Winemaking

October 28, 2007 7:26 PM

Jack Keller's winemaking site has not only the basics of home winemaking in 5 parts [12345], but also information on more advanced topics, including acidity, blending, and using a hydrometer. Equally interesting is his extensive collection of recipes for making wines out of things other than grapes, including dandelions and other edible flowers, wild plants (including nettles!), cabbages and beets, tea and coffee, mint, pomegranates, and pumpkins. A complete list of recipes is here, if you'd like to click through alphabetically, and a list of specially-requested recipes is here (scroll down a bit).
posted by Upton O'Good (11 comments total)

Pour me a mug of cabbage wine & I'll die a happy man
posted by growabrain at 8:02 PM on October 28, 2007

Oh sweet god. Beet wine. My wife will kill me if I try to make it, but it might just be worth it.
posted by god hates math at 8:02 PM on October 28, 2007

Does it explain how to get into the box?
posted by Poolio at 8:09 PM on October 28, 2007

Jack Keller's recipe ideas are simply the most wonderful kind of crazy. Very much like the Alaskan Bootlegger's Bible.

Thanks for the link(s).
posted by cog_nate at 8:36 PM on October 28, 2007

Yeah, my first thought was that beet wine would probably be pretty awesome. Pumpkin too.

But onion wines I'm not so sure about.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:37 PM on October 28, 2007

Beet-infused vodka is delicious stuff, if you're a fan of the beet. I think I'll have some now, in fact, as an aperitif. So yeah, maybe this winter it's time for beet wine. Thanks, Upton!
posted by mumkin at 9:06 PM on October 28, 2007

as an amateur honey-wine* brewer, i am looking forward to trying out some of these recipes.

pedantically, though: tea wine? coffee wine? nettle wine? making alcohol is a fiendishly simple process: yeasties eat sugar, shit alcohol. whatever the yeast is eating in these "wines" is certainly not coffee, tea or nettles. most likely, it's just sugar, with the coffee etc added for flavouring, in the form of an infusion.

* yeh, i know, it's mead, but that just sounds too much like a dorky dungeons-n-dragons / medieval / viking re-enactment society hobby for my liking.
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:30 PM on October 28, 2007

Coffee Wine (1)

½ lb freshly ground coffee
2½ lbs dark brown sugar
1½ tsp citric acid
¼ tsp tannin
7½ pts water
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Sauterne wine yeast

shenanigans!
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:32 PM on October 28, 2007

Cool... I just read this article on "natural" winemaking.
posted by exogenous at 5:49 AM on October 29, 2007

Lovely--I just planted a bunch of muscadine vines yesterday. Check back in a couple of years and I'll tell you how the wine came out.

Poolio, home winemakng stores have been selling bag-in-a-box systems for years--no joke. They're an easy way around washing, filling, and corking bottles. Accumulating enough bottles for a batch or two can also be a pain--I've gotten some strange looks from my neighbors when they've seen me going through their recycling bins.
posted by MrMoonPie at 5:57 AM on October 29, 2007

The recipes for "apple wine" sound very bad to me. "Apple wine" is not a thing, but cider made correctly is delicious.
posted by rusty at 6:25 AM on October 29, 2007