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Since I am an avid summer resident and have been living outside the city for many years all summer, my arsenal has accumulated a lot of recipes for various pickles, drinks and dishes from what grows in the garden.
Salting and seaming are very helpful in winter, when you want vegetables and fruits, and it’s cheaper to close them yourself than to buy canning in stores.
Once I was sitting at the table after a hard day in the “fields” and drinking coffee. Galina, a neighbor, came to me and asked me to lend her trellises for tomatoes, her varieties are high, the harvest is large – I have to tie them up.
It was then that she saw my rich crop of marrows lying near the table, and asked if I made wine from them. How good it is to disappear, grown with your own hands, with love!
I learned about zucchini wine only that day from Galina, before that it never occurred to me how wine could be made from such an ordinary vegetable! My neighbor surprised me!
So, I share the process of making a miracle drink!
Wine – the drink of aristocrats
Story from blog subscriber Nikolay.
Ingredients and equipment
So, to make wine, we need:
2 kg zucchini;
- Important! You should choose young and tender zucchini, they should not be overgrown, since the old ones have practically no juice and do not give the desired taste.
This is how zucchini should be.
- 4 liters of water (both filtered and artesian can be used);
- 20 g of citric acid (if not, then we take 3 lemons, I did it myself with squeezed juice, it turned out naturally), the ingredient is required, since zucchini does not have acid at all;
- 1 kg of sugar;
- 60 g of raisins or yeast (you need special wine yeast, baking yeast will only spoil the results of our labors).
Of the equipment, we will need a 30-liter plastic bottle for wine, a medical glove, a basin and a grater.
The prices are cheap:
- 1 kg of sugar in Pyaterochka costs 32 rubles;
- raisins for 100 g – 40 rubles;
- wine yeast is a little cheaper – 37 rubles;
- lemons, 3 pieces cost me 76 rubles.
The cooking process
I tell the recipe first and in detail, write!
If you still haven’t found yeast for wine, you need to make a starter from raisins. It must be done in advance – a week before the start of winemaking. If you wish, you can save on raisins if you use a vine from your garden (I can’t brag, my grapes hardly bear fruit).
Let’s get back to raisins. It must be put in a jar, add about 30 g of sugar and 150 g of warm water. From above you need to cover with gauze and put in a closet for several days. The finished sourdough should foam and sizzle (my household members have been looking for the cause of the sizzle for a long time, they thought the brownie).
Important! If mold has appeared in the sourdough, you can not use it!
Sourdough with mold
Zucchini needs to be peeled and processed with a grater or meat grinder. Next, put the gruel from the vegetable in a saucepan and pour boiling water for a day.
But such a leaven should be
After infusion, squeeze the pulp, add 500 g of sugar, lemon juice (since we all have sick stomachs, I previously diluted 1 to 3 with water), sourdough or yeast comes here.
Mix everything well and pour into a bottle. You need to fill it 2/3, as gas and foam will trample from there. Put on a glove on top
Tsoi is alive!
An inflated glove indicates that the fermentation process has started. We leave the wine vessel for a week in a warm place. Then we need to do the following operation – drain 500 g of the wort and mix the syrup with 250 g of sugar, pour it back into the bottle and carry out a similar manipulation in another week.
The wine is prepared in about 25-60 days. The end of the process is indicated by the absence of gas formation. It took me exactly 33 days to make the wine, as it is warm and sunny at home. The finished wine can be slightly diluted with vodka for a fortress, but I didn’t make it myself – we don’t drink strong at home.
What will be the result
The finished wine must be bottled and sealed. Keep the drink in a cold place – a refrigerator or basement is suitable. I used a refrigerator, I even bought an old one with Avito on purpose. In the cold, the wine should keep up to 4 months. Once a month, the drink is opened and drained from the sediment.
Important! The total shelf life is up to 3 years.
The taste of wine is no worse than grape. The drink has a moderately sweet, tart taste. The smell is also pleasant, it smells of greenery and summer. For a more delicate flavor, you can add a few pieces of cherry plum.
My result
The color varies from pale yellow to orange, reminiscent of Fanta. The cost of the drink is much less than that of factory-made wine – sugar, lemon and raisins cost me only 185 rubles, I have my own zucchini, I take out bags every year, I distribute them to my friends.
How to serve and with what to use
Like any other wine, our squash is best served with cheese, meat, fish or vegetables. I do not recommend for heavy dishes, the taste and effect will be blurry. It can be served both in a decanter and in a bottle; ordinary wine glasses are suitable for bottling.
The wine was a success! To everyone who always grows a lot of zucchini in their dachas and gardens, now I recommend making wine out of them. For those who do not have gardens, I can advise them to simply buy zucchini. In season they are quite inexpensive.
Have you tried zucchini wine?