and the Glass Contains

earlier on we had Green Tea & Ginger with our smoked haddock chowder.

And when it all went quiet the 18 month old rosehip and cinnamon came out to play. It's fruity and warming. I think it will probably benefit from more time in the bottle, there's still 6+ left. Wish I could describe the flavour better but it kind of defies pinning down. The warmth comes from the ABV me thinks, around 14-15%. It tastes kind of like a rosé, perhaps no surprise, but is very smooth and rounded. Not very interesting, but acceptable. Probably too strong for it's quite delicate flavour. The cinnamon just isn't showing up.

Sometimes you just tidy up

and today was such a day, tidying up the room that I call the brewery, and washing bottles, DJ's and siphon tubes. Still it's all good preparation for what I hope will be bountiful elderflower wine brewing soon. And it was made fun by sharing a bottle of Green Tea & Ginger wine with my better half.

Even tho I say it myself, this is a cracking wine. One of the best I make, and what a great decision to make 5 gallons of it, still 4 Gallons left ... woohoo!

Time Passes

Tonight I'm thinking, hey I haven't written in the blog for some time. So tonights ramble is that I'm enjoying some pomegranate juice wine (made form cartons of juice). It was great to go to the wine rack when I felt like a nightcap, and not have to take an age wondering which wine I can pull out for a quaff without denting the "cellar" of good stuff.

So, it's a very decent plonk, and I'm glad I made it.

Kit Decisions

Not content with deciding upon scaling up, I made another decision. My country wines are all going to be whites or rosés, I'm not going to try making reds. I'm not sure I have the patience for Elderberry wine, aging for 2 years+. Blackberry and Blackberry & Elderberry wines are delicious, but in my opinion they are more like a robust or big rosé than a red.

However I do like red wine, and I want to brew it. So I decided that I will continue to make Red Wine Kits. Today I picked up a Beaverdale Vieux Chateau Du Roi. Only a gallon as I can't afford more. This is widely and reliably reported to be the closest thing you'll get to Chateau Neuf Du Pape but in a kit. So I'll do the patience bit for this wine, a year should be good enough tho if my patience can hold out for longer then I'm sure it'll be rewarded. At £2/bottle it feels like a steal.

Scaling up

Sometimes you get to a point on a learning curve when you have a decision to make, I've been hovering around making that decision for some months, but today I decided.

Last year I made 4 gallons of Elderflower wine and it was a stunner. Shortly after making it I learned that I could make the same volume of wine using only a fraction of the flowers. The trick is to add the flowers later into the ferment. Apparently this avoids so much of the volatile flavours being blown out of the airlock while the ferment is vigourous. I suspect the increased level of alcohol in the must is a good solvent for said molecules, better than water alone anyway, and that this adds to the effect. So I had to decide, pick less flowers and make the same amount, or scale up. Scale up won out.

So today I bought myself a new 5 gallon fermenting vessel, with a wide neck and an airlock. I'll now be able to add my flowers, in muslin bags, during secondary fermentation. Getting them out will be no probs, and I wont be fiddling about with single gallon demijohns and sieves. I'll probably still do a similar batch to last year; flowers in at primary stage etc. Ensuring that I get a true comparison of the methods. All in all there could be as much as 10 gallons this year.

Bottling Tonight

We're all out of quickie pomegranate juice wine, so I'm bottling the next gallon.

How to Make a Ponce Rant

Since starting this blog my chatty style on a forum or two has stopped. A couple of days ago I posted the names of 2 bottles that me and my better half enjoyed the night before. Just year, vineyard/estate and style. Nothing else (it was in the thread for what you're drinking at the moment - home-brewed or commercial, not even limited to wine, nor alcoholic drinks). I was amused to see a rant follow, about how supermarket wines are so dull and how they give licence to "know nothings" to pretend to know something.

I'm not ashamed of my budget, nor of my tastes, and the fact that I know much more about homebrew than commercial wines doesn't bother me either. So our 4 year old Aussie shiraz and our older oaked Spanish red have lingering good memories. Perhaps I should have said that I liked them - especially at around £5/bottle. Then again that would be admitting to knowing something, even if it is simply my own taste, and would only rile the ponces further.

I mean, how I dare I enjoy £5 bottles of wines and join in naming them with other like minded brewers on the forum!

Recipe: Tanglefoot - Parsnip

It's about time that I posted a recipe and method for this wine as it is fast becoming a favourite. On top of that I think I have got it pretty much where I want it so I won't be tweaking it much from now on. This started off being a C.J.J.Berry recipe, but I tweaked it.

This is quite a laborious wine to make, so leave yourself plenty of time to hog the kitchen.

Ingredients for 3 gallons

3.7 Kg Parsnips
3 Kg (approx) Sugar (OG 1080 -1090)
2 Lemons, juice and zest
1.5 Oz Root Ginger
3 Teaspoons Citric Acid
1 Teaspoon Tartaric Acid
3 Teaspoons Pectolase
3 Campden Tablets
Yeast Nutrient
Sauternes Yeast
Water to 3 Gallons

Method

Wash and thoroughly scrub the parsnips but don't peel them. Top and tail them then slice 1 inch thick. Bring 1.5 gallons of water to the boil then add parsnip slices and simmer until they are tender but not mushy. This took 20-30 mins but check them frequently, they are done just before they start to split in the middle. You should have a clear liquid with intact parsnip slices so pour the juice through a colander into your fermenting bin. You now have lots of un-needed cooked parsnips that you can mash or roast. Boil up 2.5 Kg of sugar in plenty of water and add that the fermenting bin too.

Bruise and coarsely chop the ginger, zest the lemons (no pith), put in a muslin bag and tie it up. Add to the fermenting bin and allow to cool (covered) for a few hours then add citric acid, tartaric acid and enzyme and crushed campden tablets. Leave overnight then add yeast, nutrient and top up to 3 gallons with sugar solution to get your desired gravity. Stir daily for 7-10 days, remove the zest and ginger, then transfer to DJ's and thereafter rack, top-up, degas, stabilise etc when appropriate.

This should clear with no problems in a couple of months or less, but if not then chitin based finings work well. Gelatin finings don't seem to do it. I've never needed to use a starch enzyme, but if you want to then I'm sure it won't do any harm ... I don't know whether pectolase is needed but I keep using it anyway!

Some Thoughts

My last batch of this had an OG of 1086, and ended up being about 12.5% ABV. It's dry, a little zesty and gingery, the parsnip seems to lend a very slight earthy, grassy and maybe even radish notes! Make it well and this will be ready to drink after only 4-5 months, but will seriously improve if you give it 8-12.

Many wine-makers are quite seriously scornful of parsnip wine, and wine made from other root vegetables. But if you are interested in keeping old traditions going, even with a modern twist, then pay no attention. Go for it. Their suggestions to leave out the parsnips and use grape juice/concentrate instead may make a wine they prefer, but they are not you, and they don't know why you make it. I make it cos I like this tradition, and because it makes a cracking wine if done well. It's also a great seasonal (winter) wine. You will be able to knock people down with a feather when you tell them what it's made from - even the ponces who are scornful!

Update (just 6.5 years after making it)

it must be some sort of special occasion. We just pulled the cork on the last bottle of 2009's tanglefoot (parsnip wine). It's delicious, like a dry but subtle sherry in it's feel, and the taste just a little grassy. It's mellowed perfectly from when it was young and a little fiery.

Making this wine is not only laborious, it also needs plenty of care and attention to detail. Then it needs time to condition. A year is enough. But it's great to find out that it's not on the way out after almost 6.5 years in the bottle. There will be no glugging tonight!

At the Weekend

We went visiting, to help with clearing up a back-yard that will become a garden one day. Took along two bottles of wine, one was Tanglefoot, the other was a blend made from citrus wine and hawthorn blossom wine (50:50). The better half just loves the Tanglefoot, so I'd better post a recipe sometime!

Found that my brews have been partly responsible for inspiring someone to take up the hobby. It was good to see that they jumped right in and got 4 Demijohns!

Tonight's wines

Last night we rattled through a bottle of 4 month old Green Tea Ginger with our curry, definately an improvement on the first year's effort.

Tonight we went for red wine, so that means commercial wine.
1st was a 2003 Vina Albali, then came a 2006 McGuigan Shiraz.
Both were markedly better after 30 + minutes breathing, both were delicious.

Recipe: Green Tea & Ginger

A couple of years ago - in mid winter so there was no foraging to be had - I wanted to keep brewing. So I decided to try to make a wine that my better half would go weak at the knees for. She likes green tea and also ginger, and I reckoned this combo would work for wine. So I did some surfing and found a recipe on Jack Keller's site. I tweaked it a bit. It turned out pretty good. This year I tweaked it some more and I don't think I'll be tweaking again. So here is my version.

Recipe for 5 Gallon Batch

• 50 Teaspoons Green Tea (Sencha or Bancha)
• 500g Chopped Sultanas
• 200g Root Ginger, peeled, bruised and chopped.
• 6 Lemons, juice and zest (avoid pith)
• 3 Limes, juice and zest (avoid pith)
• 2 Teaspoons Citric acid
• 4 Teaspoons Tartaric acid
• 5 Teaspoons Pectolase
• 5 Campden Tablets
• 5 Kg (approx) Sugar (OG to 1085 - 1095)
• Yeast Nutrient
• Water to 5 gallons
• Sauternes Yeast

I don't know if the pectolase is needed but this wine doesn't seem to completely clear without finings so I tried, it still needed fining!

Method

Put all the green tea in a muslin bag, tie it closed (but keep the volume of the bag as big as possible), put this in a big pot, add a gallon of water, bring to the boil and then immediately decant liquid into your fermenting bin. Repeat with the same bag of tea but this time also add the bagged tea to the fermenting bin.
Put the ginger, sultanas and zest in another muslin bag and tie it. Again bring to the boil in a gallon of water, turn down the heat to a gentle simmer for 1 hour, then empty the contents into your fermenting bin.
Put another gallon of water onto the stove, add 4kg of sugar, bring to boil and then add to fermenting bin.
Stick the lid on and leave it to cool overnight.

Next day measure your gravity and then adjust the volume to 5 gallons using sugar solution to get the OG where you want it. Add the crushed campden tablets, acids and pectolase. Cover and leave for 24 hours. Next day give the must a really good sloshy stir to get some oxygen into it then add the yeast nutrient and yeast. After this stir at least once daily for 4-5 days. Turn the muslin bags everyday for about a week. About a week after you added the yeast you should remove the muslin bags. Rack the wine into demijohns, top them up if needed with sugar solutions of the same gravity as your original must. Fit airlocks and bliss out to blooping.

When it's finished fermenting do all the usual racking, degassing, stabilising and fining if needed. Chitin based finings work better than gelatin based for this wine.

This wine will be ok to drink after about 4 months, but will keep getting better with time.

Oh my better half loves it by the way, and I do too! It goes incredibly well with any spicy food, especially a curry. My OG was 1095 and it worked out to be 13.5% ABV.

In My Glass Tonight

I'm enjoying a wine made from 1 carton of white grape juice mixed with 1 carton of pomegranate juice (per gallon of wine), a little sugar, some nutrient, vintner's harvest MA33 yeast and the need for finings.

It was meant to be one that fermented and cleared fast to make a light easy drinking wine that is ready to drink in 6-8 weeks. Well it needed finings and by the time I realised about 10 weeks had passed. But still a decent table wine at 12 weeks is cool.

As you can see it's clear as a bell, but you can't see how wonderful the colour is, tried fiddling with camera settings but it always looks like Whisky rather than a pale pink blush. At 12 weeks old it is just starting to get some interesting flavour, albeit very subtle. Until now it has been perfectly acceptable, light (11.5% ABV), dry, beautiful colour, but not very interesting. It is however a great gap filler, like something pleasant to drink while your other wine gets a chance to age. And that was the point, a wine that is quick, easy and cheap to make, that is ready to drink soon.

Recipe: Elderflower Wine

With Spring advancing my thoughts are once again turning to Elderflower wine. This is a delicious must brew for any homebrewer. It's quite labour intensive, gathering flower sprays and then removing the flowers, but it's worth every moment and hey the flowers are free!

Here's the recipe I used last year, it made 4 gallons of wine

• 5 Litres of Elderflowers
• 1 Litre of white grape compound
• 6 Teaspoons Malic Acid
• 4 Teaspoons Tartaric acid
• 2 Teaspoons Citric Acid
• 2 Teaspoons Grape Tannin
• Yeast Nutrient
• Water & Sugar to almost 4 gallons and OG 1075 - 1095 (about 4kg)
• Sauternes Yeast

The flowers are measured lightly shaken down not packed in.

You can use white grape juice instead of the compound, try 2 litres of juice per gallon of wine, you may need less sugar this way.
If you don't have all those acids and tannin then don't worry, just use lemon juice (1 lemon is about equivalent to 1 teaspoon of citric acid, the juice of 2-3 lemons per gallon will do) and forget the tannin (or use a little strong black tea).

Picking and Preparing Flowers

The flowers are picked on a dry, sunny day. They should smell wonderful, if they don't then don't pick them. You need to remove them from their stalks, one way is with a fork, or you could also use scissors. I have heard of a less labourious method; put them in a plastic bag, seal it, leave overnight, then shake for some time. When you open the bag all the flowers should have dropped off their stems. I think I'll try that this year. Once you have the flowers sorted put them into a muslin bag or two, tie it closed, and drop it in your fermenting bin.

Preparing the Must

Pour the grape compound on top of the bagged elderflowers in your fermenting bin. Boil a heap of water and dissolve your sugar and citric acid in it. Then pour this into the fermenting bin too. Dissolve the other acids in a little water and then add this too. Then add your tannin and give it a good stir.

If you used a lot of hot water then this must will be far too hot and will kill the yeast. so you'll have to let it cool down overnight. This is ok because it'll also kill any wild yeasts and other nasties that may be on the flowers. So cover it up and be patient.

If your must is luke warm now then you'd be wise to deal with any wild yeasts etc. Add some campden powder and leave it overnight.

Fermenting

Next day give the must a good stir, slosh it about loads. This will get some extra oxygen dissolved which is good because yeast needs dissolved oxygen to multiply. Check the volume and measure the gravity to check its in the right range and adjust if you need to, then make a note of it. You can add your yeast and nutrient now. Cover it up again and for the next few days stir the must and turn over the muslin bags at least once daily. Again do it with sloshing.

After a few days you can take out the flowers. They will have given up their flavours to the wine. Anytime before the wine stops fermenting rack it into demijohns leaving most of the sediment behind. Fit airlocks and bliss out to their blooping sound. You may need to top up the demijohns, if so use grape juice or a sugar solution of about the same OG as the original must - you kept a note right? Once fermentation stops (2-4 weeks or so) you are ready for the next bit.

The Patient Bit

At this stage I rack, and then degas the wine, then crush one campden tablet and 1/2 a teaspoon of potassium sorbate per gallon, dissolve in a little water and add to each demijohn and top up if needed. These additions will make sure that the ferment doesn't start going again. After some time the wine will start to clear, it may completely clear. If it isn't clear after a couple of months then use finings, I find chitin based finings work much better than gelatin based for this wine. It should be clear in a few days then rack and top up again. Your wine will now be ok to drink, tho it will get better with time. Age it in demijohns and only bottle it when you want to drink it.

What am I drinking

Tonight I'm enjoying the fruits of my labours. In my glass is a parsnip wine, it came from a batch of 3 gallons and this is only the 3rd bottle to be opened. I call mind Tanglefoot as that's the ancient name for it, well in the south of England it is anyway. It's not quite 6 months old. I have some left from last year's batch too, but that's now vintage by my standards, so only gets opened when I'm sharing.

Anyway this Tanglefoot is 13% ABV, clear as a bell and very nearly colourless. It's clean, crisp, dry and the flavour lingers. It has notes of ginger and citrus fruit and zest too ... hmmm that would be cos I added small quantities of each of then! The flavour that comes through from the parsnip is subtle, very subtle, but is a bit earthy and a bit radish, or perhaps grassy!

Wines made in the last 2 years

Here's a list of wines that I've made in the last couple of years. If this whets your appetite then stay tuned for such things as recipes, methods, pictures and so on.

WINE & VOLUME (Gallons)

2008:

Rosehip & Mace - 1
Rosehip & Cinnamon - 1
Rosehip & Star Anise - 1
Rice & Raisin - 3
Mint - 0.5
Orange & Blackberry - 0.5
Tanglefoot ** - 3
Garden Blackberry ** - 2
Green Tea & Ginger * - 3
Citrus * - 3
Total for year = 18 gallons

2009:

Beaverdale Shiraz * - 2
Cheapskate Rose ** - 2
Elderflower ** - 4

Hawthorn Blossom - 2

Citrus * - 3
Garden blackberry ** - 2
Wild Blackberry * - 2

Wild Blackberry & Elderberry - 3

Wild Blackberry & Elderberry Rose - 2

Green Tea & Ginger ** - 5
Tanglefoot ** - 3

Improved Mint - 2

total for year 32 Gallons

2010:

Rose Petal - 1

Blackcherry Kit * - 1
RGJ, WGJ and Pomegranate Blush - 3
WGJ and Pineapple * - 3

Beaverdale Shiraz - 1

Cheapskate Rose Light - 2

Oaked Rose (tartaric acid version) - 1
Oaked Rose (citric acid version) - 1

key:

* A good brew that I'm happy with tho I may try to improve it
** Cracking brew that I'm unlikely to change
RGJ = red grape juice
WGJ = white grape juice
I haven't tried this wine yet, it's too young

The Start of Something

Hi there and welcome to my wine making journey. A journey that started over 20 years ago and is still going strong and finding new places of interest. I don't expect that there will be a destination as such but along the way there will be highlights, experiments, successes, failures and adventures.

The first thing i have to do is pour over my records and notes to tell you where i have been and what i have done so far. Stay tuned, these things will appear in the coming days.