First batch of wine in 25 years now brewing!

[Mrs Dobby]

Hi Guys!

Well, for the first time since my student days, I've started my first batch of homebrew wine! We had a taste of a fellow plotholder's Rhubarb Wine a few weeks ago at the plot BBQ, and both decided that perhaps the time was now right for us to renew our interest in homebrewing, but also as a way of using some of our surplus crops!

We recently picked up some freecycle and ebay equipment, and after a trip to the local homebrew shop for some supplies to start a batch of Elderberry Wine and a batch of Mead, we came away with an Elderflower Wine Kit and some dried elderflowers!

The kit wine was started today, and is now gently fizzing away, with the airlock bubbling nicely, the dried elderflower wine will be started tomorrow, once I pick up some lemons that CJ Berry suggests we use in his recipe (its a very old copy I've got, Ive had it for 25 years+), then once I've gotten some Elderberries picked that will be started soon after!

The Mead will be made using the honey that we get from the cappings and a couple of jars that have granulated, thats going in a 5 Gallon fermentation vessel, so we should have plenty of alcofrol on its way in the coming year!

[rustylady]

Hi Suzanne. Like you I've started homebrewing again this year after a similar gap. Dandelion wine nearly ready for bottling, Plum wine still clearing, and I've made a batch of Shirl's Fruit Teabag wine.

[Headfry]

Hi Suzanne and welcome back to the 'brewing' club!!!!
I am just about to start some plum wine......I love having a demi john 'plopping' away in the kitchen, so have to keep making it....that's my excuse anyway!
I got back into it about 5 years ago, getting the kit was so difficult then - hardly any 'brewing' shops, but now....well they pop up in all kinds of places- makes home brewing a lot more easy!
Have fun!

[Mrs Dobby]

Hi HF, thanks for the welcome back to the 'brewing club'! I wish now I'd never stopped, but time was too much of a problem back in the day, but with soo much crops coming in from the plots, it seemed sensible to use them in another new way, hence the winemaking! Well, the Elderflower is certainly 'plopping' away nicely in the kitchen, soon to be joined by some more Elderflower and some Elderberry, either today or tomorrow!

Hi RL, so we're the newbies in the 'brewing club' on the Vine then? Lol, New perhaps at this time, but I bet like me you can remember making lots of wines in the past! Isnt it amazing how much you still recall about the processes and what to do! I had a flashback whilst cleaning the demijohns to the kitchen I used to have in the bedsit, and washing / sterilizing endless demijohns and bottles, not only for wine but also for beer! Ah, fond memories, the sun steaming through the window and a few 'quality control' tester glasses, nice! Lol

[zazen999]

I'm on batch 17 of my homebrews....

This one is the must from batch 16 which was grapes [picked at the house near my lottie, as he has too much to cope with] and local elderberries; plus fresh elderberries and more sugar.

Our fav at home though is the rosehip teabag wine which is ready so quickly!

[Mrs Dobby]

Well, the first 2 batches of homebrew are bottled, we tasted the Elderflower last night, tis gorgeous!! Very impressed so far, crystal clear, crisp dry taste, very pallateable!



An then there's 5 more demijohns on the go of wine...........



... and a 5 gallon barrle of mead still brewing!

We're also starting 2 more gallons of mead this week, 1 of Druidic Celtic Mead and one of rosehip metheglin, should be fun!

[Two_Sheds]

It gets a bit addictive doesn't it? I've got about 50 bottles of homebrew maturing in the garage, 8 DJs on the radiator, carrot wine to be bottled tomorrow, and a freezer full of sloes to ferment...

[rustylady]

Bottled my dandelion the other day and had a taste - absolutely gorgeous.

[Hilary B]

We sometimes tell each other that there is no point making wine. We have the opportunity to buy it cheap (trips to Europe, and we like the cheap ones anyway) an never quite seem to drink it as fast as we buy, so why make our own? Then we open one of the good ones.....