Thursday 2 April 2020

Lockdown Day 10 - Wine Making!

If you have seen some of my blog or Twitter posts over the past few years you may have seen that I home brew my own parsnip and blackberry wine. At this time of year, any remaining parsnips in the allotment are all woody, have started sprouting again and as such are unfit to use as vegetables in meals. However, they can still be used for wine making!

I have already gone into some detail on the process involved and this is described in the blog posts here

http://cashandcarrots.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/parsnips.html
http://www.cashandcarrots.com/2013/03/parsnip-wine-making-part-2.html
http://www.cashandcarrots.com/2013/06/wine-tasting-and-bottling.html

 Here are some photos from today.

There were 2kg of washed, peeled and chopped parsnips, 1kg of sultanas, 4.5 litres of water and 1.25kg of sugar.

The mixture was brought to the boil for a few minutes then put into the large tub in the second photo to cool down, and given a bit of a mash to extract more juice from the sultanas.

It is not a good idea to overcook the parsnips as you don't want lots of mush in the mixture, it is the juice and sugars you are after.

Now, I am waiting for it to cool down before adding the Campden tablet to deal with any wild yeasts that may impair the wine, and after 24 hours I will be then adding the wine making yeast and putting in a warm place to ferment for a few days before siphoning off to put in demijohns for further fermentation.

I find it best to leave for 9-12 months at least after bottling, it does sweeten and mellow with age, although is drinkable after 6 months.

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