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Sounds like a nice brew in the making

I've just bottled the cherry turbo and started a gallon of dandelion wine

Hi Guys, haven't dabbled in this much but due to financial issues and my obsession with getting my weekly alcohol intake have just started drinking apple & blackcurrant double concentrate squash wine (don't like ribena) and what a bit of genius!! It's extremely sweet but I reckon a summers day in the garden, bit of soda added and I may have found the new pimms

The people in the local supermarket are going to start wondering if there's some sort of squash, sugar and lemon diet that they haven't heard about yet

Our first brew of the year is now on. Dandelion wine, 1 gallon. May do some more of that. The rampant rhubarb in the garden looks like it should yield enough for a couple of gallons of wine in a little more time.

Currently fermenting:
5 gallons of nettle beer
8 gallons of dandelion wine

Currently being drunk:
Elberberry wine
Mirabelle wine
Dandelion cordial
Elderflower beer
Cider

Car boot sales are great places to pick up cheap homebrew bits and pieces. The last one we went to (whilst looking for a coffee table) we returned home with a 5 gallon pressurised beer barrel and 4 demijohns (but no coffee table!)

Clare

sounds like a good car boot sale trip Clare :-)

The rhubarb has had it's annual major prune and we got 1.5Kg of rhubarb. That was cut up and sat covered in the same weight of sugar for a couple of days. Yesterday I drained it off, rinsed through and made up 1 gallon of sweet rhubarb flavour liquid, added yeast and nutrient. Now to wait for it to do it's stuff.

I've been reading about rhubarb wine as Im planning on trying that next (its a new one for me). I came across one recipe that said that if made in May then by the time of the 1st racking its roughly the same time as blackberries should be in season and you can add blackberry juice to the rhubarb wine to make a 'Christmas Port'. Has anyone else tried this?

Clare.

Not one I've tried. By the time the blackberries were picked for wine, I think most of the rhubarb was drunk.

clare.donovan wrote:I've been reading about rhubarb wine as Im planning on trying that next (its a new one for me). I came across one recipe that said that if made in May then by the time of the 1st racking its roughly the same time as blackberries should be in season and you can add blackberry juice to the rhubarb wine to make a 'Christmas Port'. Has anyone else tried this?

Clare.

Sounds interesting! We've just picked enough rhubarb to make 2 gallons - might have a go with some of it as our gal's new garden is full of brambles

Do you have to fortify it? I remember my Dad making Elderberry Port (from Mrs Beeton I think) - it had brandy in it and was divine

A first racking at that time is about 3 months too late. Your first racking should be as soon as the fermentation has stopped and a deposit has formed at the bottom of the demijohn. Beware "traditional" recipes!

However, adding blackberry juice to rhubarb wine (which you can do at any time you like) sounds like a good idea, as long as the rhubarb wine is absolutely stable.

@GA - fortifying anything like that - the heavy stuff - is always a good idea. It also means that it'll keep a lot longer ( I know, I know).

Mike

AngeB wrote:
The people in the local supermarket are going to start wondering if there's some sort of squash, sugar and lemon diet that they haven't heard about yet

I was thinking exactly the same the other day!! I have a local aldi and its a very small team of people that work there so i always get the same cashier...last week i must of gone in there about 5days in a row just to buy a bag of sugar and some cartons of juice lol! I was wondering if she'd ask what the hell im doing with all this juice and sugar!
xx

Just bottled and tasted my first ever dandelion wine and i wish i had made a lot more than one gallon
I would recommend this one as a good brew and cost hardly anything to make

Not quite brewing but I'm currently drinking the first all grain homebrew beer that me and a mate did about 5 weeks back (summer lightning clone) and have some bottles of a beer he did with ingredients that he had left over from that first batch starting to mature. They were bottled over the weekend when I was over at his place doing another brew (boddies clone this time)

Started today 1 Gallon of orange wurzel

irigg wrote:Started today 1 Gallon of orange wurzel

I'm quite new to this brewing malarky so I have not heard of this before. Sounds good, what's in it? I'm guessing oranges at least