Dandelion Wine Recipes

Why 59-68 and not 451 like Bradbury? Because we are not writing novels here, but we are making real dandelion wine, which ferments at this very temperature, in our language – 15-20 ° Celsius. Let’s try to deal with the drink, sung by the respected Ray Leonardovich in the story of the same name: the technology of preparation, the procurement of raw materials and various variations of the recipe.

The beginning of summer is a good time! It is enough to go out into any field and abundance immediately begins: everything blooms, exudes smells, dizzy, the feeling after winter is as if you have fallen into some other, cheerful, fragrant, green universe. This Universe consists of thousands of solar systems, and in the center of each is its own luminary, a bright and fragrant dandelion. And, if you can’t hide the real summer sun in a bottle for the future, then its smaller copy is quite capable of bringing joy all year round, in the form of an unusual, tasty, and even healthy drink. We present you a detailed recipe for making dandelion wine!

Dandelion wine – a recipe for “summer in a bottle”

These very words are like summer on the tongue. Dandelion wine is summer caught and bottled.

Ray Bradbury

“Dandelion wine” is not at all a beautiful phrase of the writer, but quite a real drink, which has long been made both in England and here. These unpretentious flowers grow in abundance almost everywhere, have a lot of healing properties, make wine from them quite easily, and if you properly approach the collection and processing of raw materials, the result will be excellent, even if you are far from professional winemaking.

When to collect dandelions?

In different regions, dandelion ripens at different times, so it’s time to determine exactly what is everything! – only you yourself can, by active flowering and an abundance of flowers. There are 2 seasons when dandelions can be collected in bulk: in early-mid May and late June – early July. “Early” dandelion wine at home comes out much less beautiful, it is rather greenish in color, but it is more transparent, fragrant and healthy. Summer dandelions, on the contrary, are tastier and more beautiful, the wine turns out to be a rich yellow color – in general, what you need for a “summer in a bottle”. The difference can be clearly seen in the picture below.

In general, the collection of flowers can be continued until August – it all depends on what volumes you are interested in. Just don’t miss it so that the whole idea doesn’t fly away with the first autumn breeze, as ripe dandelion inflorescences scatter.

How to prepare raw materials?

We are only interested in yellow, beautiful petals. They need to be peeled off from fresh, just plucked flowers. The collection can not be carried out after rain and early in the morning, until the dew has dried up, and the flowers have not yet opened. The easiest way to release the part of the plant we need is to squeeze it with a bunch between your fingers, grab the receptacle with your other hand and make a circular motion. Yellow stamens-pistils – in a jar, everything else – to throw away.

You can, of course, make wine from the whole flower – if you’re really lazy. Dandelion flower wine recipes also exist, one of them is given below. Such a drink, by the way, will be even more useful, but the characteristic bitterness cannot be avoided, and the color may turn out to be far from expected. Yes, the process is quite labor intensive. On the other hand, for 5 liters of finished wine, we need only a liter jar of petals, so it’s better to try hard to get an excellent result for sure.

Dandelion wine recipes at home

Almost all dandelion wine recipes include various additives that affect the taste of the final product and the proper fermentation. After all, a dandelion is still not a raspberry, from which almost 100% a first-class drink is obtained, in this case, some amendments will have to be made. Usually added:

• lemon, orange – to acidify the wort;
• citrus zest – to adjust the taste;
• sugar – for sweetening and increasing the degree;
• raisins, dry or fresh raspberries, wine yeast – to start fermentation;
• a variety of spices – cinnamon, cloves, lemon balm, mint, thyme, oregano;
• water.

In general, here at your discretion. For the first time, you can try to do without additives at all – except for sugar and water – but, I’m afraid, the result will be so-so.

Basic Recipe: Dandelion Wine with Oranges and Wine Yeast

A proven recipe from an authoritative forum, I recommend using it as a base.

• 0,5 kg of yellow dandelion petals;
• 4-5 liters of water;
• 3-4 oranges;
• 1,5 kg of sugar;
• 11 g (1 sachet) of dry wine yeast – in the original Fermivin PMD;
• yeast nutrition is optional.

Preparation:

1. Pour the collected dandelions with boiling water, close the lid tightly – you can even wrap it up – and let it brew for 2 days.
2. After this time, cut the zest from the oranges – carefully, without touching the white skin, we only need orange – add to the infusion. Pour sugar into it.
3. Bring the mixture to a boil, boil for about 15 minutes. Cool slightly and filter through several layers of cheesecloth.
4. Squeeze orange juice into the liquid that has cooled to 30 degrees – from those oranges that we freed from the zest. Introduce yeast (it is better to ferment them first).
5. Pour the wort into a bottle or other container, put it under a water seal until everything is fermented. In order to increase the strength, sugar can be introduced in parts, for example: half at once, and then – 250 grams each on the 4th, 7th and 10th day of active fermentation.
6. Fermentation is over when the water seal has stopped gurgling, usually after about a month, depending on the temperature. The optimum temperature is from 15 to 20 degrees, read more precisely on the package of yeast.
7. At the end of fermentation, the wine is decanted through a straw and bottled for aging. Store in a cool (10-15°C) place for at least 5 months.

As we can see, the recipe for making dandelion wine is no more difficult than the recipe for regular grape wine, everyone can do it.

Recipe XNUMX: Dandelion Blossom Wine

An option for those who are too lazy to peel dandelion petals. In this recipe, it is supposed to ferment the drink with wild yeast, introducing their culture into the wort (“culture in wort!” – a good slogan, isn’t it?) with the help of raisins. I warn you right away – this method will not give a 100% result, the raisins should be very good, best of all – homemade. Read more about choosing raisins and preparing sourdough from them in this article.

• Dandelions (with receptacles, but without leaves and stems) – 1 liter;
• Sugar – 0.5 kg;
• Water – 3 liters;
• 2 lemon;
• 2 orange;
• 2 tablespoons of raisins.

Preparation:

1. Put the dandelions in a suitable container, sprinkle with layers of sugar and put in a warm place.
2. After 2-3 days, when the flowers start juice, add a glass of cold water to the jar and leave for another couple of days.
3. A day later, ferment the raisins. This is done in advance, a day in advance – if the sourdough does not work out, you will have time to replace it with wine yeast.
4. Strain the infusion through several layers of cheesecloth and squeeze well. Squeeze juice from citrus fruits.
5. Mix infusion, juice and raisin sourdough. Using clean, non-boiled water at room temperature, bring the total volume of liquid to almost 3 liters – at least 1/5 of the jar should be left free. Cover with gauze.
6. If all our machinations with sourdough were successful, active fermentation will begin on the second or third day. You will determine this by smell and foaming. Now you need to put on a water seal or a glove “Hello Gorbachev!” on the container.
7. Fermentation is carried out in a dark place, at room temperature, it ends in about 2-3 weeks.
8. When the glove is deflated or the shutter stops bubbling, the wine must be decanted, bottled and rearranged in a cool place.

It will be possible to taste such wine not earlier than in six months.

Recipe Three: Dandelion Juice Wine

If you have dandelions – well, just heaps, wine can be made, as they say, “using white technology”, after squeezing the juice. This dandelion wine recipe comes from an old cookbook and does not include any additives other than water, sugar, sourdough or yeast. To make the taste of the drink more vivid, you can add a little of your favorite spices or spices.

Preparation:

1. Run dandelion flowers through a juicer. Measure the volume of the resulting juice.
2. Add sugar to the juice at the rate of 4 tbsp. l. per liter and diluted with clean water in a ratio of 2: 1, pour into a suitable jar, cover with gauze.
3. We don’t kill the wild yeasts on the flowers with this method, so the must is supposed to ferment on its own. But that’s in theory. But in fact, you may need sourdough – for a change, you can use raspberry, the recipe is in this article – or wine yeast.
4. As soon as the liquid has fermented, we put a water seal and wait for the end of fermentation, decanting and bottling. After that, the author of the recipe suggests fixing the wine by pouring 100 ml of vodka into each liter of the drink. If sweetness is not enough for you, you can add a little sugar – fortified wine will not ferment again. Send to a cool place for several months.

As we can see, the recipes for making dandelion wine are quite simple. In all cases, it is recommended to age the drink – keep it cool for quite a long time. But your patience will return a hundredfold – in January-February, when it is hard to believe that it is warm and sunny outside, this wine will come in handy!

Take summer in your hand, pour summer into a glass – into the smallest one, of course, from which you will only take a single tart sip; bring it to your lips – and instead of a fierce winter, a hot summer will run through your veins …

Ray Bradbury