Joy of Home Wine Making (30 page)

Soak the raisins overnight and chop them finely. Put the raisins and bananas in a nylon straining bag in a primary fermenter.

Boil the water with the sugar or honey and skim. Pour the sugar water over the fruit. When tepid, add acid, tannin, yeast nutrient, and the Campden tablet, if you choose to use one. Cover and fit with an air lock. Twelve hours after the Campden tablet, add the pectic enzyme. If you don’t use the tablet, merely wait until the must cools down to add the pectic enzyme.

Twenty-four hours later, add yeast, cover, and let it ferment, stirring daily and mashing the nylon bag. The must might get thick and nasty looking, but don’t worry. The dried banana flakes cause this temporarily.

When the PA goes down to 3 to 4 percent, remove the fruit
and let it drain. Rack the wine into a glass secondary container. Bung and fit with an air lock.

A few weeks later, rack it again. During the next three to six months, rack again, and when the wine ferments out dry, taste it. I feel this wine is best sweetened. Stabilize and sweeten with 2-6 ounces of sugar syrup, and bottle it. This is best as a social wine rather than a table wine. Serve chilled.

SPECULATION DRIED FRUIT WINE

This recipe is for all those interesting but usually expensive dried fruits that have been partially candied and dried, such as cranberries, cherries, pineapple, kiwi, blueberries, etc. The darker fruits tend to have more flavor, the lighter ones less. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, be sure the dried fruit has no oil in it! It’s best to use fruit you have dried yourself in a dehydrator or in the hot sun. Don’t worry about exact amounts of fruit in this recipe. A little more or less won’t hurt anything.

1 gallon water

6-8 ozs. dried dark specialty fruit or 12-16 ozs. light dried fruit

2 lbs. sugar or 2½ lbs. honey

1 tsp. citric acid

¼ tsp. tannin

1 tsp. yeast nutrient

1 Campden tablet, crushed (optional)

½ tsp. pectic enzyme

1 packet champagne yeast

Rinse whichever fruit you are using and soak overnight. Chop the fruit finely. Put it in a nylon straining bag, and place in the bottom of your primary fermenter.

Boil the water and sugar and honey, and skim if necessary. Pour the hot sugar water over the fruit. Cool to tepid, add acid, yeast nutrient, tannin, and the Campden tablet, if you choose to use one. Cover and fit with an air lock. Twelve hours after the Campden tablet, add the pectic enzyme. If you don’t use the tablet, merely wait until the must cools down to add the pectic enzyme.

Check the PA.

Twenty-four hours later, add yeast. Cover. Ferment on the fruit for a week, stirring daily. When the PA is 2 to 3 percent, lift out
the bag and drain it, but don’t squeeze. When the wine settles again, rack it out into a glass secondary fermenter, and let it go on fermenting for three to six months, racking it once or twice. When fermented out dry, taste it, and decide if you want to sweeten it a bit. If so, stabilize and bottle. Keep for six months to a year before sampling. Good luck.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Vegetable Wines

D
RINK your vegetables?

Yes, in a way, but you still have to eat your vegetables, as well. Vegetable wine is no excuse for skipping good nutrition!

My first batch of vegetable wine was made out of curiosity and carrots. I was going through CJJ Berry’s
First Steps in Winemaking
, and I thought, why not? It’s winter, and carrots are cheap.

So I went out and got the five pounds of carrots required for a gallon and did it. As you might remember from the introduction, I wasn’t impressed with the results, at first. I discovered the wonderful world of vegetable wines, thanks to time and the optimism of my brother.

Nearly all of the recipes I have adapted and used over the years have some fruit in them. In the older recipes, it is usually lemons, obviously included for the acid. Having made vegetable wines with and without citrus fruits, I must say I prefer wines that use them. They help round out the flavors. Some recipes have you
add some malt, or raisins, or grape concentrate. These also help give the wine more body. But don’t leave out the vegetables. They really are important!

Recommended vegetables:
carrots, potatoes, beets, pea pods, parsnip, squash, sweet potatoes

Possibilities:
celery, green beans, lettuce, sweet corn, onion, garlic, spinach, swiss chard

Not recommended:
zucchini, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, mushrooms

This first recipe should give you the basic idea. I’ve never had trouble with the dreaded “starch haze” mentioned in older books, particularly the British ones. Most recipes recommend that when using potatoes and carrots you use old vegetables, even withered ones (NOT rotten). I’ve done that, but I’ve also used nice, new, sweet vegetables and never had a problem in either case. It may be that overcooking or hard boiling causes the starch haze, but I don’t do either of those, either.

So, pull up your suspenders of belief, and make a batch of:

OPTIMISTIC SIBLING CARROT WINE

1 gallon water (plus a little bit more, because you lose some in steam)

5 lbs. carrots (I prefer organically grown)

juice and zest of 3 oranges

juice and zest of 2 lemons or 4 tsps. acid blend

2½ lbs. sugar or 3 lbs. honey

1 tsp. yeast nutrient

¼ tsp. tannin

1 Campden tablet, crushed (optional)

½ tsp. pectic enzyme

1 packet champagne yeast

optional: 10 bruised peppercorns (more about peppercorns in the Big Time section)

Put the water on the stove to heat.

Scrub the carrots well. DO NOT PEEL, except for stubborn bits of stuff that won’t come off. Slice fine, as for soup, by hand or with a food processor, working in batches.

Simmer the carrots in the water (add the peppercorns, if you want to try them) just until tender, 30-45 minutes. DO NOT BOIL!

Remove the zest from the citrus fruit (no white pith), and squeeze the juice. Place the zest in a small nylon straining bag.

Strain the carrots (and peppercorns) from the water. You can use the carrots as food, if you wish. Remove about a quart of the water to add back later if you don’t have enough. It’s hard to say how much you will have lost in steam while cooking. Add the sugar or the honey, and simmer until the sugar is dissolved. If using honey, simmer 10-15 minutes, stirring, and skim any scum.

Pour the hot water into a sanitized primary fermenter over the zest. Add the fruit juices. (You can reserve a bit of the orange juice and extra carrot water to start the yeast later, if you like.) Check to see if you have a gallon of must. If not, make it up with the reserved water. Add yeast nutrient, tannin, and acid blend if you didn’t use lemons. Let the must cool, then add the Campden tablet, if you choose to use one. Cover and fit with an air lock. Twelve hours later, add the pectic enzyme.

Twenty-four hours later, check the PA and add the yeast.

Stir daily. In two weeks or so, check the PA. Lift out the bag of zest and let it drain back into the container. Do not squeeze. Discard the zest. Let the wine settle, and rack it into a secondary fermenter. Bung and fit with an air lock. Rack as necessary in the next six months or so. Check the PA. When it ferments out, bottle the wine. You can sweeten it if you like by adding stabilizer and 2 to 4 ounces of sugar syrup per gallon. I prefer it dry, and used as a table wine. Keep for two years at least.

POTABLE POTATO WINE

3 lbs. old potatoes (organically grown preferred)