Recipe: Rose Petal on Base Brew

So, yesterday I laid the foundations for a brew with a yet to be determined finishing touch. I'm thinking Dandelion, or perhaps Gorse, or maybe even both. Should the weather turn bad and the sun doesn't shine then the base brew will have nothing added and simply be a crisp light summery white wine.

Confused, don't be. The basic idea is that old-time recipes* for flower wines instruct you to add everything at the beginning, including flowers, and let it rip. The down side of this is that much of the wonderful volatile flavour from the flowers is lost by being driven off during the primary vigorous fermentation. Hence lots of flowers are needed. A school of thought is gaining hold that says add your flowers when the primary fermentation has finished. For me that simply means get your brew going for a few days before you add the flowers. You'll need less flowers this way because more of the flavour will be extracted. It's not just that the fermentation is way more gentle so less volatiles will be driven off, it's also that the alcohol content (probably over 10% by this stage) will extract those volatiles and hold them in solution.

This is what I'm aiming for. Downside is you may have to guess your start time based on when you think you can gather flowers. Alternatively you can pick your flowers and freeze them. Today i picked a heap of dandelions that turned out to be mugfull of petals. Old-time recipes* call for anything between 1 and 2 litres of flowers per gallon. But a later addition means the mugfull may be enough for a gallon. Anyway, onwards with the recipe.

Ingredients

5 Litres White Grape Juice (pressed)
5.25 Litres Apple Juice (pressed)
4 Kg Sugar
5 Teaspoons Acid Mix (50:50 tartaric and citric)
3 Campden Tablets
Water to 4.5 Gallons (approx)
Yeast Nutrient
Yeast (Gervin D)
Pectolase (added 3 days in because I forgot it!)
2 Bags Rose Petals (added at secondary stage, 10 days in)
1 Teaspoon  Wine Tannin (added at secondary stage, 10 days in)
OG; 1088

Some of the ingredients for the base brew. As you can see the fruit juices I used were not concentrates, however I think concentrates will work out ok, just look out for additives that'll give your yeast a tough time (Potassium sorbate especially, less so sodium/potassium metabisulphate).

Method

Simply combined all the above (apart from yeast and nutrient) and put the lid on. Left it overnight.
Next day gave it a sloshy stir, measured the gravity, came in at around 1095 so added some water and it came down to 1088. Still quite high but that was already over 5 gallons so I have to leave it there and hope for the best, I anticipate topping the wine up at some stage so I can do this with water when the wine has such a high OG.
Added the nutrient and yeast. Gervin D chosen cos it's acid reducing, referring to malic acid which apples have plenty of. Malic acid is harsh tasting so reducing it will do no harm at all. It's also low foaming and a quick starter.

Thoughts

This base will make a very nice table wine in its own right, but it's lightness and crisp clean flavour also makes it suitable for use as a base for flower wines. The ideal gravity to start with is 1070-1080, mine is higher. That's a shame because it means I'll probably be waiting 6 months before drinking it, rather than 8 weeks. (I'd better get the next one's gravity in the right range, cos that'll be elderflower!). around the middle of next week I'll transfer the wine to secondary container(s) and add the flower petals.

As I type this I realise I've missed out the pectic enzyme, will add it tomorrow. Apples contain plenty of pectin and if I don't use pectic enzyme then I'll probably end up with a pectin haze and have a hard time clearing it.

* Old-time recipes: I have enormous regard for the old-time recipes. Without them I wouldn't be brewing wines like dandelion, elderflower, blackberry and tanglefoot. However, sometimes progress is so good that things move on, and so I want to try more late additions and see how it works for me.

Update

I missed the dandelions, and haven't made an effort to get gorse flowers, so in the end I decided to do a 5 gallon batch of Rose Petal wine as last year's Rose Petal wine was a stunner. The details you need to know for doing this are as follows. The rose petals (see piccie below) were bought from the local homebrew shop, the instructions on the bag say each bag does 1 gallon, but as this is a late addition I guess-timated that 2 bags would be more than enough for 5 gallons.

About 10 Days after starting the brew I moved the must to a secondary fermenter with airlock. The gravity at this stage was 1026 so ABV 8.5% or so. I then added 2 bags of rose petals, each one in a muslin bag (see piccie below).

 
I didn't bother to sanitise etc because the alcohol content and acidity are sufficient to ensure that all will be well. I also added 1 teaspoon of wine tannin, simply because last year's brew included it. I pushed down the muslin bags once a day for a few days. About 2 weeks later I removed the rose petals and racked the wine into demi-johns.

Woohooo! 1000 hits

hey hey hey, we hit 1000 on the counter. Thanks all for making it happen. Now it's time to let that counter rip!

Got another brew on the go last night, so look out for a recipe post with a piccy soon.

Counting Hits

I dunno if you guys ever look at the hits counter, but we're nearly at 1000 hits. When that mark is reached i'll be switching the counting method, it's currently set to the slowest count for me to get a feel for how many folks come here each day. When i switch it will then start counting each click on the blog (rather than only counting the first click of a visitor and then waiting for someone else to come along before a new click is registered.

So, many thanks to you all for getting us this far in less than a year.

Got Some Bottling Done

OK, so I hoped to get more done than was reasonable. But I did bottle 4 gallons of wine and I have piccies to prove it. so here we go. First of all I lined up the desired wines.

2 gallons of Blackberry wine, made last autumn using sauternes yeast. 1 gallon of Blueberry & Cranberry quickie. 1 gallon of Elderflower.

and a selection of bottles ready to receive them







And then I got cracking and ended up with this lot

From left to right .... Blueberry & Cranberry, Blackberry, Elderflower.

I love seeing a batch like this, in a day or two these bottles will have shrink fit necks, they'll be lying down and look much more finished - hey I may even post some piccies of that! There's some screw caps in there, those wines won't last long as the seal really isn't up to long term storage ... gonna have to drink them soon then. The Blueberry & Cranberry wine is a table wine, it's not for long term storage so they all have screw caps. The Blackberry has a couple or three screw caps ('cos I really don't mind having to drink them soon). Screw caps will be fine for at least a couple of weeks. Lucky people who share dinner with us!

You may have noticed a small plastic bottle in there, always good to have a few handy, you rarely get exactly 6 bottles from a DJ, more like around 6.5. So why waste that last little bit, I'm sitting here writing my blog with a couple of part filled plastic bottles to enjoy as I do so.

Since there's been few piccies this year, I got all gratuitous about it. Here's a close up of 3 bottles

Left to Right .... Blueberry & Cranberry, Elderflower, Blackberry.

Shame the clarity of the blackberry doesn't come through, but hey clarity isn't hard to achieve. It's usually just patience ... leave it alone for months after racking, degassing and stabilising. Only then consider intervening if it's not clear. Nice colour to the Blueberry & Cranberry.

Haha, you thought that was it? oh no, I took another piccie, just cos a different angle might show something different. I don't think it does, but I may aswell post it. This is the whole batch, bottled (apart from my sneaky plastic bottles which are already in my pockets)

I think all that comes out of this piccie is which bottles have screw caps, and which have corks. Tho you can also see 3 plastic 500ml bottles behind the clear Elderflower bottles ... ooops, they'll have to be drunk soonish then. Nothing like Elderflower wine in spring to give you impetus, momentum, and reason to get out there and do it again. Soon those wonderful sprays will be beckoning me again.

A little Update

Just been clearing out the brewery. It's also the office and spare bedroom. It's recently turned into that room that everything gets dumped into when a general house tidy is happening ... piles of paper, magazines, tools etc etc all over the place. Anyway, now its cleared up a bit so that i do some brewing stuff. In the next couple of days I plan to:

• Bottle a gallon each of the two Blackberry wines, this one too
• Bottle a gallon of Elderflower
• Bottle the last gallon of the quickie Blueberry & Cranberry

Thats only 4 gallons, and I have a glut of empty bottles that are filling up spaces around the house, so I need to find more wine to bottle (and then drink), sometimes life as an obsessed amateur brewer is so hard! But that's not all that needs attention so I'll also

• Rack, degas and stabilise the Tanglefoot
• Rack, degas and stabilise the Green Tea & Ginger.
• Rack, degas and stabilise the Pomegranate

So I very much hope to have a newsy update in the next few days, with pictures, and i'm sure tasting notes too. Then I really must start a couple more big brews, 4-5 gallons each if I'm to stay on target for 50 gallons this year!

Muscat Acidity ... the story con't

So it's been a couple of weeks since the wine was put outside to feel frosts and hopefully drop some crystals of tartaric acid. However the hopes didn't materialise, so next step is to add a little cream of Tartar to try and seed the crystalisation. I'll let you know how it goes. This is still keeping interventions gentle, which is what I prefer.