I started a new batch of wine this week, this time it's rhubarb wine. I'm always taking pictures of my wine making efforts, old facebook habit, you know. Anyway, I ended up with roughly 18 pounds of rhubarb from one plant, so that's what I used.
I process the rhubarb differently from what my recipe book suggests, I boil it down to a sauce before I ferment it.
I added 3 pints of filtered water and 3 cups of sugar to the pot full of cut up rhubarb and boiled it on low heat until it was a sauce, and then I let it cool overnight. The boiling helps to get rid of any wild yeast that might have been on the stalks. Wild yeast can turn your wine into vinegar fairly quickly.
I ended up using two 5 gallon food grade buckets for the ferment, there was too much rhubarb sauce to put into one bucket and still have room for all the water. I put half the rhubarb in each bucket, then added 2 gallons of filtered water to each bucket. Then I added 2 teaspoons of yeast nutrient to each bucket. The recipe calls for tannin, but I don't use it, I don't like the taste of it in the wine. The last ingredient was sugar. I used 4 pounds in each bucket. The yeast I used is called Premere Cuvee, it is recommended for sweet wines. It has a high tolerance to alcohol, it will handle 16-18 percent before it dies.
This is after adding everything.
I found a space for the buckets at the back of the house and covered the buckets with towels, held on by big rubber bands.
I opened the buckets to stir them, this to be done a couple of times per day to let the built up gas out of the fermenting liquid, known as the must. The rhubarb makes quite the crust as the fibrous matter gets pushed to the surface.
I basically stir the crud back into the must so that the yeast can continue to work on it.
It's all stirred in.
So, that's where I'm at with it right now. I'm probably going to put a bit more sugar in it tomorrow to keep the yeast going a bit longer. It usually takes about 5-7 days for the first ferment to slow down. Then it's time to syphon the fluid off the crud into big bottles with airlocks for the secondary ferment. I'd like to use 3 or 5 gallon glass carboys, but I don't have any right now except the one 3 gallon carboy that's full of fermenting apple wine. The darned things are expensive. I have several 1 gallon jugs, so I'll use them.
A few words about making wine. Everything must be CLEAN. Clean and sanitised with a product made for the purpose. If you're not diligent about your cleanliness, you can end up with vinegar, or worse. One of my early attempts at making wine got moldy. That'll ruin the wine quickly.
Thanks for stopping by, eh!
I hope you enjoyed my post, and feel free to leave any comments or questions you might have.
