Buckfast-ish wine

[Gayle]

So, what I'm after is to make some pretty terrible wine. But in the nicest possible way.

For those of you who've not tried Buckfast, it's a thick (that's the best way I can describe the texture), sweet red wine, with copious amounts of caffiene and about 15% abv. The taste ranges from "acceptable to to the palette" to "swamp thing", and if I could make anything like it I would save a fortune

I was thinking of using all red grape juice, instead of just 2l of juice in WOWs. Maybe some red grape concentrate? Extra sugar to take it up to 14-15%. Raisins for nutrient and taste, lots. 1tsp glycerin and 1/2 mug black tea. Ferment with wine or champagne yeast. Rack, add campden tab and pot/sorbate. Add sugar to sweeten, vanilla extract, and crushed pro-plus :lol:

Does that sound do-able? Has anyone else tried something similar? Any suggestions or advice would be welcome :grin:

 

[Davybarman]

You want to make buckfast !!! :sick:

You must be from Lurgan.

Only kidding good luck. Let me know if you have had any success. Will follow this one closely :thumb:

 

[Gayle]

You want to make buckfast !!! :sick:

You must be from Lurgan.

Only kidding good luck. Let me know if you have had any success. Will follow this one closely :thumb:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: I am!!

 

[Davybarman]

Nothing like a bottle of Lurgan Champagne :rofl:

Havent had any in years. Must be will my ulcer has died down.

Anyway Good Luck in you exploits

 

[alanywiseman.]

Its a tonic, It should be good for your ulcer surly :hmm: :lol:

If I were doing it I would use red grape and blackberry juice (or something like that for the colour) add sugar and ferment then stabalise and back sweeten with red grape concentrate as it should make it sweet and syrupy.

 

[wilsoa1111]

Well that sounds...well its an experiment if nothing else lol, gotta say having been educated by a fellow student about buckfast and its obscure bottle numbering system, one end of the scale being thick from the bottom of the vat, other thin from the top of the vat, i felt no need to ever buy it with its price tag, but with a homebrew in mind...

i seem to recall it being particulary dense, overipe plum, fruit flavours flavoured, v little wineness to it, so i would recommend the champagne yeast as it will ferment happily to 18% and seperate out well, giving few wine flavours or do a bit of red yeast then add a champagne yeast to finish the job after a couple of days like they do with belgian ales. Also bear in mind the raisins are sugary aswell, im sure theres a calculator online somewhere... and contain lots of sulphites (campden tablet stuff) so will need a boil to help the yeast out , might need less campden in the must aswell. As for the caffine tablets, im not sure whats in them but they might need added earlier so any sediment can be racked off. If your trying to do it on a budget im sure some elderberrys (free in a few months) would help (buying dried elderberrys-only need 250g normally for an all elderberry-and or rasins to make the bulk of the wine could also work out cheaper and more to "style" of the "wine", especially with its almost black colour and the cheapness requirement

good luck

 

[Gayle]

The elderberries sound interesting, I'm pretty sure the real recipe doesn't have them in it but I may put them in mine anyway, it is an experiment after all! Maybe just 50g dried elderberries to start with, along with a similar amount of raisins. I may well end up putting a gallon of wine down the drain but that's only the worst case scenario. Most of my friends will drink anything.

I wasn't sure when to put the caffiene tablets in, if it's during fermentation then won't the yeast do something to it? Or if I put them in after first racking I could always rack again if sediment is left, which given my lack of skill in siphoning I usually have to do again anyway

The flavour of the real stuff really does vary from bottle to bottle, so there's planty of leeway there :lol: I don't know how they get it so black though, sometimes it seems to be slightly watered-down treacle. (In fact, would treacle be a suitable fementable additive or does it taste bad fermented?)

It's expensive wine too, nearly £8 per bottle in many places here, it is certainly not a cheap drink. It's just brilliant

Dammit now I need an empty DJ!!

 

[Davybarman]

£6.50 here. Were the hell you getting it!!
:hmm:

 

[ScottM]

viewtopic.php?f=40&t=26589&hilit=buckfast

Been there

 

[Gayle]

£6.50 here. Were the hell you getting it!!
:hmm:

Well I think it's that in one or two of the offies here, £6.89 maybe or "2 for £13" occasionally but the closest pub to us is £7+ IIRC, if they even sell it anymore. In Tesco it was over £7 too but they've stopped selling it now. It's a long walk to get a cheaper bottle!

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=26589&hilit=buckfast

Been there

Did you produce anything drinkable? I'm gonna get some elderberries and have a go anyway!

 

[ScottM]

£6.50 here. Were the hell you getting it!!
:hmm:

Well I think it's that in one or two of the offies here, £6.89 maybe or "2 for £13" occasionally but the closest pub to us is £7+ IIRC, if they even sell it anymore. In Tesco it was over £7 too but they've stopped selling it now. It's a long walk to get a cheaper bottle!

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=26589&hilit=buckfast

Been there

Did you produce anything drinkable? I'm gonna get some elderberries and have a go anyway!

Na I didn't even get started. Spoke to my mate only to find out he had stopped drinking it lol.

I would definitely think about adding a little coffee to the mix. A cheap wine kit, a tsp or 2 of coffee, some extra sugar for strength, lots of caffeine additives and backsweetening with something after pot sorb would see you with something close IMO.

 

[Gayle]

I have no shortage of friends dedicated to Buckfast, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of willing test-subjects. I'm unsure about the coffee, but will get a bottle at the weekend for some serious research :wha: What might backsweetening with glycerin or treacle do?

 

[ScottM]

Treacle might be an idea. I wouldn't bother with glycerine as buckfast isn't exactly about the mouthfeel lol.

Backsweeteneing could be done with anything after potassium sorbate though so you could even just use sugar. There is definitely a coffee flavour or something off of buckfast, it might even be a treacle flavour but I'm fairly certain its coffee. It's a very small quantity though and not enough to be able to add enough for the caffeine kick.... I tried that out already

 

[wilsoa1111]

wow this really is starting to sound good now, may even give it a go, think i'll let u try first though :lol: and i like the idea of the treacle, along with the elderberrys will really darken it up good (other berries could also work like sloes(beware of bitterness) or as someone mentioned blackberrys). Also not sure about the coffee, again darkening yet provide caffine and also having a bitterness to temper sweetness. I used glycerin (vege) for my WOW recipe and does help out with making it immediately drinkable also referred to as conditioning solution-reckon u need at least a tbsp a DJ though to notice a difference
Another thread linked to mentioned vanilla extract as part of the original recipe (cheapest stuff would do) or using brandy to get the required abv or above to make supa bucky

 

[Gayle]

I have glycerin and vanilla extract anyway, so may as well use them. In the Wikipedia link, a certain type of sugar compound is mentioned, "glycerophosphate" as giving an energy boost to the drink, it is produced from glycerol, which is the name on the bottle of glycerin I have. I know it's probably not the same thing, but close enough to try. Also, "vanillin" is used, which I think is a fake kind of vanilla extract, better to use the real stuff if I've got it.

If I have to buy dried elderberries and pro-plus, as well as the rest if the ingredients, this gallon brew could cost around £12, which isn't too much but I hope it works! Will defintely do a brewday post and let you all know how it goes

 

[ScottM]

Definitely keep us posted

 

[narmour]

You want to make buckfast !!! :sick:

You must be from Lurgan.

Only kidding good luck. Let me know if you have had any success. Will follow this one closely :thumb:

:rofl:

Me too. That would take me right back. I would describe it more as a brown wine than a red though :?

I have glycerin and vanilla extract anyway, so may as well use them. In the Wikipedia link, a certain type of sugar compound is mentioned, "glycerophosphate" as giving an energy boost to the drink, it is produced from glycerol, which is the name on the bottle of glycerin I have. I know it's probably not the same thing, but close enough to try.

If I remember my biochemistry lectures correctly, Glycerol (3) phosphate is a bi- product of the breakdown of Adenosine TriPhosphate in the presence of glycerol in the body; it is then fed (via several intermediates) into the glycolytic pathway, which is how the body releases energy from sugars. So by drinking Buckfast you are literally drinking a bottle full of little packages of pure energy. It's this, in combination with the caffeine that makes Buckfast drinkers so twitchy! I don't know if drinking a load of glycerol would have quite the same effect.

 

[wilsoa1111]

Yeah good luck with this one, u may need it but hopefully a cheap bucky alternative can be found for all the students in scotland :pray:

, btw on ebay 500g of berries go for £9- 250g £5 delivered but ive seen 500g in lhbs for £6. if u go all elderberry (250g per dj) and raisns is only £6 plus wat ever for additives and proplus...and yes i brew alot of elderberry wine when the berries r in season, im sure ive also got 2.2kg of berries in the freezer squirrled away somewhere for when i get bored of beer.

 

[WillG3]

"a bottle of bucky and I'm oot ma chicken"

 

[alank950]

Try warming it beside the fire before drinking...havent had Bucky in awhile..Seen this on the internet .. the date the article was written..Jan 2010..

This week, the wine was elevated to public enemy number one following a BBC1 documentary called The Buckfast Code. Quoting Strathclyde Police statistics, the programme said that Buckfast had been mentioned in 5,000 crime reports over the past three years.