Rhubarb wine

[reloader28]

This winter some time there was a thread on home brewing or something like that.
Anyway, someone asked me to let them know how my rhubarb wine turned out when it was ready.

Its ready. Its been in the bottles for 3 or 4 weeks now . There is no mistaking that its rhubarb, at least for me. Others say they would'nt have guessed it.
Alcohol is 12%. I did sweeten it a little. It was dry and tart. Now its a very nice white wine. Very tasty. Probly go REALLY well with chicken or maybe pork chops.

Our rhubarb is about ready to start picking, so I think I'll save enough this year after pies and crisps to make a 5 gallon batch. I only made a gallon this go around because I didnt know how it would turn out.

I'm very happy with it and will definatly make more.

[Love Life]

I want some!! I make strawberry wine and it is a some easy drinking stuff. It's a bit strong though so a full glass at dinner may just have you dancing with a lamp shade on your head.

[mikeym1a]

The rhubarb pies that grandma and aunt Daisy used to make were very tart. I'd never have imagined it being made into wine. Once in a while the local grocer mart offers rhubarb mixed with apple or cherry for pies, which I enjoy greatly. You said yours is ready for picking? When do you plant it, and when is it ready? Seems it must be an early plant. Never too old to learn. mikey

[Silfield]

+1 on the strawberry wine!
I started making it about 15 years ago and it really caught me out the first time as it is so easy to drink too much of it. Apricot is also a good one

[WRideout]

It is spring in Southwest Pennsylvania. and there are plenty of dandelions around. I am getting enough from my front yard to make several gallons of dandelion wine. I have never yet tried eating the greens, but this may be my year to do that. Recipe for dandelion wine is as follows:
Approx. 1 qt of dandelion flowers, minus the stems
1 gallon of water
5 cups of sugar
wine yeast; I use Red Star cote des blancs
yeast nutrient, as directed on the label

Boil the water and pour over the flowers in a bucket. Let stand overnight, then strain. It makes a kind of herb tea. When cool, put into a clean sanitized bucket with lid. Add remaining ingredients and put the lid on. I only use a sprinkle of yeast, and it seems to do fine. Country people have used bread yeast for generations to make this stuff. If you wish you can drill a hole in the lid and use a bubble trap to let the CO2 out, but the only real requirement is to keep the air out while it is fermenting, otherwise it makes acetone, not alcohol. Let it finish fermenting in about 2-3 weeks, then siphon into clean bottles. If you like it sparkling clear you can transfer (rack) it once more into new bottles. When you are sure it is done, you can cork the bottles and put it away. A gallon makes about five 750 ml bottles. Some people like to add some lemon to the mix, but my wife prefers it plain. You can sweeten it to any degree you like when it is done, but any added sugar may ferment again, blowing the corks, so you should add a stabilizer first.

Wayne

[Sweetpea]

A strawberry rhubarb wine sounds about right...

[reloader28]

I have strawberry wine and its good too, but the rhubarb is better. My son in law to be mixed the strawberry and rhubarb together a couple days ago and said it was good, but I didnt try it..... yet.

Rhubarb is a perfect plant for me. Easy to grow, hard to kill, gets bigger every year and you get several picking in a year.

I have 15 gallons of concord grape wine almost ready to bottle. In fact a friend is coming over tonight so we can "sample" it.
That'll give 75 bottles of grape as long as we dont sample too much.
In the pantry we have
5 bottles razberry
5 bottles blackberry
we drank the bottle of blackberry/razzberry (AWESOME)
25 bottles strawberry
4 bottles rhubarb
26 bottles chokecherry will shortly have 75 bottles grape
And the wife is really wanting to make blueberry.

I'd say the bottom of the list would strawberry, then rhubarb and razzberry tied, then chokecherry and grape are both VERY GOOD.
But I think the top of the list is blackberry. IT IS AWESOME.

[Silfield]

This book is considered to be a bit of a bible here in the UK when it comes to wine making.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Steps-.../dp/1854861395

Its a great book for anyone interested in wine making and has resulted in many wobbly head / staggering moments for me! I think the new revised edition has been updated with US measures (something we over here have no clue on!).
Well worth tracking down.
Ps. I am reliably informed that the author was a BP shooter as well

[woodsxdragon]

I've been messing around with some honey and apples for the last few years and some fruit purees/concentrates. some turned out good others were a bust. but we moved last year. new house has a pear tree, two cherry trees, some sort of grapes, raspberries, and some rhubarb growing out on the property. i'm pretty excited to see what comes from it all. I like semi-sweet to dry but the wife (and basically everyone else in my family) likes sweet so i'm gonna explore with f-pacs this summer/fall to see if i can backsweeten to get some more fruit flavor in it.

[Love Life]

I had a friend who made some lip smacking good wine in his barracks room.

I'd definitely like to try some rhubarb wine.

[MaryB]

Sounds interesting, I eat a lot of rhubarb crisp and pie every year. And I make rhubarb sauce to serve with pork or on ice cream

[WRideout]

I only made rhubarb wine once in my life. It was too sour to drink, so I neutralized it with sodium bicarbonate, and mixed it with raspberry (I was young and foolish). It came out rather strange; you could smell the raspberry, but it had no taste.

Wayne

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I use Rhubarb wine as a base to add other friuts.
My Fav is Rhubard with Wild Black razberry wine.

What I do, Make a batch of Rhubard wine. after it's done fermenting, I strain out all the Rhubard MUCK and add friut and some more sugar to re-start fermentation...But not too much sugar as I don't want too active of a second fermention...You loose alot of aromas (and flavor) with the CO² gasing out.

Then Rack out the sediment, and age. Bottling can be done after a few months or a year, if you're patient enough.

edited to add the following recipe and notes from 2009...it took me a while to find this on my FB page.

"Juneteenth" 2009
Wild Black Rasberry Rhubarb Ale.

2.5 gallons rain water
9 lb rhubarb cut into 1" pc
7 lb table sugar
2 lb brown sugar
1/3 tsp vegemite
6 lbs Black rasberries
zest from two lemons
yeast cake combined from: my Rhubarb #1 english ale WL-002, Saison WL-550, and Munton's ale(dry )

started on 06-20-2009. I Boiled water,
added 4 lb table sugar and 2 lb brown sugar,
boiled a little more, G=1.090 at this point
cut heat and added rhubarb, vegemite, and Lemon zest
temp stabilized at 170
added enough heat to hold temp at 160 for 40 min.
inserted sanitized wort chiller...chilled to 76 deg. OG=1.083
threw yeast, due to previous yeast explosions, I doing a "sort of" open
fermentation using my 6 gallon "Bret" plastic fermentor, no airlock, cover on unlatched just on loosely. Primary fermentation took about 10 days.
On 07-02-2009 G=1.030. I strained out Rhubarb bits and old yeast. Then I started adding wild black rasberries as they ripened, about every other day, about 1 lb of berries and a cup of sugar. I couldn't easily smash the berries without the added sugar, that is why I added it, also that bumped along fermentation. After about six of these additions, totally now, I have added 7 cups of sugar and 6 lb of wild black rasberries.
On 07-23-2009 G=1.004 Now that this has sat awhile, I strained out the seeds and such. I added two more cups of sugar to bump up the gravity. I am hoping the yeast is about pooped out. new G=1.014. I was going to add campton tablets...BUT I did test them. Both Sodium metabisulphite and the Potasium metabisulphite, campton tablets removed the color. I'm wondering if it is the combination with Rhubarb's Oxalic acid that instantly removes the red color, Like it did in the second batch of "red" rhubarb ale. It's like the Oxy-clean commercial...REALLY !
on 08-04-2009 G=1.010 I syphoned off a quart for the JAB meeting this friday. It tases yummy. The new volume is 4.5 Gallons. Figuring a cup of sugar adds about 5 pts to the specific gravity, and gravity seems to have dropped to 1.010 the estimated alcohol content is 12.5%.

[MaryB]

Have a local drive up food place, serves burgers and dogs and fries in summer. But their big thing is ice cream, shakes, and malts. Had a rhubarb shake today, good stuff and the only place I have ever seen it.

[WRideout]

It must be the oxalic acid; that is one of the things you can use to remove iron stains from concrete. I have never done it, but I have read that sterile filtration is sometimes the way to go, so that you don't blow the corks after bottling. BTW: how potent is that wine you made? It looks like it has a pretty stiff alcohol content.

Wayne

I use Rhubarb wine as a base to add other friuts.
My Fav is Rhubard with Wild Black razberry wine.

What I do, Make a batch of Rhubard wine. after it's done fermenting, I strain out all the Rhubard MUCK and add friut and some more sugar to re-start fermentation...But not too much sugar as I don't want too active of a second fermention...You loose alot of aromas (and flavor) with the CO² gasing out.

Then Rack out the sediment, and age. Bottling can be done after a few months or a year, if you're patient enough.

edited to add the following recipe and notes from 2009...it took me a while to find this on my FB page.

"Juneteenth" 2009
Wild Black Rasberry Rhubarb Ale.

2.5 gallons rain water
9 lb rhubarb cut into 1" pc
7 lb table sugar
2 lb brown sugar
1/3 tsp vegemite
6 lbs Black rasberries
zest from two lemons
yeast cake combined from: my Rhubarb #1 english ale WL-002, Saison WL-550, and Munton's ale(dry )

started on 06-20-2009. I Boiled water,
added 4 lb table sugar and 2 lb brown sugar,
boiled a little more, G=1.090 at this point
cut heat and added rhubarb, vegemite, and Lemon zest
temp stabilized at 170
added enough heat to hold temp at 160 for 40 min.
inserted sanitized wort chiller...chilled to 76 deg. OG=1.083
threw yeast, due to previous yeast explosions, I doing a "sort of" open
fermentation using my 6 gallon "Bret" plastic fermentor, no airlock, cover on unlatched just on loosely. Primary fermentation took about 10 days.
On 07-02-2009 G=1.030. I strained out Rhubarb bits and old yeast. Then I started adding wild black rasberries as they ripened, about every other day, about 1 lb of berries and a cup of sugar. I couldn't easily smash the berries without the added sugar, that is why I added it, also that bumped along fermentation. After about six of these additions, totally now, I have added 7 cups of sugar and 6 lb of wild black rasberries.
On 07-23-2009 G=1.004 Now that this has sat awhile, I strained out the seeds and such. I added two more cups of sugar to bump up the gravity. I am hoping the yeast is about pooped out. new G=1.014. I was going to add campton tablets...BUT I did test them. Both Sodium metabisulphite and the Potasium metabisulphite, campton tablets removed the color. I'm wondering if it is the combination with Rhubarb's Oxalic acid that instantly removes the red color, Like it did in the second batch of "red" rhubarb ale. It's like the Oxy-clean commercial...REALLY !
on 08-04-2009 G=1.010 I syphoned off a quart for the JAB meeting this friday. It tases yummy. The new volume is 4.5 Gallons. Figuring a cup of sugar adds about 5 pts to the specific gravity, and gravity seems to have dropped to 1.010 the estimated alcohol content is 12.5%.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

BTW: how potent is that wine you made? It looks like it has a pretty stiff alcohol content. Wayne

If it was 12.5% (my guesstamite) .... Well then, any sweet wine that's 12.5% is gonna sneak up on someone

I've made a few Beet wines (with Gooseberry), with the same technique...they take the unsuspected "under the table"

[reloader28]

Rhubarb shake sounds goooood.

Shoot. I just remembered we picked up enough gooseberry juice to make 5 gallons of wine. Been too busy lately. I will have to make that tomorrow maybe.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

It must be the oxalic acid; that is one of the things you can use to remove iron stains from concrete. Wayne

This recipe and these notes were from 2009. I have since experimented...and the color robbing agent was the campton tablets. I have made a batch every year since (except last year), the Black razberries make it a beautiful 'heavy' Rose' color as long as I don't add the campton tablets in any part of the process.

[WRideout]

This recipe and these notes were from 2009. I have since experimented...and the color robbing agent was the campton tablets. I have made a batch every year since (except last year), the Black razberries make it a beautiful 'heavy' Rose' color as long as I don't add the campton tablets in any part of the process.

I normally put some sodium metabisulfite in all my wine, but never had a problem with losing color. I may not be putting in enough, however, because occasionally I get a re-ferment that can blow the corks out. I never measure the sulfite, but probably should.

Wayne

[nekshot]

been looking at our rhubarb wondering what to do with it , I don't care for the pies any more- do like in a pudding type of desert but in wine now that sounds interesting. My last batch of berry wine I made I used some cheap dinner wine jars and boy was that wrong! They let go in a row at around 1:30 am one morning and I was sure the hot water heater exploded. I will stay with mason jars from now on.