Green Tea & Ginger Wine 12-1-09

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percival

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SWMBO is a fan of ginger so i thought i'd have a crack at this. When i went surfing around the place i found a number of recipes including this one, as she also likes green tea it seemed a natural choice. I have cobbled together 3 different recipes, left some things out, added others.

for 3 Gallons:

30 Teaspoons green tea (in a tied muslin bag)
250 g washed and chopped raisins
3 Oz peeled root ginger, bruised then finely sliced
Zest of 6 lemons (care taken to remove pith)
Above 3 ingredients in a second tied muslin bag
Juice of 6 lemons
4 kg sugar
2 Teaspoons tartaric acid
1 Teaspoon malic acid
Nutrient
Sauternes yeast

Boil 6 litres water, add 2.5 kg of sugar and stir to dissolve. Then add some of the lemon juice and the two muslin bags. Simmer for 60 mins. Transfer contents of pan to 6 litres of cold water (campden added the night before) containing acids and lemon juice. Leave bags to steep until temperature comes down to around 30'C (6-8 hours). Add sugar and water to bring volume to 3 gallons and gravity to 1100 (aiming for ABV around 12.5 - 13.5 %). Remove and squeeze the giant tea bag, then add yeast and nutrient.

OG was 1099

All looks and smells good so far
 
keeping an eye on your progress with this one, love ginger, so it should be interesting, i would of thought it might have a warming taste as you drank it,what with the ginger!!
keep posting how it develops
:)
 
One of the places discussing this wine said it makes an excellent refreshing wine served chilled in summer, and also a great warming drink for winter. Typical of the complex properties of ginger!

I have a mixed relationship with ginger, i hate ginger beer and have no time for crystallised ginger. But i love ginger cake and curries made using ginger (especially marinades). So to be honest i'm not going to be a great indicator of success/failure for this one as i feel i'm unlikely to like it. Fortuneately SWMBO loves it and she'll give us feedback. If i ask her to be uber critical then she may also point out the negatives whereas normally she probably wouldn't. She prefers her wines a little sweeter than most and i don't know if i'll be able to hit the spot, so comments about being a bit dry/sweet should bear this in mind. Anyway we are jumping the gun a bit!

At the moment its noisily bubbling away and smells zesty and fruity
 
Yep, neither me nor SWMBO are into artificial sweeteners so it'll be sugar or honey if we go that route. I think that i'll probably have SWMBO taste it when it stops fermenting, if she likes it then cool, if not i'll add sugar then and then commit yeasticide :grin:
 
Racked tonight and the last bag of solids removed.

I wasn't expecting much from the taster i would get from siphoning but hey ..... it tastes promising. Sweet of course cos its only about half fermented. Ginger flavour seems pretty spot on and surprised me so much that i completely forgot to check for the green tea flavour. zesty flavours also came through tho i don't know if it was from the ginger or the lemon zest. If this taster is anything to go by then this would make an excellent sweet/medium wine as the sweetness compliments the ginger. It is of course a bit premature to get excited about flavours until the sugar/alcohol balance is much more like the final product. Next time i rack i'll have an idea of how it tastes as a dry wine. swmbo prefers a little on the sweet side rather rather than dry so chances are i'll be ensuring there is some residual sugar to suit her tastes .... and i think i may like this one sweetish/medium myself, a pleasant surprise.

Anyone know how the flavour of ginger in wine changes over months?
 
you detected my subtle optimism then falafael :lol:

if you really like ginger then i reckon upping the amount of ginger used in this recipe would suit you, perhaps by 50% initially as i don't think this much more would make the ginger overpowering. The weight of ginger i used was the peeled weight.
 
Racked again today as there is plenty of sediment and the fermentation has all but stopped ... and had a sneaky taste of course (as did swmbo)

It's base flavour is very much like a dry white wine, fruity citrus flavours also - my guess is that its not just the zest but also the root ginger that contributes to that. That typical spicey flavour associated with ginger only comes through as an aftertaste, albeit pretty quickly. And it's not a strong ginger flavour. So all you ginger fans who want to try this or something similar, i would recommend doubling the amount of ginger. It should be more than an after-taste then, but of course you would then be experimenting too and may find it still isn't enough! It is early days yet, so with conditioning i expect all the usual improvements. These notes are merely hints of what to expect, and it seems to me and swmbo that it's gonna be a nice wine.

Chances are i'll be repeating it next year, but if you can't wait that long to find out what the next iteration will taste like then it's on your hands :thumb:

Next update will be when it clears and gets racked again
 
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