Rhubarb Wine recipe

[GlentoranMark]

Hi, I've done a search and read up on a few threads but I'd like to run this by anyone that had made a Rhubarb wine before.

I've 2250 grams of Rhubarb but only 1 demijohn.

Does this recipe sound OK?

2.25 kg Rhubarb
2 kg Sugar
250 ml Red Grape Juice
100 ml strong tea
Enough water to top up a demijohn

Slice Rhubarb in food processor, mix with sugar, mix and put into straining bag. Leave 3 days, stirring every day. Squeeze bag, pour contents into demijohn. Pour 2 pints hot water over pulp, give a good stir then squeeze again. Pour contents into demijohn.

Pour grape juice and tea and top up with cold water leaving 1 pint short of top (in case of overflow) and pitch yeast.

Leave 2 weeks to ferment, top up with water, leave another week. Add 2 crushed campden tablets and leave another week. Rack off into sterilised pot then put back in demijohn topping up to the neck.

Leave 6 months, crash cool for 2 weeks then bottle.

Anyone suggest any tweaks and what would be a suitable yeast? I'm going to start this later btw.

Thanks for any comments or suggestions.

 

[Grafter67]

The acidity of rhubarb may be an issue (he says without ever having made rhubarb wine).

I'd be tempted to go to nature's way for another demijohn or go to asda and grab a 5l of water for £1.06 or whatever and split into batches.

 

[goodolpete]

I only use 2lb of rhubarb for mine.
I dice it, put it in a freezer bag, then
do four or five cycles of deep freeze then
thaw it. After that I cut off a corner of
the freezer bag and pour the liquid out
and use that with 250 g sultanas and wgj.
Pete

 

[cheapbrew]

I use 2kg rhubarb and 1kg sugar per gallon, my recipe is in this thread http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?p=601567#post601567

My latest batch has been going just over a week and I'm gonna rack off the pulp at the weekend.

 

[tonyhibbett]

I would split the rhubarb into 2 x 1 gallon batches, as it is high in (malic) acid. A 5 litre plastic water bottle is fine as an extra dj but the mouth is too big for a standard bung and fermentation trap. However you can drill a hole in the lid or cut down a bit of polystyrene packing material and make hole in that.
Using red grape juice is a good idea since rhubarb juice is somewhat pink anyway, but I would use 500 ml per gallon and reduce the sugar by 80 g per gallon. Freezing the cut rhubarb will help juice extraction. If you can get it, an enzyme called Rohapect does an excellent job of colour and flavour extraction. I recently used it to extract 300 ml of clear juice from 440 g of thawed rhubarb with an excellent aroma. Rhubarb wine is good stuff but combined with grape and apple juice you get a more sophisticated German style wine.

 

[GlentoranMark]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Yes I know I can convert a 5L water container, I've done it before, the good thing doing this method means no sterilising. Iceland sell 5L water for £1.

OK reading above I'll split it in 2 and add red grape juice to one and apple juice to the other, that should make for a good comparison.

I already started it last night, slicing my rhubarb in a food processor and mixing in the sugar. I'll give it a mix later and leave another day.

Has anyone any thoughts on a suitable yeast?

 

[cheapbrew]

I've used various makes of wine yeast over the years and they all came out good.

 

[GlentoranMark]

Doesn't matter now, when I checked my rhubarb yesterday it had a mould on it, chucked the lot in the bin. Good news is I can get more in a week or 2