Parsnip wine - sweet - natural yeast

[Jonny69]

I thought I'd post my tried-and-tested recipe for a sweet parsnip wine that kicks off with its own natural yeast. It's a slow one, but it's well worth the wait.

In July 2012 I followed a parsnip wine recipe I'd found online, which recommended using an over-ripe banana to add dessert wine flavours. I knew what it meant - black bananas smell a bit like Sauternes rot, so I gave it a go. I ran out of time during that week and didn't get around to pitching the yeast, but by the time the weekend came round I noticed it had kicked off all by itself. Everything except the banana had been boiled, so the yeast must have come from the squishy black yella fella. I decided to leave it to see what it did, and I'm glad I did because it's one of the best wines I've ever made. This week I replicated what I did, including the tweaks I made to the recipe (a couple of extra lemons to boost the acidity and citrus notes) and, after a nervous wait for the natural yeast to start, I'm confident to post the recipe.

Ingredients:

2kg parsnips
250g raisins
4 lemons
1200g white sugar
1 over-ripe banana, gone nice and black.

Remember it's the banana that provides the yeast for this wine, so make sure it's nice and black and squishy!

Method:

Scrub the parsnips and chop them into 5-10mm slices. Blitz or grind the raisins with a little water to form a smooth paste. Zest the lemons and squeeze the juice out, but don't discard the skins. Simmer the parsnips, the raisin paste, the lemon zest, juice and skins with the sugar in 4 litres of water for about 15 minutes. I had to do it in two batches.

Pour the lot through a sieve into a fermenting bucket and allow to cool. Once cool, add a crushed Campden tablet and a teaspoon of pectolase, which will help it clear since boiled parsnip is quite hazy. Cover and allow it to sit for 24 hours. After 24 hours, mash the banana and add it to the bucket, giving the liquid a good whisk. Cover it well and use clingfilm if your fermentation bucket doesn't have a good fitting lid, because you don't want anything else getting in there.

Now go and make a cup of tea, enjoy, and wait. Later in the evening you may wish to make some Ovaltine, then maybe a coffee the next morning and rinse and repeat for the next week. It will take a while to get going, but after about a week you should notice a frothy yeast cake suddenly forms on the top which looks like this:

Now we're in business! Get it in a demijohn and top up with cooled boiled water.

Some things you need to know about natural yeast:

- It takes a LOT longer to brew that commercial yeast. This wine will take at least 6 weeks to brew and up to 3 months, so be patient.
- It can't take as high alcohol abv as a commercial yeast, so it will brew to about 12% and the wine will still be sweet.
- Clearing is very slow, but it will clear by itself - the secret is to just leave it somewhere and forget about it.
- Natural yeast also forms quite a soft sediment that is disturbed quite easily, so once it has cleared, you'll need to move it to where you do your racking and let it stand for a few days, because you will disturb it when you move it.

It will still taste a bit funky after you rack it, so de-gas it and leave it to stand in a demijohn with an airlock for another two months and it suddenly becomes an amazing sweet dessert wine that you'll want to share with your friends. If you want to add Campden or sorbate, then do it now, but not earlier because there will still be some activity going on. I put mine on in early July 2012. I think it took 3 months in total because it was drinkable in September and very good by Christmas.

I have made the same wine with Young's wine yeast which has brewed to completely dry, though it is not as good in my opinion. It is harsher-tasting and currently has that 'home brew' background taste to it. That said, it is sitting in the loft conditioning and I keep revisiting it, so it may well improve. I'll probably back-sweeten it. Either way I'll keep this thread updated with both :thumb:

 

[tbert33]

Thanks Jonny! Really enjoyed reading your post. Im on the look out for a few different wines to try and this one is at the top of my list :grin::grin::grin:

 

[Brewtrog]

It's a risky trick, you're lucky you have decent tasting wild yeasts & bacteria, it'll change from place to place so this very well may not work for some people, I'm currently trying out a sourdough starter, which uses the same principle of utilizing wild yeasts and bacteria, so I'm interested to see what flavours end up in the bread, see if they'd be alright in a brew or not. Thinking about it, most my homebrew books tell you to be very wary of brewing from wild yeasts due to the unpredictability. So saying, the wine does sound very nice.

 

[Jonny69]

Well it's a controlled yeast of sorts because it's come from the bananas, it's just a naturally occurring yeast that's already in the fruit like apples or grapes. I guess with a sourdough you're relying on what's floating around in the air at the time so you have less control over what it is. I've clarified in my original post that the fermentation bucket should be covered with clingfilm so nothing else can get in :thumb:

Last night I put it in the demijohn and it's bubbling away nicely, stronger than I was expecting.

 

[cruno]

Well it's a controlled yeast of sorts because it's come from the bananas, it's just a naturally occurring yeast that's already in the fruit like apples or grapes. I guess with a sourdough you're relying on what's floating around in the air at the time so you have less control over what it is. I've clarified in my original post that the fermentation bucket should be covered with clingfilm so nothing else can get in :thumb:

Last night I put it in the demijohn and it's bubbling away nicely, stronger than I was expecting.

Are you supposed to leave the lid on the airlock?

 

[Captain_birdseye]

Lid debate = if you leave the airlock lid on, where does the air go? ((Scratches head))

 

[chrig]

Mine does not form a seal so just stops beasties getting in and lets the co2 out.

I like the idea of a parsnip wine.., unsure about the banana business though.

 

[Jonny69]

Those lids don't seal. There are three little stand-offs inside to make a small gap :thumb:

 

[Jonny69]

Ok, so this has pretty much finished fermenting and is beginning to clear, so I thought I'd give the thread an update. A thick yeast cake had settled nicely at the bottom so I gave it its first rack and a de-gas last night. I lost around 250ml in the racking because of the sediment cake which is a lot thicker than with commercial yeasts. The wine is reasonably sweet and a bit stronger than last time, though I haven't done any hydrometer readings. Despite being a bit cloudy still, it doesn't taste far off. For comparison, the one I started in November 2012 with Young's wine yeast still tastes very yeasty and needs to condition for a good few months yet; this one shouldn't take anywhere near as long and I think it'll be ready as soon as it's cleared.

I'm glad I started this thread because it gives me some accurate timescales and I'm surprised it has fermented so quickly. I'm sure it took a lot longer last time, but I may have been confusing it with the clearing time.

 

[Jonny69]

Bringing this to the top because there was another thread about vegetable wines. I thought I'd mention that I'd racked it off shortly after my last post and it both were ready to drink about a month ago. The one on the natural yeast is nowhere near as sweet as the original one was, but I just add a little sugar when serving to bring the sweetness up.

 

[Dano]

So are you peeling the banana or mashing the skin in also? Surely there is no yeast on/in the peeled fruit? any yeast on the skin could be from any environment from where it was grown to shipped, sold, housed etc?

Would this not start fermenting naturally for spores in the air as you fill the FV?

I will try this one as I tried a rather nice parsnip wine years ago, I am not a fan of white wines but this was lovely