Rhubarb (but no custard)

This was one crown of Rhubarb planted into the garden two years ago now, there are at the last count, now seven crowns! Once I have cut off the flower spikes a bit of separating needs to be done, this isn’t the ideal time to get on with this but if I don’t do it now we will be overrun with gargantuan leaves, which is easy done in our little garden.

The variety is Champagne, it has such a beautiful flavour and has been responsible for several delicious desserts already and will be the basis of many home wine recipes this summer. Rhubarb in combination with other fruits and vegetables makes a fantastic wine, and is much more manageable and less likely to ‘turn’ than when used by itself. It certainly packs a punch thats for sure!

Cider

Our usual ritual of Cider making has begun in ernest.

It’s normally a pretty long winded run of events, as we have previously chopped our apples using a food mixer before putting the pulp into the press.

But on a rare day off in the week for the DH. He went to his seemingly all time favourite place to be – the local auction. And bought a garden wood chipper for just £8! he gave it a good clean, and then hey Presto! Instant pulp and no long winded lid off – apples in – lid on – buzz apples – lid off scrape apples – repeat ad infinitum…

So with a little help from the Tallest the Cider store has begun to grow again.

Although unfortunately it shrank again a little after the lids were put onto two bottles that hadn’t finished fermenting and they made a rather sticky and smelly mess in the  out building! Not impressed, but I think that I had better check more closely that fermentation has properly ceased before corking things next time!

We are on the ball to go and gather some more wildings that are growing around the vilage, and along with the bags of apples that we get given from a friend I am sure that we will more than catch up soon.

Bottling and Racking

In the summer I made rather a lot of Elderflower wine, a beautifully simple country wine recipe that if treated with a little care makes a very delicately aromatic and flovoursome abate rather alcoholic wine!

So with some ‘help’ from the little girl we set to bottling two demijohns of said concotion.

I tend to sterilise my bottles in the oven, which is on quite often in my household, yesterday I was roasting a bacon hock, so alongside that was a stack of bottles that had around 60+ minutes in a medium heat oven! A peculiar combination for sure.

Allow the bottles to cool before syphoning the wine into them, as the difference in temperature can crack them.

Fill all the bottles evenly and if the bottles are slightly short of the neck you can add some cooled boiled water if you wish, this will only slightly alter the specific gravity (alcoholic content) but it gives you a better looking bottle, especially if you give them as gifts like we do – it prevents you from appearing stingy!

Once corked ( remember o soak your corks in boiled water or sterilising solution as this makes them SO much easier to put in! And label with all the appropriate information. I even have batch numbers on mine, as I like to see whether to slight alterations in the ingredients at the must and fermentation stages have any effect on the taste.

Leave them to rest stood upright at room temperature for 24-48 hours before laying them on their sides in a cooler environment, as this allows any settlement not got rid of in the racking process to drop to the bottom of the bottle.

We also racked some Rhubarb and Bullace (a type of wild plum) and Marbella (another type of cherry plum, that is yellow when ripened you see it quite commonly in roadside hedgerows in our particular part of the country)

Racking is simply transfering the wine from one vessel to another and leaving the yeast and sediment behind, which can taint the flavour. You can buy filters and wine fining granules all of which we have inherited from various sources, but the general consensus is that filtering and fining is no substitute for racking. And the key to making a smooth wine is allowing it time to settle and separate from the rough stuff naturally rather than forcing the issue.

Bung the demijohns, label and then leave for a month of two to clear until the next racking or bottling depending on flavour and appearance. And of course whether you can extricate the two year old from the alcohol! Does she know theres a new baby coming already?!

Only three more gallons to bottle, five more to rack, and then we can turn our attentions to tidying up the ‘cellar’ (the corner of the outhouse!) and making ready for the first wine of the season Birch Sap Wine which is another with a beautifully delicate taste. Oh and there’s the cider to be transfered into jars now its settled down! By the time this baby is born I think that we had better have a party to make a dent in all this homebrewing we’ve been doing and not consuming! A boozy baby party not bad! – I can hear social services being called as I write this! heheheh