carrot wines breaks out the start of the year

[hedgerowpete]

walking through ASDA yesterday dragging my heels behind the memsaab, when i spied a crate of carrots marked down for 8p a kilo. we did carrot years ago and it just triggered the wine maker in me.
we are going to run two recipes

one is a slight variant on 500 recipes- homemade wine and drinks by Marguerite Pattern
per 5litres
2kg of carrots
1kgsugar
60gm ginger
plus acids and pecti and yeast
we boiled the carrots till tender but not soft. i was always told if you cook the right a real chef would send them back as underdone, lol after that its drain the juice and empty into the bucket with the sugar and acids. wait till cool and add the yeast, four days in the bucket Aerobic and then demijohn and Anaerobic and rack and wait as usual

the second lot is a wild card
so starting with - home making the right way by Kenneth Hawkins and carrot whiskey,

so this time the orginal recipe is 1.8kg of carrot and 1kg of sugar plus acids
i have gone
1kg raw carrot plus the 4kg of cooked carrots from recipe one, plus 1kg of sugar in a bucket, i have added 110ml citric and 10ml tartaric plus pecti, when it goes into the demi john i want to add 500ml of asda cheap white grape juice as well. so looking to ferment on the must for four days to raise ten litres of liquor, but i want to SG it before adding the second bag of sugar as the grape juice will change it first.


as i want both of these medium sweet but not dessert sweet, i was looking at 12(ish)% alc and a finish around 1003SG

I am looking to aim at 12% so roughly a starter SG of 1090 is best for my wants and we should be under 12%, i might add a touch more to an even 1100 and allow for variations

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I admire members who make wine from scratch I haven't the patience and am lazy so it's supermarket juice or kits for me.

 

[hedgerowpete]

when i started the fruit juice market wasnot that good so went else where, to be honest very few of my wines are fruit juices. its like grapes, they never realy interested me

 

[hedgerowpete]

well its been a week so heres an up date

wine one, which went direct to demi johns from the boil, had a yeast packet each and neither did very well from the start, i ordered new wine yeast off line and had it delivered by wednesday, the wife then gave each demijohn a tea spoon each, of mixed yeast and nuitriants, there are both working now, there sat in the cold corner of the room so sat around 16 degrees all day and night

wine two the bucket and ginger wine also struggled with the fermentation so had a kickup the jacksee too. it started out at SG 1060 when it was in the bucket with one bag of sugar thrown on it. I wanted to split it into two demijohns when it was ready so held back on the sugar, but gave it a litre of grape juice.

so this weekend it was drained off, SG was 1015, it was then split and run to the demijohns with another 500gm per demijohn added, sg 1055 again, i filled to the shoulder line just incase the extra sugar kicked in the yeast,but its not as lively as i wanted, must be a off yeast year. any way they are sat on the shelf with the rest, it has untill tomorrow to pick up other wise i will top the demi johns up to the neck

draining off

splitting between the two demi johns and testing SG

the resultant shelf ready demi johns

 

[hedgerowpete]

forgot to mention, had a small snortter to taste test, ginger might me to little, as it was not as strong as i was expecting and i know it will weaken with the ferment, but less is better than more i suppose. the grape juice is in there as a smoother but the carrot wine is very young to really get a feel for it,

 

[Skye Piper]

I made 5 gallons of carrot wine which wasn't very nice at all. It ended up like a strong sherry that could blow your head off! I had some great laughs drinking it with some poor unsuspectful friends but my inexperienced wine making skills were evident in the tasting and a lot of it went down the sink. I made quite a few concoctions from CJ Berry's book and some TC's but gave up in the end. Was furloughed for 3 weeks and my interest has come back with avengence. I have a 30 bottle kendridge wine kit on the go but I'm looking forward to trying your Tea wine recipes and a try at wow wines. The closest thing I did enjoy to the carrot was a parsnip wine. Hope your carrot wine went down well

 

[johncrobinson]

Well the sherry flavour was down to oxidisation.
One tip think hygene +++++.
and afew more ++.
Thats just about it. ( Honestly.)
Some reprints of Berrys books advocate sugar levels that would be horrible for todays drinkers.

But its great you have joined the forum
I hope you can go on to make nice wine for your friends.

One or two years at it and you might become skywalker

 

[Skye Piper]

Hello John thank you for that, I try to keep every thing as clean as possible. As you say though a few more ++ certainly won't go wrong. I added loads of sugar thinking that it would give it extra kick and it did. People still talk about it years later. I will try to make nice wine going forward though and adhear more to good advice and recipes. I will probably steer clear of carrot wine right enough. Thanks for the words of encouragement, slainte

 

[Backtobrew]

walking through ASDA yesterday dragging my heels behind the memsaab, when i spied a crate of carrots marked down for 8p a kilo. we did carrot years ago and it just triggered the wine maker in me.
we are going to run two recipes

one is a slight variant on 500 recipes- homemade wine and drinks by Marguerite Pattern
per 5litres
2kg of carrots
1kgsugar
60gm ginger
plus acids and pecti and yeast
we boiled the carrots till tender but not soft. i was always told if you cook the right a real chef would send them back as underdone, lol after that its drain the juice and empty into the bucket with the sugar and acids. wait till cool and add the yeast, four days in the bucket Aerobic and then demijohn and Anaerobic and rack and wait as usual

the second lot is a wild card
so starting with - home making the right way by Kenneth Hawkins and carrot whiskey,

so this time the orginal recipe is 1.8kg of carrot and 1kg of sugar plus acids
i have gone
1kg raw carrot plus the 4kg of cooked carrots from recipe one, plus 1kg of sugar in a bucket, i have added 110ml citric and 10ml tartaric plus pecti, when it goes into the demi john i want to add 500ml of asda cheap white grape juice as well. so looking to ferment on the must for four days to raise ten litres of liquor, but i want to SG it before adding the second bag of sugar as the grape juice will change it first.


as i want both of these medium sweet but not dessert sweet, i was looking at 12(ish)% alc and a finish around 1003SG

I am looking to aim at 12% so roughly a starter SG of 1090 is best for my wants and we should be under 12%, i might add a touch more to an even 1100 and allow for variations

A mate of mine gave me a couple of bottles of carrot whiskey and I forgot about this and left this in the garage for a few years when we moved house. It was bloody gorgeous and drank it over two nights.