Rhubarb Wine

[nikia43]

Hi all,

I am fairly new to the wine making fraternity but having great success with kits so far.

I am looking for a tried and tested rhubarb wine recipe as I have a large rhubarb plant that has gone berserk this year and I would love to make wine from it.

Any recipes greatly received Thanks

 

[Dieseljockey]

Nikia hi..

I've had this recipe for years...

3 lb rhubarb
3 lb sugar
1 sachet general purpose wine yeast.

Wipe the rhubarb, don't peel.

Chop into pieces. Place in a bucket and cover with the sugar.

Leave overnight until the sugar has dissolved.
Strain off the syrup and cover the rhubarb with water to rinse off any remaining sugar.
Add this liquid to the syrup and make it up to 1 gallon with water and a cup of strong cold black tea to add tannin.

Add the wine yeast and transfer the liquid to a demi-john fitted with an airlock. Leave to ferment. Leave the wine to clear naturally. Pour the wine into sterilized bottles, and leave for a minimum of 3 months, like all wines rhubarb will get better with time.

 

[Ken L]

I only made it once and really liked it but a lot of people have bad results with rhubarb and it's probably a bad choice to start out country winemaking with.

I don't recall a specific recipie but my usual aproach for something like this would be to chop up my "fruit" and cover with boiling water, when it cools to blood temperature, get in there with clean hands and mash it up and then add yeast and let it ferment on the pulp for three days.
The yeast will extract a lot of flavour for you as it goes in search of all of the available sugar.
In the case of rhubarb wine, I would add a couple od table spoons of precipitated chalk at this stage to neutralise the rather excessive acid levels in the plant.
After your three days, strain, add to a demijohn along with a bag of sugar and a litre of grape juice from the supermarket. Top up with water to the shoulder of the demijohn and let it go.
after a week or so, top up to the neck of the demijohn with either water or grape juice.

BTW: With rhubarb, it's strictly stems only. If you use the leaves you will make yourself very ill.