I suppose there's a point, before you get started with your call that you get moved to make an awful lot of wine based on some inspiration from your parents. My parents were keen home winemakers, experimenting with many flavours. Some memorable flavours were rosehip, rowan, tea, apple, marrow, and beetroot - apparently the beetroot even stained your pee purple... After obtaining a starter winemaking kit from a local charity shop, Mrs Gerbil and I have made a few concoctions, sometimes with alarming results. She will be quick to note that the Vimto wine was certainly not her idea As a tribute to it's flavour, it has been called Vim... This being the bramble season, today was spent making bramble wine.
Boots used to stock winemaking kit, but not any more. The best place to get wine and beer making supplies in Scotland, in my opinion is Stirling Health Food Store, where the owner has given me loads of helpful advice.
The following recipe is based on one from my parents copy of "The Boots Book of Home Winemaking and Brewing" by BCA Turner published 1979. Last year we used the stock boots recipe. This year we have tweaked it to use more fruit and less sugar. Variations for this year's version are in brackets.
Bramble wine (5 gallons or 25 litres)
7.5kg freshly picked brambles (10kg)
1250 grams red grape juice concentrate (5 litres of supermarket grape juice worked fine)
4.5kg sugar (4kg)
18 litres boiling water
5 tsp citric acid. (3 tsp)
1/2 tsp tannin (didn't have any last year. Forgot to get any this year.)
pectolase (5 tsp although read the label on the container)
yeast nutrient
yeast.
Wash, drain and crush the brambles, pour on the boiling water and when cool (the next day) add the acid, tannin, pectolase, grape juice, nutrient and yeast. Make sure whatever you are using as a fermentation vessel is big enough to hold all this. If you are using supermarket grape juice, it's not all going to fit into a standard 5 gallon fermenter. This is when you realise that 1250 grams of concentrated grape juice takes up a whole lot less volume. If you need to, only use 2 litres of grape juice at this stage.
Place the lid on top of your fermentation vessel loosely, leave it in a warm place for 5 days.
Now the recipe says you need to strain, press, stir in the sugar, pour into a fermentation jar, top up with cold boiled water and ferment to dryness. Oh, how one sentence can make it seem so simple...
We had a big funnel over the fermentation vessel, and into that we placed a bit of muslin. We then started syphoning the bramble juice through. After 2 litres out of the 25 or so, the pipe was blocked with bramble pips, and the cloth was clogged with fruit pulp. It was clear we were going to be there all day. After some head scratching (if your hands are covered in bramble juice, everything you touch will turn purple, including the head you are scratching) we got another fermentation bucket, pegged the muslin in a sort of cone over the bucket, poured in the remaining pulp and went out for lunch. When we got back, the majority of liquid had drained into the bucket. All we then had to do was wring out the fruit pulp to get the last of the juice out, transfer the liquid to the fermentation vessel and add the 4 kilos of sugar.
Bugger, there's only two kilos in the cupboard. We could have sworn there was four.
So now after visiting the place where "every little helps" there's four kilos of sugar in the now fermenting bramble juice. The gravity at this stage is 1.060, although that may be on the low side. I'm not convinced all the sugar has disolved.
In about a week, when the fermentation has slowed down I'll rack it - that's where you syphon to a fresh vessel, leaving the later of yeast sediment behind. Then it will be left for up to a month to ensure fermentation has stopped. At this stage I will rack it, add campden tablets to stop the fermentation, de-gas it, and then filter it to clear it. Then it's off to somewhere cool to mature for a year.
Simple.
But my hands are still purple.
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