rhubarb

[Big Al]

Rhubarb Wishkey...hic

1 gall of rhubarb
1 gall of cold water
4 lbs of demerera sugar
4 lemons
1.5 lbs of clean wheat
1/2 lb of raisins
1 oz yeast
2 egg shells

Method Cut the rhubarb up in small chunks and cover with the water. Add the wheat and leave to mash for 14 day, stiring often. Strain and squeeze all of the moisture out of the pulp before throwing away
Strain the liquid through 3 layers of flannel and add the sugar. Add the thinly p???? the yellow rind of and the juice of the lemons, chopped raisens and washed egg shell. Sprinkle on top the yeast and put in a warm place to ferment After 12 days skim and bottle. It matures in 6 months.
It ferments a long time in a cloudy condition.


1916 recipe for Rhubarb wine
Ingredients

7 lb of rhubarb
3 lb of sugar
1 gallon cold water
2 lemons
1teaspoon full of yeast

Method
Remove leaves and wipe sticks of rhubarb.
Cut into small chunks and put into wooden tub or earthenware crock. Boil water and pour onto rhubarb.
Cover and leave for 10 days stirring once each day. Strain through 2 squares of muslin and squeeze liquor out pulp.
Gently heat the liquid until lukewarm and then add the sugar and juice of lemons. Add a little sugar to the yeast and mix until liquid. Add this to the rhubarb liquor and pour into a dog cask or earthenware jar.
Cover lightly and leave to ferment out then bung or cork tightly and leave for 4 months then bottle.

1918 Potato wine recipe
Ingredients
6 pounds of potatoes
1 gall of water
Juice and rind of 2 oranges and 1 lemon
½ oz yeast

Method
Cut up the potatoes unpeeled and cook with orange and lemon peel until tender. Strain and add sugar and juice of oranges and lemon. When cool add the yeast and shake until sugar is dissolved. Leave for 7 days stirring from the bottom every day then bottle.

[witch way]

Is its still OK to pick and use rhubarb this late? I read somewhere that you should leave it for the nutrients to work back down to the roots to overwinter? Mine's looking a bit tough now, but I'd love to have a go at the whisky and wine. ww

[Penny Lane]

Wish I saw the rhubarb wine recipe last week when I had access to loads of rhubarb!

What's the potato wine like?

[Big Al]

Wish I saw the rhubarb wine recipe last week when I had access to loads of rhubarb!

What's the potato wine like?

I don't know what any of them are like yet penny lane. It was just a scrap of paper I found in my mams tins that I've been sorting through since she dropped off the perch a couple of years ago. There are another couple of recipies here called bread champagne and christmas wine but again I don't know wha they are like but they are from the turn of the last century ...ish...

Why not have a go and tell us what they are like

[Mr and Mrs luvpie]

So Big Al, my new(ish) plot is overrun with rhubarb at the mo, where any of these any good? Did anyone ever try them, or is it down to us??

[vancheese]

Just started a batch of potato wine - Hope the recipe proves it worth!

[frozenthunderbolt]

As with most wines high in starches, if you dont add the starch digesting enzyme (amalayse?) you will get a wine that gives a killer head the next morning as it will be high in methanol rather than ethanol + more fusil oils and such byproducts. You could rectify this somewhat by adding some activated charcoal to your brew.

[vancheese]

Thanks for the advice - How much Charcoal should be added for about 5 litres?

[MKG]

One of the very few occasions I have to disagree with ftb. Alcohol in any form is one of the things which does not get absorbed by activated charcoal (which is why it's used to purify vodka). It takes out most other stuff, but all the alcohols are left behind. So if you do produce methanol, it'll still be there even with the charcoal. The question is whether you actually do produce more methanol by trying to ferment starches. To be frank, I have never found any evidence that this is the case. I suspect that the tale is a hangover from moonshine days, when rocket fuel would be distilled from a potato wine. It was poor distillation practice which concentrated the methanols rather then the original wine. However, I'm prepared to be corrected on that.

In a nutshell, if you put any starchy ingredients in your wine (potatoes or grains) then the use of amylase is just about the only practical method of changing the starches to fermentable sugars. Not to worry, though - in most recipes, the grain is there for flavour only (it makes the wine taste a little like whisky) and potato wine isn't worth wasting the sugar. Oh, and if you don't use amylase, there's a good chance that you'll end up with a starch haze in the wine, and there's only one way to get rid of one of those (which, as you may have guessed, is amylase).

Just in case anyone is panicking, there are methanols in all wines, commercial or home-made. But they are there in such small quantities that normal consumption is harmless. Too much and you get a headache, but that's about as dangerous as it gets until you start to concentrate everything by distillation.

Mike

[vancheese]

I thought that the levels of Methanol were also low but only became a problem when distilling - This could be an issue as I live in hungary and it legal to produce 50l(!!!!) of palinka(schnaps) per year. I've been tempted by the idea of distilling homebrew. I would avoid the first few shots which come off due to methanol boiling off first.I would also probably run a sample through a chromograph system at my work (chemistry department, local uni) to measure the relative concentrations
Would amylase be a must if I was considering concentrating my potato wine?

[frozenthunderbolt]

Correct mike, was tired last night and didn't phrase that well. The charcoal will help kill the fusil oils but will do nothing for the methanol content. If you are worried about methanol in spirits buy a fractal distilation still rather than a pot still - if used correctly it should overwhelmingly concentrate only the ethanol.

[vancheese]

I'll follow local practises - I just like my eyesight!

[MKG]

Hmmm - I just looked up poteen. It was traditionally made from a mixture of equal weights of potatoes and sugar. The alcohol, then, comes mainly from the sugar. I would imagine that the inclusion of the potatoes was simply because that's what the Irish had at the time in plenty, and you do need something to provide some nutrients for the yeast to do its work - potatoes can't possibly have added much flavour. Given that, I think I'd use anything but potatoes if I was making a wash for distillation (not that I would because it's completely illegal here). But the answer to your question is therefore no - you don't need the amylase as you're not trying to convert starch to sugar.

I'd take a bet that using cheap fruit juice at the rate of 1 litre per gallon of wine would give a better base than any amount of potatoes - and would be more in the schnapps tradition, I would have thought. Or even rhubarb which, now I cast my mind back, was what this thread was about . Sorry !!!

Mike

[frozenthunderbolt]

One of the best wash mixtures (legal here in NZ; ymmv) is apparently made with orange juice - the pulpier the better - it provides a structure that helps prevent the yeast autolysing when dead and producing off flavours or so many of the less desirable by-products. I used 4L orange juice 16 L water 5 kg sugar, vit b, some tartaric and some malic and about 1/2 cup of nutrient salts. Has produced a quite pleasent, if bland dry white (STRONG) table wine that is almost finished fermenting out.
I will run it through my still in a few weeks time after i finish writing school reports and the school drama production is done!

[gregorach]

Hmmm - I just looked up poteen. It was traditionally made from a mixture of equal weights of potatoes and sugar. The alcohol, then, comes mainly from the sugar.

You can convert quite large amounts of starch to fermentable sugars by mashing with green (ie undried and unkilned) barley malt, and I'd be surprised if this wasn't used at some point, given that sugar was once an expensive luxury.

There's a story at my allotment site about a bloke who used to put his plot down to 3/4 potatoes and 1/4 barley...