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El Dorado Home Wine Making Website - Home Wine Making Information and Wine Recipes
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Fruit Wine
Concord Grape Wine Making Recipes
Homemade Dry Concord Grape Wine Recipe
1 gallon water
10 lbs Concord grapes
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1 package wine yeast
Bring water and sugar to boil in a large pot. Separate grapes from stems and place in primary fermentation container. Crush grapes and pour water into container. Let cool until room temperature. Stir in yeast nutrient and yeast. Cover and let sit for 1 day. Ferment for 3 weeks stirring once a day. Strain through mesh bag into secondary fermentation container. Let rest for 1 month. Rack and let sit for 2 months. Rack into bottles and let rest for at least 9 months before serving.
1 gallon water
4 cups sugar
6 cups Concord grapes
1 Campden tablet
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 package wine yeast
Bring water and sugar to a boil. Crush grapes in primary fermentation container. Add water, crushed Campden tablet, yeast nutrient, and lemon juice. Let cool to room temperature. Add yeast, stir, and cover. Let rest for 1 week. Strain into secondary fermentation container and airlock. Rack every month for 8 months. Place in bottles. Wine will be ready in 1 year.
DANDELION WINE #1
Ingredients: for 1 gallon
6 quarts dandelion blossoms (no stems or greens)
1 gallon boiling water
Method:
Let stand for 3 days and nights in a warm place, stirring often. Strain and
add the juice of 1 lemon and 3 oranges, and 3 lbs sugar. Let ferment until it
stops working (2-3 weeks), stir often. Strain again and bottle. This is
reputed to be a potent wine.
FAST DANDELION WINE
This isn't really a modern recipe either ... no cultured yeast recommendation, no specific gravity and acid levels, not even air locks. The author says it's mellow and potent, and adds "I call it a sippin' wine as its comparison to store wine is similar to that of white lightning to store whiskey."
One gallon of freshly picked, stemless flowers to one gallon of water. Pour boiling water over unwashed blossoms. Allow to steep 1 to 4 days, until blooms_begin_ to float again. Strain water off, warm it to 90 degrees, add 4 lemonsand 4 oranges (the whole fruit with juice), then 3 and 2/3 cup sugar. Stir todissolve and _then_ add yeast. If it doesn't begin to work within 30-60 minutes, try a little more sugar. If you _want_ a sweet wine, it's better to add sugar to taste _after_ it's finished working. Stir it once or twice daily until it calms down. Then strain into bottles and cover loosely until settling is over. It's usually ready to taste 5-7 days after blossom picking. Fast!
If you keep a towel over it during soaking and fermenting times, it will keep fruit flies out of _it_ but not out of the winemaking room. Keep it cool both before and after fermentation times. If blossom soak gets too warm, it will sour for yet another unique flavor to the finished product. Keep it warm, at least 80 degrees, during fermentation for speed.
You may want to use one or the other of these recipes as a starting point only. They seem to share a couple of things in common: 1 to 1-1/2 gallons of flowers to a gallon of water, added lemons and oranges. If I were to try this, I'd shoot for a semi-sweet wine. Starting S.G. a little higher than for a drytable wine. Acid level ... ? But I'd definately use Campden tablets to eliminate wild yeasts and innoculate with a cultured white wine yeast likePasteur White. And I'd ferment it (after the foaming subsides) in a glass carboy with an air lock.
DRIED BILBERRY WINE (or Elderberry or Sloe)
Ingredients:
1⁄2 lb. dried bilberries
4 oz. raisins
1 gallon water
Yeast nutrient and yeast
2 1⁄2 lb. sugar
1 level teaspoon citric acid
Method:
Chop the raisins and pour the boiling water over them, the bilberries, and the sugar. Stir well to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool, then add citric acid, nutrient and yeast.
Keep covered in warm place and stir daily for a week, pushing the fruit down. Strain into fermenting jar, ferment, rack when clear, and bottle. An excellent dry red table wine, best made with a Bordeaux or Pommard yeast. For a sweet wine increase sugar to 3 lb. and use a Burgundy yeast.
N.B.—It is possible to take a second "run" off the discarded fruit by adding another gallon of boiling water, more sugar, more nutrient and more acid. When it cools, add some of the first batch of fermenting wine as a starter and ferment for 10 days on the pulp, and continue as before. A lighter wine will result.
Elderberry Wine
4lb Elderberries
3lb gran sugar
1/2 oz yeast
6 cloves
1/2 oz well bruised root ginger
1 gallon cold water
Wash fruit. Boil till tender. Add sugar, cloves and ginger. Stir.
When lukewarm add yeast. Cover and leave for ten days. Then Strain and bottle (I've transferred to demijohn). Add sugar after a few weeks if required. Ready in six months. Better if longer. Good for colds,especially when hot
HONEYSUCKLE WINE
Ingredients:
2 pints of honeysuckle blossom (pressed down lightly)
3 lb. sugar
4 ozs. raisins
1 lemon
1 orange
1 Campden tablet
1 gallon water
Yeast and nutrient
Method:
The flowers must be fully open, and dry. Wash them in a colander, pour the water (cold) over them, and stir in two lbs. of sugar, the minced raisins, and the citrus fruit juice. Add the crushed Campden tablet. Stir well, and next day add the yeast (a Sauternes yeast is suitable) and the nutrient. Ferment for a week in a warm place, stirring daily, then add the remaining sugar and stir well. Strain into fermenting jar and ferment, rack and bottle as usual. Use 1⁄2 lb. sugar less for a really dry wine.
"INSTANT" WINE
by A. S. Henderson
If you have just started winemaking and want an 8 % wine which is suitable for table use, quickly—made, rapid to mature, and low-priced, try this "instant wine" recipe
Ingredients :
1 medium (pint) tin grapefruit juice
1⁄2 lb. EDME light dried malt extract
1 lb. granulated sugar
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
Yeast
Water to 1 gallon
Method:
Dissolve the sugar in up to 1⁄2 gallon of water, putting the saucepan over a very low heat to speed up the solution. Meanwhile dissolve the dried malt extract in a little cold water, open the tin of fruit juice, and funnel everything into the fermentation jar. Dissolve the yeast nutrient with a little warm water and add to the jar, top up with cold water to the shoulder (this should reduce the whole to a safe temperature) and add the yeast. Shake well, and fit a fermentation lock. Stand in a warm place and watch it go ! Within 24 hours the stream of bubbles should be continuous, not less than 1 per second. After a day or two, a thick layer will form on the bottom. Give the jar a swirl round daily to agitate the deposit. When gravity has dropped to 1004, or less (10-14 days), filter. Boil a little filter pulp for 2 mins. in half a pint of water, place a piece of clean linen in a funnel and pour the filter pulp on to it, then pour the wine carefully on to the pulp so as not to disturb it. Return the first few wine glassfuls to the funnel until the filtrate looks reasonably clear. Repeat the filtration two or three days later, and keep the finished wine a week in a cool place before drinking. Other fruit juices (except, God forbid, tomato !) can be used in the same way.