Anyone making dandelion or berry wines?

[Jan]

Hi! I'm new to the forum. I made a delicious batch of dandelion wine in May, picking the flowers from my yard. I used the recipe in Roger Phillips book Wild Food which called for 5 cups of sugar, juice and zest of 2 oranges, water and yeast. I poured boiling water over the flowers and soaked then for 3 days before squeezing out the resulting liquid and adding the rest of the ingredients. It made a gallon. This must sat for 2 days before I poured it over into an airlock jar. It took about 7 weeks for all the sediment to sink to the bottom of the airlocked jar and for the brew to become crystal clear. It turned out great, and apparently will only improve over time. This success got me interested in making more wines, especially fruits that are wild or that I have growing in my yard. When the black caps ripened I collected enough to make a 3 qt. batch. Although Phillips has a recipe for raspberry wine, I didn’t like the idea of using a sulfate, and I didn’t want to use as much sugar as his recipe called for so I added about a cup of raw honey. I also discovered that what I thought were 2 organic oranges turned out to be grapefruits, but I added the juice from them anyway, as I had read that the main ingredients in making fruit wines are fruit, acid, sugar, water and yeast. Today, I made a blueberry wine, using the same basic recipe as for the dandelion, but I improvised. I used the juice of 4 limes as the acid this time. I had to scrounge in the cupboard looking for sugar because I only had about a cup of organic granular sugar. I ended up adding some confectionary and then some light brown sugar for a total of about 4 and a half cups to a total of a gallon of liquid. Anyway, I am wondering if anyone else has made any berry wines. I’m slightly concerned about mold, as some of the black caps and some of the blueberries had risen to the surface and gotten moldy after sitting for two days in the first stage of the process. I simply picked out the moldy flecks, noticing that most of the berries had sunk to the bottom of the jar and were fine. The black cap wine has been fermenting for about 2 weeks now and the sediment is starting to settle. I noticed some foam on top and took a look at it thinking it was mold, but it just appears to be the yeast still foaming. It has been very active. I’m a little worried that I didn’t add enough honey to the blackcap wine, but time will tell. Phillips recommends topping off with sugar syrup later if it’s too tart. Any tips or cautions regarding the possible mold situation would be helpful. I'm looking forward to trying pears and peaches as they ripen too. If anyone is interested in the dandelion wine recipe I'd be happy to post it. Thank you for any feedback!

[FermentingYeti]

I'm planning on venturing into dandelion and berry wines this summer, but thought I'd address your question regarding mold. I've read through Sandor Katz's books and checked with various people I know who have done a lot of wild fermentation. Essentially, you don't need to worry about the mold. Mold will sometimes develop if you're fermenting in an aerobic environment (when any amount of air is present). I've had it develop on the surface of fruit floating on top of my must, and have sometimes found it in my kefir. I just skim it off and continue fermenting. Essentially, anything that is submerged will be exposed to all of the good bacteria that takes over anything that will produce mold. Sandor address this in more detail here: http://www.wildfermentation.com/aerobic ... ntroversy/

I would love to have your recipe for dandelion wine. My dad made it once, but he made the mistake of having us kids do most of the work and ended up with lots of stems and leaves in his must. He had to toss it...

[justineaton]

I have always been curious about dandelion wine. anything I can pick out of my yard and turn into something tasty I am interested in. maybe next summer I will give it a shot.

[parkranger]

i made dandelion wine last spring, and wasn't all that crazy about the result, but it was one of my first wines, and i think i've learned a lot since then. this summer, i picked at least 30 lbs of blackberries, and am making a 5 gallon batch of blackberry wine, and a 3 gallon batch of blacberry melomel. for the 'wine' i'm doing a ratio of roughly 4 lbs of blackberries to 2 lbs of white sugar per gallon, and i used a red wine yeast - i believe pasteur red. the mead has about 3 lbs of berries to 2 lbs of raw blackberry honey per gallon and a champagne yeast. since blackberries already have lots of tannins, i didn't bother with any additives.

my general method for both was to freeze the berries for a few days to help break down the cell walls, then thaw them and dump into a fermenting bucket. i boiled water and let it cool, and then poured over the berries, letting them steep (and start to wild ferment) for about a week. then crush crush crush the berries with my hands, and strain into a carboy, and then add the sugar or honey.

the wine i started a few weeks ago, and it's still bubbling strong. it smells increeedible. this was definitely the messiest and most time consuming of any brewing project i've done so far. my bathtub and porch still have purple stains everywhere! my chickens seem to like the berry pulp, though, and some i soaked again in water to make blackberry vinegar. definitely worth all the work!