gillonstewart
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- Joined
- May 6, 2022
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Hello all.
Yesterday I bottled my first batch of what used to be my standard house wine since I restarted home brewing. An elderflower wine.
It's a very simple "recipe". 1x 23l white wine kit (usually a 7 day Chardonnay) and dried elderflowers. The dried elderflowers get thrown in during the initial making of the kit and I rack the wine into a second FV for de-gassing and clearing. This also gets rid of the vast majority of the floating flowers.
This results in a wine every bit as good as shop bought Cairn o Mohr elderflower and if allowed to mellow for 6 months or so in the bottle is truly delicious.
Back in the day I'd have 15 gallons on at any time. One fermenting, one "maturing" and the other being drunk. They went on a 7 day cycle, so it took 7 days to drink the 5 gallons, 7 days to "mature" and 7 days to drink and there was a limitless supply of wine... Albeit it was always way too young.
This was fine when 23l kits were £18 but at nearly £30 now I've been having thoughts....
A 5 litre drum of white wine concentrate costs c£45. If I made 4 batches using 1.25l of the concentrate in each and add the elderflowers, the only thing I'm missing is the oak chips and the little flavouring sachet.
I'm not convinced the oak chips make a vast difference in the 7 brewing days but I can easily get plenty of oak chips so not an issue.
I'm not sure how much of a difference the little flavouring sachets make to the finished elderflower wine. The main flavour comes from the flowers I think but the extra 250mls of grape concentrate should make a difference to the overall wine.
The rest of the contents of the kit are basic supplies I've already got in bulk anyway, yeast, nutrient and finings. The only thing I'd need to get is a bulk supply of stabiliser.
The only thing that could be an issue is the concentration of the concentrate in the kits compared to the bulk bought stuff (which is 4x concentrated) and the general flavour of the two concentrates.
Once I've been paid, I'm going to order a 1 litre bottle and a 250ml of concentrate and give it a bash. I've got a fresh batch of wine from the kit to compare it to. I won't be wasting a vast quantity of wine if it turns out nasty.
Potentially, this would make 120 bottles of wine at approximately 40p each using the 5 litre drums.
Yesterday I bottled my first batch of what used to be my standard house wine since I restarted home brewing. An elderflower wine.
It's a very simple "recipe". 1x 23l white wine kit (usually a 7 day Chardonnay) and dried elderflowers. The dried elderflowers get thrown in during the initial making of the kit and I rack the wine into a second FV for de-gassing and clearing. This also gets rid of the vast majority of the floating flowers.
This results in a wine every bit as good as shop bought Cairn o Mohr elderflower and if allowed to mellow for 6 months or so in the bottle is truly delicious.
Back in the day I'd have 15 gallons on at any time. One fermenting, one "maturing" and the other being drunk. They went on a 7 day cycle, so it took 7 days to drink the 5 gallons, 7 days to "mature" and 7 days to drink and there was a limitless supply of wine... Albeit it was always way too young.
This was fine when 23l kits were £18 but at nearly £30 now I've been having thoughts....
A 5 litre drum of white wine concentrate costs c£45. If I made 4 batches using 1.25l of the concentrate in each and add the elderflowers, the only thing I'm missing is the oak chips and the little flavouring sachet.
I'm not convinced the oak chips make a vast difference in the 7 brewing days but I can easily get plenty of oak chips so not an issue.
I'm not sure how much of a difference the little flavouring sachets make to the finished elderflower wine. The main flavour comes from the flowers I think but the extra 250mls of grape concentrate should make a difference to the overall wine.
The rest of the contents of the kit are basic supplies I've already got in bulk anyway, yeast, nutrient and finings. The only thing I'd need to get is a bulk supply of stabiliser.
The only thing that could be an issue is the concentration of the concentrate in the kits compared to the bulk bought stuff (which is 4x concentrated) and the general flavour of the two concentrates.
Once I've been paid, I'm going to order a 1 litre bottle and a 250ml of concentrate and give it a bash. I've got a fresh batch of wine from the kit to compare it to. I won't be wasting a vast quantity of wine if it turns out nasty.
Potentially, this would make 120 bottles of wine at approximately 40p each using the 5 litre drums.
