How to Make Cucumber Wine: A Step-by-Step Guide

Very interesting people live in our village. Among them there are simple hard workers, and deputies, and heads of hospitals, and professors, and teachers, and many others. We live in a very friendly and cheerful company.

On big holidays we gather in the village, cook pilaf, barbecue and feast at a large table set on the football field. A sort of Soviet Union in a single settlement.

Everyone brings interesting dishes and strong drinks. Everyone wants to surprise each other. And, I confess, one drink simply struck me – wine from cucumbers.

Such a story about unusual alcohol was sent to me by my subscriber Anna Lvovna from the Moscow region. Hope you enjoy this recipe too. Happy reading!

How I Started Making Cucumber Wine

It was at one such gathering, dedicated to seeing off winter, that I tried the most unique, in my opinion, drink – cucumber wine. To be honest, the drink is specific, but everyone should try it. I asked for the recipe and made it myself the following summer.

Cucumbers are growing in abundance. Every year I plant less and less, but still in the summer I distribute them to everyone in need. I salt a bunch of jars, close winter salads, and now I also make wine. Let me tell you more about this unique drink.

To prepare it you will need:

1. Cucumbers – 5 kg.
2. Oranges – 5 pcs.
3. Dry yeast – 1 pack.
4. Water – 1 liter.
5. Sugar – 1,5 kg.

Agree, the ingredients are very simple and accessible to everyone.

Cooking progress

So, first of all, we collect cucumbers. You can take overgrown ones, which usually hide from human eyes, and eventually grow the size of a zucchini. They roam great.

If the cucumbers are very overgrown, then it is better to remove the skins. Then we follow a fairly simple instruction:

1. We grind the harvested crop with a blender.
2. We peel the oranges from the peel, stones and also grind in a blender.
3. Mix all the chopped vegetables and fruits together, add sugar and water.
4. Mix well and add yeast.
5. We put the mass in a three-liter jar and leave it to ferment for 30 days in a dark, warm place, shake the jar every day to mix the contents, a rubber glove should be worn on top of the jar.
6. After fermentation, we filter everything through a dense cloth or gauze folded in several layers.
7. Young wine is bottled and sent to a cool place (not a refrigerator) to “ripen” for six months.

In order for the final product to ripen well, it is tedious to filter out young wine bottled through gauze every month.

And yet, to give the drink a copper hue, you can add a couple of cloves to bottles of young wine.

Result

In the end, I ended up with two versions of the drink. Bottled with cloves, a beautiful amber liquid with a characteristic aroma. In bottles just with young wine – a light yellow drink.

The taste of the wine is fresh, with an orange aftertaste. the drink is quite strong, has a pronounced smell of fresh cucumbers. I liked the option with the addition of cloves much more. It gives the wine not only a beautiful shade, but also its light aroma, which goes well with orange.

I will say right away, for everyone who tries the first reaction: “What kind of nonsense is this?”. And when the aftertaste is revealed, they ask for more. Saying they haven’t tried it. 50% of tasters don’t leave until they finish the bottle and ask for the recipe.

How and with what to drink cucumber wine

I serve this drink exclusively with meat, pilaf, heavy dishes. In no case should vegetables or fruits be present in the serving, they are absolutely incompatible with the drink.

I pour it into small glasses and ask you to first “evaluate the smell” of the drink, guess the composition. I always hear the same thing: “Watermelon?”. No one can believe that our native and familiar cucumbers give freshness.

Here’s an unusual recipe I discovered for myself. This summer I will definitely prepare a couple of bottles again, and not because there are a lot of cucumbers, but because I want to have a special, unique drink in my basement that can surprise guests.

Excessive alcohol consumption is harmful to your health. Take care of yourself!

What do you think, is it worth preparing alcohol from such unusual ingredients? Or is it better to give preference to the classics? Personally, it amuses me a lot to watch, for those who try for the first time, for their reaction. And the guests from the capital were so amazed by the taste that they asked for another bottle to take with them to treat their friends.