52 bottles of wine.

[rainbowgardener]

I'm so Gemini! I love starting things and learning new things, so I'm already starting to think about what is next...

I have done homemade candles, jellies, syrups, canned tomato sauce and salsa, frozen stuff, dried herbs, made herbal tea blends, distilled essential oils, made hand lotion, now I'm in the middle of wine making.

So what should the next project be, how to use stuff from my garden? (Don't say beer, I can't stand the stuff!)

[GardenGnome]

I don't know about you but I could use a glass of flower wine after reading this.
Yeah I know its 730am ... maybe ill just smell a flower outside. Blackberry wine sounds nice how much do you need for 30 bottles?

[!potatoes!]

so rg, did you buy yeast, or culture your local ones? in my winemaking in recent years, I've realized how easy it is to get a yeast culture going that will drive the entire fermentation of a wine. and fun, for the folks who get a kick out of doing such things.

also; the dandelion wine we started early last april, we bottled in february. after a tiny bit of aging, it's really amazing stuff. complex flavor. it's fermented to dryness, so not sweet from sugars, but there's a floral-based sweetness still there in the flavor. pretty cool. we needed a crew of three to process the flowers to get it started, though. I actually wonder if the lilac wine wouldn't be a little too floral/perfumey for my taste, but my tolerances are low where very scented flowers are concerned, I guess. I vote for more experimentation in wineland, as next project. (though I guess you'd need another vessel to ferment in)...that's what got me - and why I now have 8 1-gallon jugs around - got lucky that we were sampling out a bunch of cider at the store, so they were free.

just started the household's 9th 1-gallon batch of wine two days ago. made with (next) summer in mind: rooibos/lime/ginger.

also: GG: to fill 30 wine bottles, you'd need about 6 gallons, so depending on your recipe (sweetened with honey, as is my wont) you'd need around 12 cups of honey and maybe 18lbs of berries (for good flavor, some would say you could use less)...

[!potatoes!]

also, re-reading this thread that I somehow mostly ignored...in response to gary's comment about dandelions not having much flavor...to make something seem like a wine to our tastes, it needs tannins and acids, neither of which are present in dandelions...but easy to add. citrus juice and peel can add enough acids, raisins or dried apricots can add enough tannins. both tend to be ingredients in flower wines.

[GardenGnome]

Lol maybe ill start with less bottles. I ordered that book that wass listed. Still sounds like fun to make. Now if I could just get how to make french bread right. Id be set its always rock hard.

[GardenGnome]

Lol maybe ill start with less bottles. I ordered that book that wass listed. Still sounds like fun to make. Now if I could just get how to make french bread right. Id be set its always rock hard.