Elderflower Quickie Blush 2013 (apple & red grape juice)

So the elderflower quickie wine making continues. This time the variation is a blush. Half red grape juice and half apple juice. I thought that the only difference would be the colour really, but it turns out the red juice has more sugar in it than the white juice. Not a huge amount, but enough to make my original gravity higher, and so make the wine a little stronger. I only noticed the different sugar content because I couldn't immediately see why the gravity should be a little higher, and so checked cartons.

Recipe - 5 Gallons

5 Litres Red Grape Juice (Vitafit)
5 Litres Apple Juice (Simply)
3.5 Kg Sugar
5 Teaspoons Pectolase
3 Teaspoons Tartaric Acid
3 Teaspoons Citric Acid
3 Teaspoons Yeast Nutrient (Tronozymol)
Yeast GV5 (Lees from previous batch)
Water to 5 gallons
OG 1080
Elderflowers, 2 small muslin bags, loosely packed

And the usual piccie of ingredients (tho there are some other pics coming later)

Method

So this is a quickie wine, and there's heaps of methods for them elsewhere on this blog. It's also a late addition wine (more on that later). And it's also fermented on the lees of a previous batch. I'll skim over the details of making quickie wines, and focus on the late addition and lees. 

You've just racked your previous brew into secondary fermentation vessels. Paying extra attention to keeping lots of the yeasty sediment in the bottom of the primary fermentation vessel. This is full of live yeast, in a good sized colony, and raring to go. So save yourself all that sanitising effort, the bin is fine, your last lot of wine just came out of it and all was good. Cover it up tho. You also save some loose change on a new packet of yeast. Just don't forget that you have live yeast in your fermenting bin, don't kill it. Dissolve the sugar in hot water (boiled). Leave to cool, it may take a few hours but if you don't let it cool then the yeast probably won't enjoy the heat, and if you add it to your lees before the other ingredients (at room temperature) then you'll almost certainly kill the yeast.

Put all your other ingredients in the fermenting bin, except the flowers, we'll add them days later. When the sugar solution is cool add it to the fermenting bin too. Give everything a good stir to ensure it's mixed. You probably don't need to do the sloshy stir tho. The yeast colony should be plenty big and healthy enough. But if you can be bothered it won't do any harm to give it a sloshy stir. Measure and record the original gravity. Cover. Make notes of the ingredients, quantities, and your method. With dates.

A few days later you'll want to pick your flowers. Put them all in a plastic bag, tie it.

Haul of elderflower sprays ready to tie up for the night.

Next day shake the bag for 10 minutes or so. (It's a great use of ad break time if you're watching a film on TV!). All the flowers drop off the stems. Put the flowers into muslin bags, and tie them. This year i had excess flowers so at this point i froze some to use another time. I'll tell you if it works out when i drink it ... in about 8 weeks i reckon. 

Drop the flowers into a secondary fermentation vessel, under airlock. Rack the must ontop of them. Fit the airlock. After a few days remove the flowers and rack again. Fit the airlock(s) and then follow the usual procedures. Racking, degassing, stabilising. It should clear in a few weeks and be ready to bottle and drink 6-8 weeks from when you started it.

Discussion.

When collecting flowers choose a dry day. Smell the flowers on each tree, some smell great - pick them - and some smell unpleasant (like cat's pee is how some people describe it). Leave those of course. You may have to get about a bit to find the best flowers. I enjoy that part, i have a particular favourite tree and always go there. The best smell and lots of flowers. But i also enjoy visiting the smaller trees that have grown noticeably since i first noticed them. And finding new trees is always a good thing. The colour of flowers varies from creamy to quite brilliant white. I don't think it makes any difference, the smell is what matters.

This year while i was exploring i ended up in a car park by the side of the river. A little too far out of town to be useful, so it was quiet. Which probably explains the graffiti ... that i enjoyed looking at. So here's a piccie of some.

Late addition; the main bonus of the late addition of flowers, which are essentially your flavourings, is that you need considerably less. Primary fermentation is vigorous and will blow lots of the delicate flavours out into the air. Secondary fermentation is much gentler, so more flavours will stay in the must. Additionally I think the alcohol will help to extract more flavour from the flavours.

Quickie Wine; This is formulated to be ready to drink quickly. It's very important that you don't try to make it higher ABV, or bigger bodied. If you do then the wine will no longer be a quickie, it'll need months to condition before being ready to drink. Quickie wine is table wine quality (the kind of quality you pay £5 for in the supermarket). It won't improve with age beyond about 3 months. It's a quaffing wine. Something to drink while your other wines get the time they need to condition. You're still looking at a wine around 11% ABV. Where you can experiment is with the fruit juices. Always ensure that half is grape juice, the other half can be whatever you like, including more grape juice. Apple is great too. I hear great things about lychee juice and it sounds like a good match for elderflowers but i've never tried it.

Muslin bags; i strongly encourage you to use these. They make it a breeze removing any solids you add to your must. They cost loose change. And you can re-use them many times. Just wash them well after each use. I put mine through the washing machine (tied in a sock) and then rinse them before using them. Nylon mesh bags are also fine for the job.

clicky here for a comparison of this year's elderflower wines, all 4 of them.