How to Make Elderberry Wine. How to make elderberry wine – it’s something I’ve wondered about since watching Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail many years ago. :-) (“Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries.”)
Now that I’ve gotten into wildcrafting and learned that elderberries are loaded with antioxidants (they’ve made it into the superfood category), I thought wine would be a great way to use the abundance of local elderberries. (I’ll also be making more jellies and syrups this year, too.) The wine isn’t done yet, but people have been asking for the recipes, so I thought I’d share my experience to date.
How to Find Elderberries Elderberries like moist soil, so you’ll find them in ditches, along the edges of wet woodlands, near lakes and rivers, and other damp ground. We went foraging for elderberries along country roads here in northeast Wisconsin. Roadside elderberry patch Be careful to make sure you have a positive identification. Elderberry leaves In the middle of an elderberry thicket. How to Make Pumpkin Wine.
Did you know you can make wine out of just about any fruit or vegetable, even onions?
I haven’t tried that one yet, but I did have more than enough pumpkins this season, so I decided to try my hand at pumpkin wine. Note: it’s entirely possible that I keep making wine even though I am not a big wine drinker just because I love the rich, yeasty smell in my kitchen as it ferments. Pumpkin Wine Recipe Adapted from Ingredients 8 cups pumpkin 1 pound raisins (I used golden) 1 – 4 inch cinnamon stick 1 inch fresh ginger root 1 whole nutmeg 1 gallon water, boiling. How to Make Dandelion Wine and Dandelion Cookies. We have been inundated by dandelions – LOTS OF DANDELIONS!
They are everywhere! Along the driveway… …in the garden, in the yard – hundreds (maybe thousands?) Of dandelions. What do yo do when you’re overrun with dandelions? The boys and I got picking and we gathered a large bowl full of dandelion flowers for wine and cookies, plus some greens for a decoction. The recipes I used called for the petals only, so we sat down to a long session of “second picking”. The cookies called for 1/2 cup of petals, the rest went into the gallon crock for wine. How to Make Pear Wine. When life gives you too many overripe pears, it’s time to learn how to make pear wine.
The “recipe” I used is the love child of two recipes – one from “How to Make Home Wines and Beers” by Francis Pinnegar and another from “How to Make Wine in Your Own Kitchen” by Mettja C. Roate. I started with the first recipe, because it was all I could find, and then converted to the second recipe, more or less, because I preferred it. (Thanks, Tammy, for bringing over your copy of “How to Make Wine in Your Own Kitchen”.
Tasting the Dandelion Wine. Doesn’t it look lovely?
The glass is a family heirloom from my husband’s grandmother. I finally got around to tasting the dandelion wine I mixed up around this time last year. Mmmmmmmm….now there’s a drink that’ll warm your tummy and curl your toes. Hubby and friends said it tasted more like a brandy. I say it had a kick, but not like a mule, just enough to get your attention. The Europeans often believed that the making of the wine was a magical process, and that the fae (also known as faeries or fairies) helped the process along. As I mentioned in the original post, dandelion wine was allowed during some periods of prohibition due to its medicinal properties.
Studies show that the dandelion to be a rich source of vitamins and minerals. I cooked up some greens with my eggs for breakfast, and I have to say they taste pretty…green. So what’s next? Bottling Dandelion Wine. Two days after the fruit was added to the wine, it looked like it was about to grow right out of the crock.
The golden raisins swelled immensely, and the yeast got a little crazy with the bubbles. I was a little concerned I was going to end up with a big mess. It stayed covered with a clean flour sack towel, and after a few more days it settled back down. By the time I was ready to bottle, it was back near where I had started. I waited around two weeks before bottling, even though the original recipe said two days to one week, because I could still hear the wine actively fermenting. I ladled the fruit into my jelly strainer to drain, trying to keep as much sediment as possible out of the bottles.
After filtering, I funneled the liquid into the wine bottles. In the bottom of the crock there was a fair amount of yeasty sediment, or dregs. In Wild Fermentation , Sandor Katz recommends substituting these dregs for one quarter of the liquid in a French onion soup recipe.