Rhubarb Wine!
Hey! It IS a recipe!!!!
Ingredients
18 lbs. of rhubarb
10 lbs. of sugar
1 tbsp. Yeast Energizer
1 tsp. Wine Tannin
1 Packet of Wine Yeast: Montrachet
10 Campden Tablets (5 prior to fermentation and 5 at bottling time)
Directions
1. Cut the rhubarb into small pieces. It is important to understand that you can over-process the produce. Food processors, blenders and such should not be used for this purpose. Doing so will cause too much bitterness from the skin and seeds of the produce to be incorporated into the resulting wine.
2. Stir together all of the wine making ingredients called for, EXCEPT for the Wine Yeast, into a primary fermenter. Collect any pulp in a fermentation bag and submerge the bag into the wine making mixture. Add water to equal the batch to 5 gallons. Then add 5 Campden Tablets. They should be crushed up before adding. Do not add the wine yeast at this point in the process. Adding the wine yeast at the same time you add the Campden Tablets will only result in destroying the yeast.
3. Cover the fermenter with a thin, clean towel and wait 24 hours. During this waiting period the Campden Tablets are sterilizing the juice with a mild sulfur gas. During the 24 hours the gas leaves the container making it safe to add the wine yeast.
4. Sprinkle the wine yeast over the surface of the juice and then cover with a thin, clean towel. Allow this mixture (must) to ferment for 5 to 7 days. You should start to see some foaming activity within 24 hours of adding the wine yeast. Typically, 70% of the fermentation activity will occur during this 5 to 7 day period.
5. After 5 to 7 days remove the pulp from the fermenter and discard. Siphon the wine into a carboy in a careful manner, so as to leave the sediment behind. You can easily remove the pulp by lifting out the fermentation bag. Wring out any excess juice from the bag. Siphon the wine off the sediment without stirring it up. Get as much liquid as you can, even if some of the sediment comes with it. If necessary, add water back to 5 gallons.
6. Attach a wine airlock and fill it half-way with water. Allow the juice to ferment for an additional 4-6 week period or until it becomes completely clear. You may want to verify with your wine hydrometer that the fermentation has completed before continuing on to the next step. The wine hydrometer should read between 0.990 and 0.998 on the Specific Gravity scale. Be sure to give the wine plenty of time to clear up before bottling.
7. Once the wine has cleared completely, siphon it off of the sediment again. Stir in 5 Campden Tablets that have been crushed. Sweeten to taste. I have tried Sugar, but prefer to back sweeten it with honey!!!!
Then bottle. When siphoning off the sediment, unlike the first time you siphoned the sediment needs to remain behind, even if you lose a little.
I have use a little more than a pint of honey to back seeten, depending on the intended purpose.
I also often add berries to change the flavor and enhance the color.. Using straight Rhubarb will give it a faint pink color. The last batch I made I swapped out a few pounds of Rhubarb for an equal amount of blueberries. This batch I used strawberries and raspberries. About a pound of each with sixteen pounds of Rhubarb. Last batch had a blue ish purple color, this batch looks like PINK Lemonade!
I have 35 pounds of Wild Maine Blueberries coming back at Christmas time when my wife comes back... Looking forward to another batch of Blueberry wine at that time.. theres actually enough for TWO batches if I am a wee bit skimpy on the blueberries in each.
