Lychee and Elderflower Wine/Champagne

[alanywiseman.]

So this is my second batch of Elderflower Wine. I made a batch last year that was nice and everone who has tasted it really likes it but I feel it is a bit 1 dimentional. To counter this I have come up with the following recipe to add a bit more flavour and make the wine a bit more interesting:

For 4G

4 x tins of Lychee in Light Syrup
300g Saltanas (Rinsed of oil, rehydrated, blended then boiled)
Sugar to 1.090
50g Tartaric acid (TA currently just under 3g/l, but I think I will need more)
Water to 18L
GV3 Yeast (Sparkling Wine Yeast)
6tsp tronozymol yeast nutrient
6tsp Pectolase

This is what is currently in the bucket. The plan is to let this ferment for about 5-6 days then rack the wine off onto the elderflowers which will be harvested on a sunny day to get the best aroma and flavour possible. The reasoning is to retain as much of the aroma as possible. OG was 1.090 and yeast was pitched at 22C.

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that using lychees in wine makes it difficult (if not impossible) to clear. I'm hopign that's wrong, as the combination of lychees and elderflowers sounds scrummy!

 

[alanywiseman.]

Thanks for the input Tim :thumb:

From what I have read it seems to be ok. The idea came from HERE and no one seems to have a problem with clearing. Fingers crossed it will be ok cause once the champagne bottles are filled there will be no going back :pray:

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

I don't bottle a sparkling wine until it's already fermented and cleared in the DJ. That way you know it'll clear after carbonation in the bottle.

 

[alanywiseman.]

So do you then stir the yeast back into the wine or pitch new yeast?

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

Even once a wine has cleared there'll be yeast cells suspended in the wine - too few to see, but enough to carbonate a wine. They do drop out eventually, but it takes about six months, so as long as you prime and bottle within a few months of the wine clearing you should get a good fizz.

 

[alanywiseman.]

Got the elderflowers picked today. Hopefully I have 4 pints worth :pray: as it is really late in the season and there are not many got heads around.

I tested the SG on Monday and it was at 1.050 so it shou be about 1.010 by tomorrow so I will shake the heads off and boil them tomorrow morning and rack the wine onto them till it is finished.

 

[awl23]

i started a elderflower wine/champagne about 2 months ago and its still bubbling away. Did yours take that long?

It was 1 gallon of water with 1.5kg of sugar so no extra sugar from fruit juice

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

If you're short on elderflowers, add some gooseberries. Freeze them to break down their structure, then crush with a potato masher and add along with 1tsp pectolase.

 

[alanywiseman.]

Only ended up with 1.25 pints of elderflowers and not the 4 I was after. I used the dark bag technique to get the flowers off the stems and compared to last year you really seem to lose a lot of the smell I thought so will go back to cutting them off fresh next year I think.

The SG 1.030 and rack off the lychee and saltanas onto the flowers. Cant get ahold of gooseberries sadly so may add some strwberies of maybe some more Lychee (I have plans to make a Lychee Wine as this is currently one of the best tasting homwbrewed wines I have had on the go!)

 

[alanywiseman.]

SG down to 1.012. The prodominent taste at the moment is definetly lychee and that seems to be no bad thing.