Contents
To make flower wine, you need to know a few secrets of working with raw materials. If the technology is followed, you will get a drink of a light yellow, honey or amber hue with a delicate taste and a persistent aroma of nectar. We will consider a universal recipe using lilac wine as an example. The proposed method and proportions of ingredients are suitable for any other flowers.
Theory
Any fragrant flowers are suitable for making homemade wine: acacia, lilac, black elderberry, rose, dandelion, linden, etc., which grow away from dusty places, such as roads. The optimal collection time is before noon in dry, sunny weather. It is desirable that the day before it was raining or dew fell in the morning. Immediately after the rain, the flowers lose their nectar, so the wine turns out to be tasteless, and on a cloudy day the inflorescences do not fully open, which also worsens the quality of the drink.
Attention! Use only flowers with a pleasant aroma, as the smell is fully transferred to the finished drink.
For normal fermentation, the total (titratable) acidity of the wort should be 6-15 grams per liter. The problem is that flowers, water and sugar do not contain acids in the right amount, so you have to add citric acid to the wort. If you do not increase the acidity, instead of fermentation, rotting will begin, and the flowery wine will go bad.
Yeast will convert beet sugar and nectar in flowers into alcohol, the approximate strength of the drink is 11-12%. According to the proportions in the recipe, you get a dry wine, which in the last stages can be further sweetened or increased by vodka (alcohol).
Lemon or orange peel enriches the honey-nectar aroma of the wine with pleasant citrus hues and slightly complements the taste.
Making wine from flowers requires wine yeast, which can be bought (preferred) or activated by making homemade raisin starter. Some recipes suggest simply throwing some raisins into the must, but this is the most risky way, since not every raisin retains wine yeast on the surface. Baker’s pressed or dry yeast is not suitable, otherwise, instead of wine, you will get a flower mash with a characteristic smell of alcohol.
Ingredients:
- water – 4 liters;
- sugar – 1 kg and to taste;
- flowers (lilacs, elderberries, acacias, etc.) – 1 tightly packed liter jar;
- lemons – 2 pieces (medium) or 2 teaspoons of citric acid;
- unwashed raisins – 100 grams or wine yeast.
To avoid contamination of wine with pathogenic microorganisms, all containers must first be sterilized and raw materials can only be handled with washed hands.
flower wine recipe
1. If there is no shop wine yeast, prepare raisin starter 4-5 days before picking flowers: pour 100 grams of raisins into a jar, add 25 grams of sugar and 150 ml of water at room temperature. Cover the neck with gauze, leave for 3-5 days in a dark, warm place. When foam, hissing and a slight smell of fermentation appear on the surface, the starter is ready, you can proceed to the next step.
If mold appears, you will have to start over. I advise you to put 2-3 starter cultures at the same time on different types of raisins (purchased from different manufacturers), since most berries are processed with preservatives that kill wine yeast on the skin.
2. Collect flowers (only fully opened ones are suitable). Remove leaves, stems, flower stalks and other parts that give bitterness. For 4 liters of water, a minimum of 1 liter, tightly packed can is required. If possible, it is desirable to increase the number of flowers to 1 one and a half liter jars, but not more.
Attention! Flowers should not be washed, otherwise the water will wash away the nectar and the wine will turn out to be odorless.
3. Lightly shake the flowers from dust and small insects, put them in a saucepan, pour 3,5 liters of boiling water. Boil for 5 minutes on low heat, remove from the stove, close the lid and leave for a day.
If lemons are used to increase acidity, remove the peel from the fruits previously washed in warm water (the upper yellow part, without touching the white pulp that gives bitterness). Zest (instead of lemon, you can use orange) add to the infusion. Put the peeled fruits in a plastic bag and place in the refrigerator.
4. Squeeze the flowers through cheesecloth to dryness. In the resulting filtered liquid, add the remaining unboiled water (0,5 liters), juice squeezed from peeled lemons or concentrated citric acid, half of the total amount of sugar (0,5 kg), sourdough (without raisins) or wine yeast. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Make sure to add lemon juice or acid!
5. Pour the wort into a fermentation tank. Leave at least 25% of the volume free for foam and carbon dioxide. Close with a water seal of any design, you can use a medical glove with a hole pierced by a needle in one of the fingers.
6. Move the container to a dark place (or cover) with a stable temperature of 18-25°C.
7. After 5 days from the date of installation of the water seal, pour in the second portion of sugar – 25% (250 grams). To do this, open the container, pour 250 ml of wort separately, dilute sugar in it, pour the resulting syrup back into the fermentation container and close it with a water seal.
8. After another 5 days, add the remaining sugar – 25% (250 grams) according to the method described in the previous step.
Depending on the air temperature and yeast activity, the fermentation of homemade flower wine lasts 25-60 days. The process is complete when the water seal does not release gas (does not gurgle) or the glove has deflated, the wort has become lighter, and a layer of sediment is visible at the bottom.
If the fermentation process does not stop after 55 days from the moment the starter was introduced, so that bitterness does not appear, it is necessary to drain the wine from the sediment through a straw and let it ferment under the same conditions.
9. Pour the fermented wine through a straw into another container without touching the sediment. Try a drink. Sweeten with sugar if desired (to taste). You can also increase the strength by adding vodka or pure ethyl alcohol – 3-15% by volume.
10. Fill the aging containers with wine. It is advisable to pour under the neck to minimize the contact of the drink with oxygen. Close hermetically. If sugar was added at the previous stage, install a water seal for the first 7-10 days, then close it with a regular cork.
11. Transfer the wine for maturation to a dark room (cellar, cellar, refrigerator) with a temperature of 6-16°C. Leave for at least 4-6 months.
12. When a precipitate appears with a layer of 2-5 cm, filter the drink by pouring. Usually 1-3 filtrations are required. The wine is considered ready when the sediment no longer falls. Then the drink can be bottled. Store in the basement or refrigerator in sealed containers. The shelf life of wine from flowers is up to 2 years. Fortress – 10-12% (without fixing).
