what to brew this time of the year?

[percival]

i enjoy making cheap wines, especially from ingredients that i can pick from hedgerows etc. the latest expedition was rosehips. but after the frost and into november i'm a bit stuck for ideas in this vein. has anyone got any suggestions for picking this time of the year? my fermenting bin is busy for 2 weeks. i want a wine, not beer or cider.

if there is no more good picking then i may go for something cheap to buy, like parsnips.

 

[Wez]

No suggestions P, but i'd be keen to hear how you make parsnip wine :thumb:

 

[percival]

CJJ Berry gives a couple of recipes in his book (first steps in wine making).
don't be fooled by the title, it is an excellent book for beginners, but is also packed full of stuff for those who want to move beyond that. and experienced brewers will find inspiration in his recipes for their own particular tastes and methods.

anyway one recipe is wine, the other is sherry.

if i do the parsnip thing i'll post the important details here. it looks like a straight forward recipe, what got me interested was the realisation of how sweet a good parsnip can be (hmmm i find myself thinking that i must sound like baldrick), their price, and its seasonal. if it works out to make a yummy wine :pray: then the amusement value will be almost priceless :thumb:

 

[BrewStew]

hmmm i find myself thinking that i must sound like baldrick

that's a point, are turnips fermentable? :lol:

 

[percival]

hmmm i find myself thinking that i must sound like baldrick

that's a point, are turnips fermentable? :lol:

i bet they are, more to the point does the result taste good ... apart from in baldrick's opinion

i just been rummaging about online looking for inspiration and found some funny stuff ... pumpkin wine, sweet potato wine, cucumber wine to mention a few. also mint wine ... we have a little patch of mint in the garden, about to go to waste with winter upon us .... i think its time may have come.

 

[Jensen]

Here's an idea, I remember my dad made some rice and raisin wine about 25 years ago, should ok to drink by now :rofl:
Seriously he did, and i seem to remember he said it was ok, don't know where you'd get a recipie tho.

:

 

[percival]

that'd be sake then. the recipe i followed used rice and raisins. apart from the variety of the rice its pretty much CJJ Berry's recipe. his book is really good, just seen he has a follow up to. both available on amazon. "first steps in winemaking"

of course its not true sake, thats made using a fungus to break down the starches in the rice into simpler sugars. Still the wine does get something from being fermented with rice. i use basmati rice (one of my more expensive brews ... BUYING all those ingredients! :whistle: )

i've just had a remarkable thing happen when i racked it. in teh last gallon i got a lot of resuspended sediment swirling about. when it settled, few days, it took all the fine suspended material with it. now its pretty much crystal clear, i would be happy if it was like that 3 weeks after racking. the first gallon still has a noticeable haze and little sediment. it had me rummaging about in the storage cupboards of my memory, looking for that old chemistry knowledge, for an explanation. about the only time it comes in useful these days. homebrew isn't a precise science tho, so turning that into a repeatable useful procedure will probably never happen, alas.

 

[Jensen]

You could try some cider made with s/market value juice, about 50p litre, aparently it's very good :thumb: and cheap

 

[percival]

i often wonder if making orange wine from cartons of juice would be be just as nice and much less effort than doing it the long way .... from whole oranges etc. one day i might even try it, but at the moment i enjoy the process too much!