Making wine - A rough guide ... ...

I figured I'd write a post about making wine, seems a lot of people are thinking about having a go at it, I say why not :-)

It's not really that difficult to make a halfway drinkable wine, I've managed to do it twice so far, although I did follow a recipe the first time, well I more or less followed it ;-)

 Here's a picture of the plum wine we made last year (still in demijohns)

Not much of it left now ;-)

So on to making wine, you will need some equipment, a tub for starting things of,demijohns for fermenting and empty bottles to put it in once it's done, but you don't have to get everything in one go, you could get to the demijohn stage and then get the empty bottles as it'll take a few months for fermentation to slow down and stop.

Charity shops and free cycling are good places to find equipment, we got pretty much all our equipment from free cycle and charity shops, maybe you have a relative that used to make wine, they may have some spare or unused demijohns and other stuff, although you don't actually need them, you can used large plastic bottles, the 5 litre kind that you get water in, it's easy to fit an airlock to a bottle like this.

You will need airlocks, these help the gas escape during fermentation, they are cheap enough to buy, or you can find them in charity shops and such like, and it's also possible to make them using a piece of tube.

Here's a list of the basic stuff you'll need, it's what we use to make wine. 

Steriliser,this is very important, some people don't use it, but I wouldn't try it, it's best to have everything nice and clean to prevent build up of unwanted bacteria, a tub of steriliser is about £4 (you want vwp steriliser) this will last a while, we also use it to clean out our jars when we make jams.

Large plastic tub for starting things off, these can be bought for about £10 or you could use any large tub, even an old 10 litre paint tub will do, even more so as you can seal it, obviously it will need to be clean and paint free.

Demijohns, these can also be bought for about £10 each, which is a little expensive, so look in charity shops. Or you could use a large water bottle, but you'll need to make a hole to fit an airlock and rubber bung, this is easy enough to do.

Airlocks, these are cheap enough, you can usually get a pack of 2 complete with rubber bungs for as little as £2.50, but again you might find some in charity shops.

One of our airlocks -

This one is my favourite :-)

This airlock is an old one, it's made of glass, sounds great as the bubbles go through it, most are plastic these days, like the ones in the picture below.

Plastic airlocks -

I prefer the ones on the left, they sound better ;-)

Some other things you might want to get are a straining bag, or you can use muslin, a funnel makes bottling up loads easier and a long bottle brush, you can also buy these from good wine making shops, or you could buy a cheap pack of brushes from somewhere like poundland and attach one to a bit of garden cane, it's what I did to get the tough stuff from the bottom of the demijohns, you can also use a little dry rice in some warm water, just shake it about for a while, it works quite well.

Here's a picture of our blackberry wine, along with the brewing tub we use -

Oddly enough there isn't much blackberry wine left either ;-)

Here's a link to the local shop we use, the bloke that runs it is very helpful, you can also order online ---> Good life home brew (opens in new window) you should be able to find everything you need for making wine,beer and other stuff, they also sell some good wine making yeasts, it will also give you an idea of where to start with it all.

Okay I thought I'd leave you with a recipe for making plum or blackberry wine, although it's easy enough to adapt for them for making different wines, like elderberry for example.

Black berry & Plum wine (which are rather good, even if I do say so myself)

You will need about 2kg of blackberries or plums, which you can pick from your local hedgerows (it's what we did)

2kg of sugar (normal granulated is fine) Obviously the more sugar the sweeter the wine, but 2kg is a good starting point, you can always add more buy boiling some water and adding the extra sugar, but make sure it's cooled right down before adding it to the wine, or you'll kill the yeast.

Boiled water, about 4.5litres (roughly a gallon, enough for a demijohn)

And a good yeast, which you can get from shops like the one I mentioned, they do some good ones for about £1 a packet, enough for a batch of wine, or you can get larger packets of wine yeast.

I'm not going to go into working out the gravity and all the rest of it, but there are many guides online on how to work this out, but this will require a hydrometer, or you could buy a vinometer (about £3) which will give you a rough idea of alcohol content, once it's bottled up.

To start the wine of, make sure your tub is clean, use some steriliser and leave it for a few hours or over night (same for bottles and demijohns) when you want to use them make sure you rinse them well.

Fill your clean tub with the boiled water, then add the sugar and blackberries or plums, use a potato masher or big wooden spoon to mix it all up, try and break the fruit up as you go.

Leave the mixture to cool, make sure it's cooled down before adding the yeast or you'll kill it and it won't ferment.

Once you've added the yeast give it a stir, cover the tub and leave it some where warm for about 5 to 7 days, give  it a stir now and then, you should start to notice when it starts fermenting.

After 5 to 7 days you need to strain the wine through a bag of muslin and pour the liquid into your demijohn, then put an airlock on, you need to put a little water in the airlock, this stops anything getting into the wine, I normally use a little bit of the steriliser water in my airlocks.

The wine will be ready for bottling when no more bubbles go through the airlock, this can take a few months, once the bubbles stop this means fermentation has stopped, the sugar and yeast have turned into alcohol, and you can now bottle it up, you can use screw top bottles, we got a load of glass bottles and corks with our freecycled stuff, it's worth doing it this way.

To get the wine out of the demijohns use a length of plastic pipe (you can get this from wine making shops as well) and siphon the wine into your bottles, you can also buy filters that will help make the wine clearer.

Guess what ? we got a filter as well -

Even came with filter papers :-)

Leave your wine for a week or 2 before drinking, it will however get better the longer you leave it, we noticed a distinct difference between our wine from the bottles we drunk after a few weeks and the ones we drunk after a few months, so again it's worth leaving it that little extra.

The above recipe is how I made both wines, plum and blackberry (both made from foraged fruit) this method would work for elderberries and other fruits, we have a batch of elderflower wine on the go, but that requires a slightly different method.

You don't have to forage for fruits either, although buying a few kilos of blackberries will be quite expensive, but things like plums might be cheaper, we ended up with about 13 bottles (8 blackberry & 5 plum) of wine for Christmas last year, and each bottle cost about 50p not bad and we still have our eye sight ;-)

It's worth looking online for guides on making wine, there's a wealth of information and it's easy to do,saves money and the end results are pretty good, it's not just wine either, you can make your own cider and beers to.

Thanks for reading and happy brewing :-)

Elder flower cordial ... ...

I've made some elder flower cordial, which I'm quite pleased about, mainly because it worked :-) we wanted to make some last year, but missed the best of the flowers, so we put it off until this year, and today I bottled the cordial up (all 2 litres of it) we also have some elder flower champagne on the go, although it'll most likely end up as wine, but I go into that another time.

Here's the cordial -

Nice and refreshing.

Looks good, and tastes great, now making this is pretty simple, although I was a little concerned about it as I've never used flowers in this way and wanted to get it right, and not kill anyone in process :-) we've made cordials before, we make rhubarb and blackberry cordials, and if we get enough black currants we'll be making black currant cordial as well, how ever using elder flowers requires a slightly different method. (you can read about the rhubarb cordial here on my wife's blog opens in new window)

Okay so how to make the cordial ?

Equipment :

• Measuring jug.
• Saucepan for boiling water, or you can use the kettle.
• Large bowl,bucket to keep the mixture in while it infuses.
• Straining bag or muslin.
• Funnel (not essential, but makes bottling up easier)
• Bottles.

Ingredients : (feel free to adjust to suit your needs)

• Sugar (about 1kg, you can adjust to suit your tastes)
• 2 lemons (un-waxed)
• Water about 2 litres (we used 2 litres, but you could use less or more, again adjust to suit your needs)
• Citric acid (helps it last longer, we used 2 teaspoons, but you can add more, or not use it at all)
• About 20 good sized elderflower heads, make sure they are as fresh as possible.

The ingredients are easily adjustable, and with the citric acid you don't have to use it, it just helps it last longer, although from the way the kids have been drinking it we needn't have bothered :-) you can also freeze it in ice cubes, which we've done as well, this will help it last longer as well.

Method :

First boil your water, either in a saucepan or use the kettle (if you use the kettle make sure no lime scale gets into it) then put it into your bucket / tub, then add the sugar, and stir it until all the sugar has dissolved, you can use more or less sugar, we've found that 1kg is probably a little too much for us, but we'll just water it down more.

Add the zest of the lemons (again you can use more or less lemons, or add oranges and limes) then cut the lemons into quarters or slices and squeeze the juice into the mixture, then chuck the lemon pieces in the mixture, if your are using citric acid (which you can get from your local pharmacy) add it now.

Now for the elder flowers, before you put them in the mixture there's 2 things you need to do, make sure that the mixture has cooled and remove any bugs, and if your elder flowers are anything like ours there will be loads of them, give each flower head a shake, but not too hard as all the flowers will drop off, you can also rinse the flower heads in cold water.

Our mixture in the brewing tub we use for this type of thing -

The smell is fantastic.

Once your elder flowers have been de-bugged and the mixture has cooled you can put them in, then just give it a stir and cover it with a lid or a clean cloth, cling film will do as well, then leave it in a cool place for 24 / 48 hours to infuse, the amount of time you leave it is up to you, I looked on various web sites and found people left theirs for a day or two, some a week so it's up to you, obviously the longer you leave it the more flavour it'll have.

When it's ready for bottling all you need to do is strain it through a piece of muslin or a straining bag, then you can pour it into your bottles, make sure they are clean first, once bottled put it in the fridge to chill, or you can freeze it as ice cubes, or ice lollies, you could also make sorbet out of it, it's quite versatile :-)

Here's some in an ice cube tray - 

These go down well with the kids, as would ice lollies.

Just to point out that the flowers contain a natural yeast, if you leave the mixture in a warm spot long enough it will start to ferment and you'll end up with a slightly alcoholic mixture, this is how elderflower champagne is made, and whilst this may be nice for adults it's probably best the kids don't have any ;-) I have another post about our elderflower champagne, which I'll try and write soon.

And finally, you can also make lemon cordial in a similar way, just leave out the elderflowers and don't leave it so long, if you chuck everything in your tub of choice when the water is hot and leave it to cool, you should then end up with a lemon cordial, or you could use limes or oranges.

Thanks for reading.

Adventures in ginger beer ... ...

I decided I was going to make some ginger beer, last time I tried was when I was a kid (a while ago now) and it got messy, although the beer fountains in the kitchen looked quite good :-)
I didn't want to make a shed load of the stuff, just enough to last a few days when the weather is hot, and because I like ginger beer.

Where to start ? well I looked around on-line to see what sort of recipe's I could find, and I found loads all a little different in method,ingredients so I kind of took parts from the various ones I found and made my own, and it worked, that's what I like about experiments, sometimes they work well, and sometimes they don't either way it's good fun :-)

So here it is, it's simple and only takes a couple of days (you can shorten the process if you want, or increase it)

Step 1 -

You will need, a medium sized jar (with a lid)
2litres of spring water (you can get a bottle from Tesco or Sainsburys for about 18p)
1 lemon, a chunk of fresh ginger (enough for about 3 tablespoons when grated) you can get this when you get the water, it should only be a few pence, you can also use powered ginger, but I prefer fresh.
Sugar, it's up to you how much you use, the more sugar the sweeter, use less and it's less sweet.
A small sachet of yeast, the stuff you can get for making bread is fine, we make our own bread so I had some already.
Some hot water from a kettle.
And something to strain with, a fine sieve or a tea strainer, you can also use a clean jay cloth or other fine material type thing, net curtain maybe, but don't go cutting bit's from the one's in the front room.
A tablespoon and a grater, if you don't have a grater you can finely chop the ginger etc.
And a jug.


Now at this point I should mention that I'm not making a plant, my madness will become clearer, perhaps :-) if you are interested in a ginger beer plant then have a read of this - ginger beer plant it mentions the plant about halfway down, under the " Brewed " section, but if you ask me it's an overly complicated way of doing things, and I'm a simple kind of chap, anyway onwards to step 2.

Step 2 - This part you can change about if you see fit, but this is what I did.

Get your jar and put some sugar in it, how much is up to you, I put about 6 heaped table spoons in, but you may want to use less or more depending on how sweet you want it.
Then either grate or chop finely the ginger, until you have about 3 heaped tablespoons, this again is something you can change, less ginger not so hot, more ginger more heat, I didn't peel my ginger, but you can if you want, but it doesn't matter.
Put the ginger in the jar as well.
Then add some lemon zest (peel) again grated of finely chopped, and then squeeze the juice of the lemon into the jar, don't worry if it looks bad, we aren't going to use the mush, we are making a kind of marinade.
Once all that's done add some hot water, this will help dissolve the sugar, top it up with little water if you want, the jar doesn't need to be full.
Then give it a shake (MAKE SURE THE LID IS ON TIGHTLY FIRST) especially if you used hot water from the kettle, shaking the jar will help get all the flavour out of the ginger and also help dissolve the sugar.

At this point I should explain what's going on, lot's of the recipes and methods I found just chucked all of the ingredients into the same tub,bottle and then when finished the ginger beer was strained to get all the bits out, so I thought I'd do it this way to save on straining it out at the end and letting the fizz out.

You can leave the jar of mush over night or for a few hours, it's up to you, I wouldn't leave it much more than a day though.

Step 3 -

Get your jar of mush, and you straining device, I used a tea strainer, but if you brew your own stuff anyway you might already have some muslin or a straining bag.
Strain the mush into a jug, you should be left with a cloudy liquid.

Next get you bottle of water and empty some of it out, fill up the kettle or water filter if you have one, drink it ? seems a shame to waste it. You only need to empty out enough so as the liquid you have will fit into the bottle and leave a gap at the top of about an inch.
Then add a small amount of the yeast to the liquid and give it a good stir to dissolve it, I only used about a third of a teaspoon of yeast, so you can always make some more ginger beer with what's left.
Add the yeasty gingery liquid to you bottle of water, screw the lid on tightly and give it a shake to mix everything up.

Now all you need to do is leave the bottle in a warm place, I left mine on a windowsill in the sun.

Right now this is important, the yeast will start to react with the sugar and start fermenting, this will produce gas, this is how your ginger beer will get it's fizz, but if you leave it too long then the bottle might go bang, or at least the top will blow off and you will have some cleaning to do :-) so you will need to check the bottle now and then to see how hard it is, if it starts to feel really firm you might want to put the bottle in the fridge, this will slow the reaction down.
It only took a couple of hours for mine to work, so I put it in the fridge over night, and then let it warm up again.
The whole process should take about 24 hours or so, the reaction you get will depend on how much yeast you use and how long you keep it warm for.

All in all it took 48 hours from start to finish, and now I have some ginger beer for hot days, I don't think it will keep for ages, but it should be okay for a week.
It's not alcoholic ginger beer, but I would guess that letting it ferment for longer would increase the alcohol content, but you would probably need some kind of fermentation bin or a demijohn with and airlock to do this ?

Have fun, and it may be wise to add a pack of cleaning cloths to you equipment list just incase of accidents :-)

Sorry there aren't any pictures, I will try and include pictures next time I post something like this.

Thanks for reading.