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well the Norfolk Nog' kit beer.. which is rather like a porter... is pretty good - impressed with that..
and now i have some lager burbling away in the ferminting bin.

Lord, I am surprised you lot are ever sober enough to post legibly on here!

I don't really drink, but DH does, and I can't ignore stuff in the hedgerows when I am walking the dog. So at the weekend I started off some sloe vodka. I thought I might be too late for the sloes but there are still loads of them.

Made some lovely raspberry wine and some gooseberry last year, which disappeared fairly quickly. I am thinking about parsnip wine - it sounds vile, but we have plenty of parsnips on the veg patch. Anybody else had success with this?

Jane

the.fee.fairy wrote:ooooh...that gives me ideas!
i've got loads of apples that i was going to turn to cider, and apple wine, but i picked up a load of ginger at the weekend, so...does anyone have a tried and tested ginger wine recipe?

I'm thinking apple and ginger too...that would work, right?

made fejoa and ginger that was beautiful straight out with no maturing.

im going to have a go at ginger wine next too. i LOVE "Stones Green Ginger Wine" or as it is affectionately called "Bastard Juice" lol

Am thinking i will get a pound or so of ginger root (i like it strong!) a kilo of brown sugar, 250grams of sultanas, juice of two lemons, tablespoon of mollases and about 4.5 L of water and see how it goes

Chickenlady wrote:Lord, I am surprised you lot are ever sober enough to post legibly on here!

ha!

problem with wine making is its such a long process. you need a lot of things on the go just to keep some wine in!

beer making.. this is a first time for me, and I am making it for that winter festival thingy, but, the people at my local homebrew shop assure me that by bottling and conditioning my beer in plastic bottles, it will keep, so I so be ok for the occasional glass for a while.....

Chickenlady wrote: So at the weekend I started off some sloe vodka. I thought I might be too late for the sloes but there are still loads of them.

Jane

It's perfect sloe picking time, in my Gran's book you need to wait for two frosty nights before picking them (this will soften them up) and prick them with a silver needle/fork, though stainless steel will prolly do!.


In spiced apple wine you use ginger and raisens, these help provide pectinase to reduce cloudiness. I can post a recipe if you like (if I remember tonight!)

It's perfect sloe picking time, in my Gran's book you need to wait for two frosty nights before picking them (this will soften them up) and prick them with a silver needle/fork, though stainless steel will prolly do!.


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course these days we have freezers.. and they soften up in the freezer too!

My little bros helped me to bottle my Feijoa wine the other day, its STILL a little cloudy, and slightly too sharp to my taste but im not going to bother with fineings.

Is still drinkable and will be better colder than from the carboy i suspect, it is rather like a feijoa version of cider realy - just slightly sparkeling.

on a sad note my carbouy died was washing it out with cool water on a material pad on my driveway and it cracked. not thermal shock and i didnt drop it but it is the end of an era none the less . . .

was a massive round one used in the old days for transporting the acid used in printing. belonged to my grandfather.

oh well will have to fin another or some more demi-johns now.

anyone want to give me pros and cons of using PLAs-tick *ew* to ferment in - brewers plastic carbouys - go or no?

ooh, yes, can we have the recipe for that spiced ginger wine please?

I've got apple juice and ginger, and ginger on the go at the moment...and 2gall ciderish!

For the apple juice and ginger, i put the remains of 2 cartons of apple juice (about half a carton each...they'd already started fermenting - the cartons were blown up!!) and some ginger juice - i chopped up a good handful of fresh ginger (the bloke at the boot sale was selling a tub of fresh ginger - typical market bowl size - for £1...so i got 3!) and put it in some boiling water. Then i liquidised that lot. Then, i strained it and squeezed the pulp in some muslin so that i got ginger juice.

I put it all into a demijohn, and filled it to the shoulders with mineral water. Then i put a teaspoon of citric acid, a tsp of wine yeast and half a small bag of sugar in there too (i made it up as i went along) its started fermenting nicely!

OK here's Apple wine (spiced)
6lb windfall apples
3lb white sugar
1 lemon rind
1 gal water
1/2 lb raisins
1/2 oz. root ginger
Cut apples thin slices, pour 1/2 gal boiling water leave 2 days, stirr occasionally.Squeeze out thro' muslin into jar. Return pulp to bowl.Boil remaining water,with sugar,lemon rind,ginger for 30 min.keep water vol.same by adding more water.Pour boiling mix over pulp.Leave 2 days,stir ,mash.Squeeze out thro muslin add 2nd extract to first,discard pulp.Add yeast and cut up raisins, ferment as disired.

Subsitute pears for apples, reduce sugar to 2lb, inc raisins to 2lb, to make delightful wine!.

Ginger wine
2 oz. root ginger
3lb white or demerara sugar
2 lemons
yeast
1 gal water
2 sweet oranges
1/2lb raisins
peel fruit thinly, avoid pith.Put in jug with chopped raisins and fruit jiuce.Boil water/sugar/ginger 30 mins.Add water to retain vol.Strain when cool into jug add yeast.Cover with cloth leave in a warm room for 7 days
Stirr well and add to jar. Continue as normal. If hazy after storage, clear by fining with gelitine and tannin. This is best as a sweet,still wine.

Hope these help

Here's the old ginger beer recipe:
1 oz root ginger
1/2 oz. cream of tartar
1 lb white sugar
1 gall water
1 lemon
yeast
briuse ginger,cream tartar,sugar and lemon rind. cover with boiling water. Stir virorously until sugar dissolved..cool.
Add yeast ,lemon juice, cover with cloth and leave 24 hrs in a warm room.Remove scum,syphon off liquid (no sediment) bottle,cork and wire as quickly as poss.beer is ready in 2 to 3 days!!

ooh they look good!

I've got ginger and apple on the go, its plinking nicely.

I've also got orange and mango going too - its splishing rather than plinking!! I had a 2l carton that had gone off and started fermenting itself, so i thought 'what the hey' and decided to see if i could make something palatable out of it (this year's mystery wine if you like...except i know what this one's made out of...) Again, it'll either be good or it'll be drain cleaner!!

Ive got Blackberry, (Just bottled up),
Carrot Whisky (Bottled)
Nectarine (still to bottle)
Apricot, (15 bottled, 10 to bottle)
Lemon & Ginger (Bottled)
Parsnip (Bottled)
Orange and Apple (Bottled)
Red Grape (Bottled)
And others already bottled
About 180 bottles in total.... + 2 barrels of Home made beer
and about 30 bottles of home made brown ale...

Ive been making wine now for about 2 years, with Rhubarb, Elderberry, and others still in the cellar.

The first trial i had was using the infused tea bags from the supermarket...they worked out ok, but can be a bit sweet.
With price of a pint these days i think im going to have to start drinking wine....

crikey - party at yours I think!

Please excuse my ignorance... but there's so many links and I've searched most of them... but where are all these lovely 'brew' recipes?

I've printed out the most recent recipes on this forum, but please direct me to the other recipes, or send them to me... I'd really appreciate it , especially that APRICOT WINE! I've got a glut of apricots at the moment !

Thank you!
Bridgette

There are a few good books - CJJ Berry's First Steps in Winemaking is a brillaint starter. There are loads of recipes in that, and once you've made a few and worked out how it happens, you can adapt to your own stuff too.


The orange and Mango is finished with - mum was moving the demijohn, it hit a glitch in the floor and cracked So no Orange and Mango this year.

Instead, there is 'random juice' wine. I like to take a litre of fruit juice to work - i decant half a litre into old small coke bottles and have one of each juice. However, i don't always drink the juice and i hate drinking it the next day, even if its been in the fridge overnight. So...Random juice wine is slowly coming into existence. I've decided to just leave the fruit juice on its own to ferment - most of the juice seems to have enough natural yeast in to ferment if left. I'm going to put all the juice dregs into the demijohn until its full, and then leave it to ferment. This is this year's mystery wine! Will it be good? Or will it be drain cleaner?!

frozenthunderbolt wrote:

the.fee.fairy wrote:ooooh...that gives me ideas!
i've got loads of apples that i was going to turn to cider, and apple wine, but i picked up a load of ginger at the weekend, so...does anyone have a tried and tested ginger wine recipe?

I'm thinking apple and ginger too...that would work, right?

made fejoa and ginger that was beautiful straight out with no maturing.

im going to have a go at ginger wine next too. i LOVE "Stones Green Ginger Wine" or as it is affectionately called "Bastard Juice" lol

Am thinking i will get a pound or so of ginger root (i like it strong!) a kilo of brown sugar, 250grams of sultanas, juice of two lemons, tablespoon of mollases and about 4.5 L of water and see how it goes

Could you post your fejoa recipe pretty please, I have a tree that gives me a bumper crop, apart from peeling and eating, I don't know what else to do with em!