawthorn Blossoms (no twigs, leaves, stems etc)
3kg Sugar
4 Lemons - Zest and Juice
2 Teaspoons Wine Tannin
Nutrient
Sauternes Yeast
2 Campden Tablets
and here's the piccies
Method
Put the flowers in a muslin bag or two. You don't want the bags stuffed, and bags make it really easy to remove the flowers when the time comes. You could use nylon bags instead. Dissolve the sugar in about a gallon of hot boiled water and pour onto the flowers. Add the juice and zest (no pith!) of the lemons and the tannin. Make up to two gallons with water. Add 2 crushed campden tablets, stir well and cover. Leave overnight and the campden will take care of any wild yeasts etc. Next day measure the OG (mine was 1100), stir sloshily to get some gasses dissolved in the must then add your yeast and nutrient and cover. Stir once daily for a few days
About a week later remove the flowers and transfer the wine to secondary fermenter(s). Rack, degas, stabilise etc as and when needed. This one needed finings to clear.
Thoughts
If I do this one again then I'll make sure to pick flowers with a pleasant strong smell. I'll also keep my OG down, about 1080 should be ok. This wine fermented down to a final gravity of 990, which gives a hefty 15% ABV. Dry as a bone, and no flavour to speak of. Hence I've used it for blending.
Going to be trying this over the next week.
ReplyDeleteJust starting to get into wine making and my aim is to forage a new ingredient every week and brew a gallons worth
Hi,
ReplyDeleteFlower wines are not good when theyre strong.
As you said yourself you have made it too strong - 15% is way too strong for the flower wine.
You have also said that you degass the wine (?)
Degassing the wine will only spoil the wine and proffesional winemaker do not do such a things.
To get rid of co2 from your wine you wait, wait and wait.
You can place your demi john in a warm place and it will degass itself after sometime.
No finings are needed either.
Patience is a virtue of a winemaker :)
Hi Anon. No doubt you will have noticed that your comments are most relevant to my older recipes. so yes, 15% is normally (but not always) too much ABV for a flower wine. If you'd follow the blog chronologically then you would have kept up with my learning. It was years ago, literally, that i stepped my game up.
DeleteAnd you are on it. Flower wines tend to be subtle, but rules are made to be broken buddy. Elderflowers pack a powerful punch and can certainly handle being a strong ABV wine. Personally i don't advise it because it's not easy to get the balances right, but you can make strong elderflower wine, or sweet. etc, but time is then the master. if your balance tends towards more (in any department like acidity, body, astringency, ABV) then add more time. Elderflower can handle it with time.
Onto degassing ... This is something personal. If you like a still wine to be utterly still then any amount of "not still" will disturb you. it's not a rule. it's a preference. free your mind. Let me expand on that and bring professional winemakers into the discussion (as you bring them up) .... They do not ferment under airlocks. They generally use a natural cap. you know what this is, surely. it's a "crust" simply put, which often includes a floating layer of debris that could include rat or bird carcasses.
And there are plenty of professional winemakers who don't use sachets or tubs of commercial yeast. And what about adding sugar or acids or nutrient etc. What i'm getting at is that just because a pro does something it doesn't mean the homebrewer should copy it. And most of the folk i know who brew like to experiment too, personalise their product.
.... more coming
Time is important, but not always how we think it is. The wines i make called "quickies" are well worth giving a shot. And after just a few months they won't improve. They may even begin to deteriorate (i'm doing some experiments with that). So drinking them young is where the sense lies. If folk want a still quickie wine then they'll have to degas it.
DeleteWhen it comes to wines that you're in no hurry to drink then waiting is the best option, but not somewhere warm. Cool is better in my experience, a room that's a bit chilly to sit in works for my wines. You may have to wait longer but it sounds like that doesn't concern you. However some wines won't clear without intervention and if clarity matters to you then intervention is what you'll do. If you're anything like me then you'll start with the most gentle or natural processes, avoiding chemicals if possible. Degassing is a good first step and could be all it takes to do the job.
To wrap up i write my blog for beginners and improvers. I want to publish recipes and methods that are going to give people results that suit them. This includes how to make wine that is ready to drink quickly, and good quality. We both know that waiting is the best option but it's often not practical. Especially for new brewers. I have heaps of wines that are years old simply because i've been brewing for decades, and also because i make quickie wines so the others get the time they need and deserve. i still have a gallon of that hawthorn blossom wine!
i'd be curious to see why you say degassing spoils wine. It never has in my experience, and i've used more than one method. is there a preferred method to your knowledge? Minimising the risk of oxidation or contamination is obviously something to check for. And there are ways of degassing that do this. Or are you talking about something a little more mysterious, along similar lines to bottle shock? Time takes care of this.
Ta for the comment, but relax on those "rules". After all we're making homebrew and strictly speaking it's not really wine, because it's not purely and simply fermented grape juice (with nothing added). it's country wine, but i'll call it what i like anyway, so i call it wine and anyone can see what's in it so i'm not being deceptive.
Hey Peter. My advice would be to start with littler ambitions. if you forage a new ingredient and learn it properly every season the you'll be clearly ahead of the pack after a couple of years. BUT if you do manage to stick to your goals then i'll applaud you! Personally i'd say that brewing 3 gallon batches a season is way easier than 3 different gallons per month. i admire your enthusiasm, really, genuinely. and if you make it work then you can show me something special. but if you fall short then go easy on yourself. it's a common "fault". just do what is next best, and if that fails then do what is next best.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete