Recipe - Dragon Blood Fruit Wine

Resource:  https://brulosophy.com/2020/04/16/bru-it-yourself-dragon-blood-wine/

In searching for various country/fruit wines, I came across something that sounded pretty interesting...Dragon Blood!  It appears this recipe has been floating around the internet for several years and looked pretty straightforward.  I had purchased some extra and fruit and sugar from Sam's Club on my last order with some future batches of fruit wine and mead in mind, so I already had all the ingredients at home, minus the large amount of lemon juice.  That was easy enough to get from the grocery store, so this was a pretty quick brew overall.  I punched down the fruit cap on the wine a couple times a day for the first week then removed the bag and squeezed out the juice.  After that, I sealed up the lid, filled the airlock, and now I'm waiting for fermentation to finish up before transferring to secondary for long-term aging.

Recipe - Blueberry Wine

Resource:  https://winemakermag.com/article/making-blueberry-wine-tips-from-the-pros

After making the Blackberry Wine below, I started looking a little more at fruit wines using either fresh or frozen fruit.  I settled on frozen blueberries for the first batch since I have a Sam's Club membership, and the fruit was relatively cheap ($2/lb).  I used the recipe & process in the link above after reading through several other sources.  I used our Ninja blender to pulse the blueberries a couple times to break them up a bit, but I was careful to not puree them so the skins wouldn't release too much tannins during the fermentation process.  I also used a mesh BIAB bag to contain the fruit and pulp, since I had a huge problem racking the blackberry wine into secondary and ended up with a ton of volume loss.  This caused me to transfer that wine twice, once into a 5 gallon fermenter and again into a 3 gallon fermenter since there was too much headspace.  Live and learn I guess.

Recipe - Blackberry Wine

I was ordering some brewing ingredients from Homebrewing.org, and of course I always look at the sale & bargin bin items. I happened to stumble across some 96oz cans of Vintner's Harvest Blackberry Wine Base for 70% off because they were slightly outside their sell-by date. Since it's a canned fruit product, that didn't bother me, so I ordered four since they are part of the free shipping option. So that got me looking back into wine after my mostly unsuccessful wine experiments from last year. I'm still letting them age, but that's another story.  When the wine base arrived, I mainly used the recipe on the can, but I added two cans of base instead of one.  I thought this would increase the fruit flavor in the finished win, so time will tell.  I also added a little less acid blend because I've been using citric acid (part of the blend) for my Hard Seltzer making, but it's really easy to go overboard, so I can always add more later to taste.

Recipe - Orange Citrus Wine

After making the dandelion wine and all the effort that was involved with that whole process, I wanted to try something a little quicker and easier.  I stumbled across a few recipes for "Citrus Wine," that seemed pretty simple, so I decided to give it a try.  Rather than mix a bunch of different citrus fruits, I decided to go with a straight Orange Wine for my first attempt.  I used a couple varieties of oranges from the grocery store, but nothing too crazy.  For this recipe, I was mainly interested in getting the zest off of the fruit and minimize the amount of the white pith.  In the past, I've used a zester when adding citrus to beers, but several times I think I got too much pith and my beers ended up being bitter.  For this batch, I found that using a vegetable peeler actually seemed to work the best if I didn't apply too much pressure.  I was able to get most of the outer orange layer off and it was much quicker than trying to zest all those oranges.  Here's my process and a few pictures of my "brew" day for this wine.

1. Bring 2 gallons of water & 6 lbs of sugar to a boil and boil for a few minutes

2. Turn off heat, remove kettle, and add the peels/zest (no white pith part) to the kettle along with 1 TB of Yeast Nutrient to the pot

3. Stir to combine and allow this to steep for 30-60 minutes as it cools

4. After you have steeping, cool the must (term for unfermented wine) down to around 80 degrees using a water bath or whatever method works best for you

5. Use a sanitized slotted spoon or a strainer to remove the citrus zest/peels

6. Pour must into sanitized fermenter & sprinkle dried yeast on top - no need to rehydrate

7. Put your fermenter in a cool place where it can ferment in the mid 60s to mid 70s

8. Once the fermentation is complete, you can rack into a secondary fermenter to help clear the wine or bottle straight from the fermenter and allow it to drop in the bottle

Recipe - Dandelion Wine

I was about to mow the lawn and happened to notice several dandelions had popped up around the yard. For some reason the idea of making dandelion wine popped into my head, and I just went with it.  **Disclaimer - This is where having children or other people to help you would be very beneficial. I did all this work myself, and my back & fingers were sore for a couple days afterward.**

References:

-  https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-make-dandelion-wine-1327932

-  https://practicalselfreliance.com/dandelion-wine-recipe/

"Brewing" Process

1. Find a patch of dandelions that you KNOW haven't been sprayed with chemicals/fertilizer/weed-killer before you get started. Since these were all from within my yard and I know my neighbors hadn't sprayed, I felt safe picking them.

2. Pick the dandelion heads.  This is where having kids or friends help comes in very handy.  I did this on my own, so it was a lot more work than I was expecting.  I was picking dandelions for probably 1-1.5 hours before I had enough for a small batch.

3. Once you have a bunch of dandelions picked, you will need to separate the yellow flower portion from the green base.  The best way I found to do this was to gently rub and squeeze at the base upward, and the petals will come out relatively easy. Repeat this a bunch of times until your fingers are sore and blistered.  In my case, this took the longest amount of time at around 2-2.5 hours.  I was just sitting at the table watching TV, so it wasn't a big deal.  TIP - wear gloves while doing this, unless you don't mind having yellow fingers for a day.

4. After the petals were picked, rinse them in cold water once or twice to remove dirt and other particles.

5. Bring 2 gallons of water to a boil along with 5 lbs of sugar and boil for a few minutes.

6. Turn off the heat and add rinsed dandelion petals to the kettle along with some Yeast Nutrient & stir to combine.

7. Let this steep for 30 minutes off-heat and strain out the dandelion petals. I used a slotted spoon & made several passes along with using a strainer in a separate pot so I could add any liquid that drained off back to the kettle.

8. Cool the must using a water bath and stir to chill down to around 80 degrees.

9. Pour must into a sanitized fermenter (or various bottles in my case since I didn't have anything smaller than 5 gallons at the time - I have since purchased a 3-gallon fermenter that has worked well for these smaller batches), and top up with 1 gallon of distilled or cold tap water.  NOTE:  You can add more or less water depending on how strong you want the wine to be.  Remember that the final gravity will be very low compared to beer, so be sure to factor that in when deciding what the SG will be.

10. Sprinkle dried wine yeast over the top, attach the lid & airlock, and put in a cool place to ferment.  NOTE:  The fermentation process for wine seems to be much slower and less aggressive when compared to beer, so just give it time (a month or two) and take a gravity reading after several weeks to check progress.