Elderflower Blush Quickie

So, as there are still Elderflowers out and about in abundance, and as we got through 8 gallons of elderflower wine last year, I decided that I should make more this year. So I've just got another 5 gallons on the go. This time with a difference, there was no cheap white grape juice in the supermarket, so I got red grape juice instead, hence it's probably going to be a blush.

I'm going to do this recipe/method in some detail for those of you new here. This is a fantastic wine, and as long as you like elderflowers their blossoming will be one of your favourite times of the year, second only to the time the wine's ready to drink. I'll be picking my flowers at the weekend or early next week, on a sunny day, but a few days in advance of picking is a good time to start the brew going.

Recipe

5 Litres Red Grape Juice (Sungrown, pure pressed)
5 Litres Apple Juice (Tesco value, pure from concentrate)
3.45kg Sugar
3 teaspoons Tartaric Acid
2 Teaspoons Citric Acid
2 Teaspoons Nutrient (nutrivin)
4 Teaspoons Pectolase
4 Campden Tablets (crushed)
4 Litres Elderflowers (measured by gently shaking down, added 2.6.2011 with gravity at 1042)
Yeast Gervin Number 1 (GV1)

OG 1079

Method

The usual method, dissolve sugar in hot water. Empty cartons of fruit juice into fermenting bin. Dissolve all other ingredients (apart from yeast and elderflowers) in water, and then add to fermenting bin. Add sugar solution to fermenting bin. Make up the volume to 5 gallons. Cover tightly and leave overnight. Next day stir sloshily (or use a whisk) to ensure its properly mixed and also, importantly, to get plenty of air dissolved. Then add the yeast. Stir sloshily each day for a few days. Transfer to secondary fermenter (fitted with an airlock) and then add the elderflowers in 2 muslin bags. To process the flowers put the sprays into a plastic bag the day you pick them, tie it up, leave it overnight, next day shake the bag for 5 minutes or until the flowers drop off the stems. Separate out the stems and put the flowers into muslin bags. Push down the flowers once a day for a week or so, then remove the flowers and do all the usual racking, degassing, stabilising etc.

Discussion

Incase you're new here and would like some extra details I'll just summarise the basics of some of the ingredients chosen etc. You can find all this info in other places on my blog tho.

1. This is a quickie wine, it's designed to be drunk only 8 weeks or so after starting. This means the wine will be light, hence only 2 litres of juice pr gallon of wine, and the amount of sugar added to give an ABV that will likely be 10.5-11.5%. If you add more sugar then the balance will be all out and it will likely taste "hot". To avoid this you'll need more fruit content for more body. The result of doing this will be a wine that needs months, rather than weeks, to be ready to drink.

2. I chose a blend of citric and tartaric acid. tartaric acid is the dominant acid in grapes. It is crisp and clean tasting. Citric acid tastes, unsurprisingly, lemon like, fruity. This flavour goes well with elderflowers but I don't want to overdo it. If you don't have citric acid you can use lemon juice. Juice of one lemon is roughly equivalent to 1 teaspoon of citric acid. If you don't have tartaric acid don't worry. You'll still make a pleasant wine with lemon juice or citric acid.

3. Pectolase is always a no-brainer addition for me, it never does any harm. It's function is to break down pectin which is commonly found in many fruits, including apples. Pectin will cause a haze in your wine which will be a royal pain in the backside to get rid of. Adding pectolase at the start is the prevention rather than cure method. I always do it.

4. Campden tablets are added, primarily, to take care of wild yeasts, funghi and bacteria. To be honest with wine made from cartons of juice this shouldn't be a problem. However it's a good thing to do in anycase because you never know what's airborne in the kitchen, or in the sugar etc. It also neutralises the chlorine present in tap water.  And it is an anti-oxidant, which means that your juice and hence wine will not discolour so much to a brown. After adding it at the start of a brew you need to wait 24 hours before adding yeast, otherwise your ferment will probably not start as campden inhibits yeasts. Waiting 24 hours allows it to do it's job and all that neutralising of chlorine, killing stuff and anti-oxidising means that levels are low by the time 24 hours have passed.

5. Nutrient. Yeasts, like all living things, like nutrients. Most fruits don't have the right balance needed so a helping hand is good. with a wine made from only 2 litres of juice per gallon this is especially true.

6. Gervin number 1 is a good general purpose yeast, it starts quickly, is low foaming and easy to work with. Others that I like are Gervin D, Sauternes, MA33 (vintners harvest), GV5.

7. By the time you get around to adding the eldeflowers the must will have an alcohol content of about 8-9 %, so there's no need to sanitise the flowers, the alcohol content will do that, and so will the `CO2 atmosphere in your secondary fermenter. Adding flowers late on, rather than at the start, means that you need to use less of them. This is a good thing. The reason is that the alcohol helps to extract the flavours, and also the fermentation is not at all vigourous at this stage. Vigourous fermentation will "blow off" much of the volatile aromas/flavours from the flowers, hence needing more. Using less means more berries in the autumn (great stuff cos they are great in wine) and also means less work getting them off the stems, which is essential cos elderflower stems taste gross and don't make good wine.

Another Pomegranate Update

So the Pomegranate Quickie has cleared, been racked, degassed and stabilised. Some has ven been bottled and some of that has been drunk. All in the last few days tho, so I'm not too tardy with reporting back to you.

What can I say, yet again this formula for a quickie wine has worked out. i.e. 2 litres of juice (one of which is grape juice) per gallon of wine, and an OG of around 1075. It took 3 months rather than 6-8 weeks because I'm a little fussier these days and knew I could get it to clear with a little effort or waiting.

So it's  a very pale pink. crisp, refreshing, sharpish and clean. The ABV worked out to be a little shy of 11.5%. It's fruity, but light and the nearest I can get to nailing a flavour is raspberry which comes quickly. I don't think it would do any harm for this to be 11%ABV rather than 11.5%, so that would perhaps be my aim for next time, just a bit less sugar.

Overall verdict, cracker of a wine for something that is so easy to make, so quick to finish, and at around 30p per bottle there is just no complaining. It's table wine quality but if you gave this to your mates (especially the women as men tend to have an irrational aversion to rosé) they wouldn't believe this was your version of plonk. Its perfect for those hot summer days, BBQ's, picnics and sitting in the park etc.

Elderflower Forage

woohooo, 4 litres of elderflowers were shaken off the stems last night, and put into muslin bags and then put into the fermenting brew.

I remember in my early days of brewing i often wondered what the volume measurement of such things meant. is this squashed in, dropped in or what? It turns out that most folks measure the volume as lightly shaken down, this is what i have used.

Drinking Blackberry Wine

Watching a cheesy horror flick (triangle) with a glass of Blackberry Wine from 2009, which makes it 20 months old. Last time I tried this was probably 6 months and my thoughts at the time were recorded with the recipe linked above.

In short, it was then harsh and acidic, but promised much. Now it's stunning, crisp, clean, bright and the fruit is fresh tasting. It's well balanced but not the big wine that you would get if you're used to paying  £5 or less for a bottle of red. That's our usual price range. This is more like what you would get for £8-10. It's no longer harsh and there are no strange flavours that I can't put my finger on. Neither is it too acidic.

I didn't like using GV2 yeast, it foamed a lot (so was messy) and threw a big sediment. But upon drinking this wine I think I may try it again. It's hard to say it's down to the yeast, and I'm not doing that, but it's certainly worth considering trying it again. I think I'll let the haul of blackberries decide me, enough for 4-5 gallons and I'll go with GV2. Less than that and something easier to work with will be my choice (Sauternes or GV1), choosing a Malic acid reducing yeast may speed up the time of getting the acidity down, in which case Gervin D.

Elderfower Forage

Surely one of the best moments of the year for a home-brewer is when the elderflowers come out. I've just got in from picking, had to be a little selective as there were plenty of the "wrong" flowers out - they smell like cat pee. But nevertheless I got a good haul and the better half's face was a delight to behold when I got home with a couple bags of wonderful smelling flowers ... and I found a new spot for uber smelling flowers. As there were still plenty of flowers yet to open I'm very tempted to get another 5 gallons on the go and do another forage in a week or so.

so get yourself a base brew on the go and then get yourselves out there brewers, its far from too late to make yourselves a big batch of this delicious wine. It's as easy as pie and all the instruction you need is right here on my blog.

Pomegranate Quickie Wine Update

So what else is news worthy? Remember the wine that was a bit of a dog's dinner of ingredients? Odd cartons of red and white grape juice, with some pomegranate juice too. Clicky for a reminder of the recipe. Well, it's almost clear, but it's doing so very slowly and unless we start decimating the seriously good stuff prematurely then I need this one to come online pronto. Check out the piccie to see how fussy you become about clear wine

So I chucked in gelatin based finings tonight. I seem to remember that it worked well for pomegranate, but I didn't check my notes so don't take that as being gospel truth! I'll be racking, degassing, stabilising, bottling and then drinking it, in a few days! Table wine is all I was aiming for, and that's what I expect to get.

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.

Rose Petal Wine

Did I tell you, that brew I started that I called the base brew, that was going to become dandelion or gorse flower wine, well it turned into rose petal wine. I've updated the recipe with everything you need to know. Basically adding rose petals and grape tannin at secondary stage. And there are new piccies too, so go feast your eyes there.

The brew is now sitting in demi-johns, probably finished fermenting, the rose petals removed now. I'll be degassing and stabilising if the fermentation has indeed finished, which I'll know in a day or so.

Looking, well, not very nice eh, especially not with the uber clear wine sitting next to it, but fear not, it'll clear and be delicious, and hopefully we'll be drinking it in the autumn.

Brewing Season is Gathering Pace

Take a look around you when you're walking about or driving around and you'll see flowers in abundance. Certainly in the Northern hemisphere. There's lots of Elderflowers especially and these make a great homebrew. Infact if there were one wine I would recommend for the novice or improver then Elderflower is it. It is very special. So check out the link to the recipe page, then find the elderflower recipes and give one a try. The quickie recipes are especially good ... 'cos they're quick, so you'll be drinking the wine in something like 8-10 weeks, and if you do the late flower addition then your flowers will go much (I mean MUCH) further. Look out too for the tip on processing the flowers, it'll save you hours and there is no effect on the quality of the wine.

Others worth considering are Gorse, Hawthorn and if you're really northern you may still have plenty of dandelions. Smell the flowers first tho, and only use those that smell good. This is especially so for elderflowers, there is no doubting a good smelling elderflower spray, it is wonderful. So if in doubt pass it by and find another tree.

Happy foraging, and stay tuned for news from this brewer, nothing out of the ordinary, just more tales of my brewing.