Sloe wine started

[Cwrw666]

Just put on a gallon of sloe wine - only the one gallon as there seems to be a lack of sloes round here. What there are are very ripe.
Here's the recipe:
4 lb sloes, 1 cup strong tea, juice of one lemon. All this put in the FV with a bit under a gallon of boiling water. I'll be letting it steep for about a week before straining off the liquid and then adding wine yeast compound and about 2 1/2 lb of sugar.
When I've used this recipe before it's made a wonderfully fruity plum flavoured wine.

 

[steviec_lj]

I can only dream of having that weight in Sloes.. I have however, just planted a small bush, so should have more next year!



Your FV, a demijohn, or something a little larger?

 

[dbg400]

Glad to hear it's not just me that's not able to find sloes this year (though for adding to gin, rather than making wine). Sent the lad out on his bike to scout out some more bushes on the local cycle tracks, and he came back with some damsons instead. Went back out with him and brought back 7lbs! I'm not geared up for wine yet, so will stick to the gin based liqueur this year, but it does give me ideas for next year. Hope the sloe wine turns out well :)

 

[mickthetrick]

like the sound of this.
i take it that is a long time for this to be ready?
ive enough slows in the freezer to make this up.
might give it a go.

 

[Cwrw666]

I can only dream of having that weight in Sloes.. I have however, just planted a small bush, so should have more next year!



Your FV, a demijohn, or something a little larger?

FV is just a 2 gallon fermenting bin I bought specially to do this - I used to have a 3 gallon one but the wife nicked it to use for green manure in the garden!

We've got 2 kinds of blackthorn bushes round here (I live on top of a mountain!) - one produces little round sloes about 1 cm diameter and they're a pain to pick, the other kind produces sloes about the size of grapes and you can easily pick a few lbs quite quickly. They're both the same in sloe gin and sloe wine, so I always pick the big'uns if I can find them.

 

[Cwrw666]

like the sound of this.
i take it that is a long time for this to be ready?
ive enough slows in the freezer to make this up.
might give it a go.

When I've made it in the past it hasn't taken too long for it to be ready. It's got such a fruity flavour you can more or less drink it as soon as it's cleared.

I've already varied from the plan though. Took it out of the airing cupboard and had a look. It's a nice red colour already. I've chucked the sugar in - 3lb as I seem to have gone over the gallon with the water - and the yeast. I'll give it another week or so until the first crazy fermentation dies down, then strain off the fruit and put the liquid into demijons.

 

[Cwrw666]

And here it is - looks like I haven't got the volumes too far wrong as I'll be able to use the stuff in the gin bottle to top up the demijohn as the sugar ferments away.

 

[Cwrw666]

Here we are at bottling time. After racking it off over winter it's gone from looking like beetroot soup to a nice clear red wine colour, although in fact there was very little sediment left in the bottom of the demijohn.
Note to self : if you're going to take pictures like this you should at least try and find a sparkly clean glass!:lol:
By the way it tastes very sloshable even at this stage...

 

[Cwrw666]

Tried the first bottle a couple of weeks ago - very nice indeed. I have to confess that in the past I've rarely managed to keep wine for this long but these days I'm making so much AG beer I don't often think of drinking wine.:lol:

 

[NCFCcrazy]

I'm pleased to hear its nice, I started some off last week and its rocking away nicely in a fermenting bucket right now. Plenty of sloes about this year, I had 14lb of them!! Made 3.5 litres of sloes gin and the rest has gone to making 2 gallons of wine.

 

[Cwrw666]

I'm pleased to hear its nice, I started some off last week and its rocking away nicely in a fermenting bucket right now. Plenty of sloes about this year, I had 14lb of them!! Made 3.5 litres of sloes gin and the rest has gone to making 2 gallons of wine.

Wow - 14lbs. Funnily enough we've had very few sloes round here, normally the bushes down our lane are covered but there's only been one or two with any sloes at all. So no wine this year - just had enough to make 1.5 litres of sloe gin which is all done and bottled now and waiting for Christmas.

 

[NCFCcrazy]

At the risk of rubbing it in, I picked some more today so I can't do another batch of wine, hedges are still pretty full.

View attachment uploadfromtaptalk1446559598004.jpg

 

[NCFCcrazy]

Second batch of sloe wine started, thinking of adding some raspberry syrup, thoughts?

 

[NCFCcrazy]

My first batch of sloe wine finished fermenting mid-november but took forever to clear it. I treated it with finings and when settled, racked it off but there was the best part of an inch of sediment. Did this 3 times, each time leaving 2/3 weeks and each time I had an inch of sediment. It now finally looks clear, but out of 2 DJs, I will only get about 9 bottles!!