Dandelion wine

Summer has lead to a dandelion explosion in our garden, somehow triumphing where the grass has given up

Dandelions are a non-native species in Australia but are very widespread and considered a weed. Which is a shame, because like nettles they have a whole host of medicinal and culinary applications. If they grew in a remote Amazonian rainforest then they would be being touted as a superfood. You can use all of the plant - the leaves as salad garnish, the taproot in soups and stews and the petals as edible decoration - and there are a host of health benefits assigned to it.

You can also brew with it - either using the leaves and stalks as a bittering agent in beer (as was done in the days pre-hops) or using the flowers to make a white wine. I needed to mow the lawn and it seemed a waste to let so much good produce go to waste so I thought I'd go for the latter.

 

First off you need to harvest your dandelion petals. Some recipes suggest using the whole flower, others just the petals, and I found it was just as quick to grab the flower and snip at the base of the petals, leaving the green stub on the stalk. 

It's a hot and tedious business though, and best left to cheap immigrant labour

Some of the websites suggest harvesting in the middle of the day, but after half an hour outside at 11am on the longest day of the year all I'd achieved was this many petals and a mild case of sunstroke

The next morning I went back out and finished it off.

How many petals do you need? Theoretically it's roughly the same volume as the wine that you're trying to make, but in reality it's the number of petals you can pick before your back gives out, you get sunstroke or you get bored of passing dog-walkers asking you why you're moving your lawn with a pair of scissors.

Once you've got your petals pour boiling water over them and leave to soak for a day or two. Then add in another few litres of water, bring to the boil and add blended / chopped raisins, lemon zest, lemon juice and sugar. Quantities depends on how much wine you want to make and what you have to hand - I used 700g of raisins, 2 lemons & 2kg of sugar . That will give me roughly 10 bottles of wine at around 10% alcohol by volume (I think!).

Boil for a few minutes to make sure the sugar dissolves and then take off the heat. Country wine making is a little different to beer because the flavours don't come out in the boil, instead you add the whole of the contents of the cooled pot (or 'must') to a fermenting bucket, lumps and all (although I took out the lemon segments in case the pith gave a bitter taste). Mix in wine yeast and yeast nutrient, cover and leave for a few days to a week to get the initial fermentation going.

I'll add further posts as I carry out the next steps because wine making has as few more processes than beer and takes longer to reach a drinkable state. 

 

The petals I used were harvested on the Summer solstice, so if all goes well we'll be able to crack the first bottle on the evening of the Winter solstice, watch the night sky and enjoy a taste of summer sunshine.

Edit - Part II is here