Historic recipes and their re-manufacture

[hedgerowpete]

Does anyone know of any wine makers that have remade old recipes for research, I have a few digital books from the 1850's and whilst most of the recipes sound awlful i do wonder if anyone has actually made any in the last 40 years and documented it.

Fusil oili know about but gum arabic in wine has me intregued

I like the idea of the challenge of replecating someof them

 

[Wynott]

Hmmm...gum arabic. Is there any similarity to birch sap, which I have read is used to make wine?

I noticed at the back of an old book recently (Home Made Country Wines, 1955) the following: 'from a cookery book of the 1700s.

COWSLIP WINE
Boil 20 gallons of water for 15 minutes, then add 2 1/2 lb of loaf sugar to every gallon of water, then boil it as long as the scum rises, till it clears itself. When almost cold pour it into a tub with 1 spoonful of yeast, let it work 1 day, then put in 32 quarts of cowslip flowers and let it work 2 or 3 days, then put it all into a barrel with the parings of 12 lemons, the same of oranges. Make the juice of them into a thick syrup with 2 or 3lb. of loaf sugar; when the wine has done working add the syrup to it, then stop-up your barrel very well and let it stand 2 or 3 months, then bottle it.
'John Luff, Stoke Poges, Bucks'

Amazing to think that 32 quarts of cowslips were that readily available!

 

[johncrobinson]

Gum arabic does a few usefull things in wine,Improves mouthfeel etc but I dont think anyone uses it any more.

I get gum arabic from artists supply shops.

Never seen it in a homebrew store.

 

[MmmmCitra]

Gum arabic brings back memories...............many years ago I use to be a printer, it was used in the printing process, spread over the printing plates and then dried with a rag so the plate wouldn't oxidise.
Amazing to think it was ever used in homebrew.

 

[johncrobinson]

I was once tempted to try a birch sap wine,But found out it damaged the trees so i didnt bother.

 

[An Ankoù]

Gum arabic does a few usefull things in wine,Improves mouthfeel etc but I dont think anyone uses it any more.

I get gum arabic from artists supply shops.

Never seen it in a homebrew store.

It's interesting to see just how versatile Gum Arabic is; From Wikipedia:

it remains an important ingredient in soft drink syrup and "hard" gummy candies such as gumdrops, marshmallows, and M&M's chocolate candies. For artists, it is the traditional binder in watercolor paint, in photography for gum printing, and it is used as a binder in pyrotechnic compositions. Pharmaceutical drugs and cosmetics also use the gum as a binder, emulsifying agent, and a suspending or viscosity increasing agent.[4] Wine makers have used gum arabic as a wine fining agent.

The polysaccharides in gum arabic are mainly arabinose and galactose, which are considered unfermentable so I wonder if it was used a a sweetener ans well as increasing the viscosity of the wine to cover up harshness.

 

[An Ankoù]

On a similar subject, I find the old recipes of now defunct breweries (for the most part), very interesting indeed. The collection published by the Durden Park Beer Circle is a good starting pint and I've made a few of them with varying results. Small Amber Beer by Cobb and Co. is made from barley malt and a frightening amount of amber malt. It's a funny old beer, but only 4½% abv and quite drinkable once yo get used to the flavour. Their Simonds Bitter also goes down a treat. Got some of their stronger ones planned for the spring.

If anyone else uses their recipes, they make a great thing about an obsolete diastatic malt called Pale Amber Malt, which is called for in some recipes. They suggest it can be substituted with crystal malt of the same colour and I think this is a mistake as it's manifestly not a caramel malt. I use Simpsons Imperial Malt, which is right at the top of the colour range they give (and a bit, but I don't think kilning was an exact science in the day) or, if you want it lighter, use 2/3 Imperial and 1/3 Munich.

 

[hedgerowpete]

I was once tempted to try a birch sap wine,But found out it damaged the trees so i didnt bother.

lol, sorry but if done right it does no harm.
i harvest birch,sycamore, ash, whalnut, last year each tree does 5 litres and we did many many trees, we also tried boiling down some birch sap for syrup as well

 

[An Ankoù]

lol, sorry but if done right it does no harm.
i harvest birch,sycamore, ash, whalnut, last year each tree does 5 litres and we did many many trees, we also tried boiling down some birch sap for syrup as well

I'd be very interested in learning more about that. I remember reading a page in Berry many decades ago about birch sap wine, but never got round to trying it as I didn't have any mature trees. Now I've got oak and sweet chestnut trees, are they any good?
Do these saps make good wine?

 

[hedgerowpete]

yes you can use either, i find oak hard to get sap out of, it never seams to flow as easy as birch does, sweet chestnut flows as fast as as birch. i use 5litre plastic water bottles as they can get damaged unlike glass demijohns, i drill a 8mm hole in the standard wine bottle cork, drill a 20mm hole in the tree about knee height, knock in the cork and tube drill a hole in the bottle cap, do one as a tester around mid feb, if not flow after two weeks , redrill the hole else where in the trunk. usual flow is around late feb early march, last year it was a mid winter and i had a flow from third week in feb for some trees, which ran till late march for the sycamore

 

[Wynott]

good starting pint

...love that typo!