Recipe: Elderflower Quickie Wine 2011

About a week ago I started the base brew for the Elderflower quickie wine. I was aiming for a repeat of last year's brew, and got very close to that recipe. Tomorrow I go looking for Elderflowers, I've been holding off a day at a time hoping for just a little rain to wash the petals as it's been dry for weeks now. It rained ever so lightly today. Sunshine is forecast for tomorrow, so I anticipate excellent flowers. Anyway, you'll be wanting the recipe and method, so .... onwards.

Recipe:

5 Litres WGJ (Tesco, pure, pressed)
5 Litres Apple Juice (Tesco, value, from concentrate)
3.4 Kg Sugar
5 Teaspoons Pectolase
5 Teaspoons Tartaric Acid
Nutrient (brupak)
4 Campden Tablets
Gervin D yeast.

OG 1078

Method:

You probably know the drill by now. Dissolve the sugar in boiled water. Pour into the fermenting bin, add the cartons of juice, the tartaric acid, the pectolase and the crushed campden tablets. Make the volume up to almost 5 gallons with water and stir well to mix. Cover tightly and leave overnight. Next day measure the gravity and then make up the volume to 5 gallons with water or sugar solution. The 3.4 Kg of sugar had a good gravity for this brew so I just used water to correct the volume. 1078 should give a light wine, ready to drink in weeks. Then I gave a good sloshy stir (actually whisked) to get air dissolved and finally added the nutrient and yeast. Covered it up and left it overnight. Before I went to bed I noticed the lid bulging, the yeast had started doing it's thing in only a few hours. Each day for a week or so I stirred for a few mins (well whisked).

So it's now about 9 days later, the gravity has dropped to 1015, I've transferred the brew to a secondary fermenter with an airlock fitted.

I'll go pick flowers tomorrow, leave them in a tied plastic bag overnight, then shake the bag for about 5 minutes, transfer the flowers (having magically shaken loose of the stalks) to muslin bags and add to the barrel.