Raisins

You can add raisins or grape concentrate to fruit wines to add "vinuosity", body, depth, mouth feel, -- lots of things that it is very difficult to define in words. Basically it is done to add something to a wine that may be deficient in some character.

Ray

I use about 12 pounds per 60 gallons of apple wine, about the same or a little less in my pear wine. A pound per gallon sounds a bit much, but if your recipe says so, do it. Never used that many but I'd be careful as it sounds like you may end up with raisen wine. Good luck.

I spotted a field full of ripe dandelions and couldn't resist. I'm working on a recipe off Jack's site where the main ingredients are sugar, oranges and dandelions with D-47 yeast. I'm going to finish dry. Other recipes call for raisins for the above reason. Anyone care to throw out their thoughts on whether or not dandelion wine could use either raisins or tannin?

Don

Hi, I'm just now trying my dandelion wine from 2002 (dry). It has a very dandeliony (odd) taste - which I have not decided if I like or not. I did make another batch in 2003, and I tried to make it sweeter, but I'm waiting for that batch to mature. I did not make it this year, because I want to make something I'll like. I think it could use something else like raisons or tannin, or a can of 100% Welch's white grape juice. The flowery taste just really, well, comes across. Have you tried dandelion wine before? Darlene

I haven't tried dandelion wine before but between this quote from Jack's site "Dandelion wine is one of my favorite white wines, bar none" and that field of dandelions I figured I'd give it a shot. I minced up 1/2 cup of raisins last night, covered them with boiling water and added them to the must. Tonight I strain and put in a gallon jug. I could smell the yeast starting up this morning.

When you freeze your blossoms/petals do you remove the calyx before hand or just toss them in and remove later. I can pick another gallon of blossoms this weekend but it's the removing of the calyx that is the killer. I was thinking I'd like to try a dandelion mead at sometime but we have a 3 week old in the house now and I'm getting some stranger looks from his mother...

Don

When I froze my dandelions, I froze just the petals (the green base and stem was removed). It is a pain to remove the base. I haven't made dandelion mead. Yes, I suppose you are getting some strange looks - sleep deprivation starts to take its toll, you know, the first week is relatively easy, but then it gets tougher. Just wait until 5-8 weeks if the little one doesn't start sleeping through the night, you might get more than strange looks. Darlene

The strange looks are from my son's mother who wonders why I'm fooling around with dandelions when we he's only 4 weeks old. We already went through one that didn't/doesn't sleep and she's 3 1/2 now - heaven forbid that we have another.

Anyway I racked into a gallon jug last night and everything looks fine. I know what you mean about the taste and petals, I had a sniff and thought that's not a fruity smell and wasn't quite sure how I felt about it. Tasting will tell.

BTW, you just gotta love that Lalvin D-47 yeast. I filled that gallon jug right up to and into the neck of the jug. Bubbles are streaming up the sides but no foam-over. They shouldn't call that yeast low-foaming, it should be no-foaming... and the taste of whites is far superior to using the EC-1118 that wine kits come with.

Don

"Don S" wrote

That D47 is what my local shop has begun carrying and I have noticed exactly the same thing! Even running over 100 bubbles per minute out of the airlock, with virtually no empty headspace!!! (That's how I keep track, bpm, LOL!!!)

I ended up adding a bit more sugar than I wanted to that dandelion wine (SG 1.092) and the bubbles are coming out in a steady stream, probably 3 or 4 per second. As I mentioned the gallon jug is filled right into the neck where it is 1" across and the only foam is a small ring around the edge less than a 1/10" wide.

And it's not just the low/no foam, some of the best whites I've made were done with D-47. I end up keeping my EC-1118 packets from kits for stuck fermentations and some fruit wines but reach for the D-47 for everything white. Although I have now split a kit between two

Don