what has been the strangest wine you have successfully made?

Jalapeno Mead. It is incredible. About a dozen good jalapenos minus the stems chopped coarse, 12 pounds of honey to around 5 gallons of water with a little citric acid or lemon juice added. Not too hot, not mild. SG of ~ 1.085.

I was going to make some into vinegar but won't spare it this time, it's too good as a mead.

Never used molasses in wine but have heard of it in beer.

Joe

Jack Keller's Jalapeno wine It was HOT but drinkable. I put it in chili, spaghetti and marinade chicken with it... I lost the recipe and it is not on Jake's site. He lost a lot of recipes. I think I could make it again though.

Sea Yawl, John Mc

Purple Passion

9 frozen concentrated Welch's Red Grape juice 10 lbs honey 1 squeezed lemon 1 tsp yeast nutrients Belgian Ale yeast water to 6 gallons

It tasted like grape juice, but had an alcohol by volume of 12.5% It has a hell of a kick, but tastes smooth. The women love it! Totally drinkable!!!

John Mc

Fermenting straight molasses and water is drinkable only if distilled into rum.

A tbsp of molasses in a 5 gallon batch will add color and a nice taste.

Gatoraid?

Dick

Or you could just cut up a couple jalapeno peppers, put it in some white wine and wait until the hotness was to your liking. It works; I have done it.

I made a Wild Dewberry wine back in 1998. 10 gallons with about 7 lbs per gallon. My wife did a lot of picking to get me those berries. Got it to bulk aging and then put it back and forgot about it. We had to move and it got put in a place that was not convenient and I forgot about it. The airlocks dried out and it oxidized. I was so p*##@d with myself that I left it there. For years I left it there. Finally, a couple of years ago the wife was going to be gone and I decided to dump it when she wasn't around. Just on the edge of the sink I realized that this was my chance to taste some really badly oxidized wine. I tried it. It tasted like sherry. I fortified it and slightly sweetened it and it came out real nice. The wife loves it.

Just proves ... well I am not sure what it proves but it is an interesting experience. I named it "Wrong Turn Sherry". It is still mellowing and an open bottle can be kept around for months.

Ray

I made Sumac wine in 2003 . After 2 years of aging it's like a sherry . It measures around 18% , is citrus flavoured , a light orange colour .

My other strange one is a Maple Syrup dessert wine. It took 4 months to kill off the yeast , is straw coloured and after a year of aging it has smoothed it's flavour . Really nice . Other than being great to sip on it's also great,,on ice cream!

My very first wine (Zinfandel) was pretty darn strange. It still scares me every time I open a bottle!

Charles

Maple mead -- Reminds me of the maple based stuff in Lois McMasters Bujold's "A Civil Campaign". I am planning to make a maple based product, and generally like strongly flavored musts, but fear that the strong flavors will make me miss that expensive maple syrup.

Gatoraid -- not a real success, but except for the high salt content, most ingrediants would work. I fermented (super small batch) a juice wine with a touch of gatoraid. Presently it needs more time and sugar. I was also trying a pressurized fermentation system, and I am not sure that that worked. This was more of a fun 'what will happen' experience than an controlled experiment in a scientific manner.

I do know about holding only one variable constant in an investigation, and may take the same juice and use several different sugars on it. I am not sure I have the capacity to work this on the scale that I like, but standard sugar, maple syrup, and honey would be a good check. Would also like to include corn syrup, but do not want the trouble of tracking it down when the other syrups are easily found.

Sean

Details, please?

And has anyone used vanilla as an ingrediant? It is used everywhere else? And if so, from the beans or from a vanilla flavoring agent?

Sean

I saw a recipe for Vanilla wine but they didn't use any vanilla in it..they used woodruff. I suppose it smells like vanilla? The recipe was in First Steps in Winemaking I think.

Maple mead . The maple wine I made was not mead.

For some reason it appears making wine is terribly complicated, or so it seems .

Keeping it simple , I bought Grade A maple syrup . I just couldn't find any grade B , which apparently has a stronger flavour. I have a 6 quart carboy, I suppose a glass gallon jug would work.

For every oz of syrup I added an oz of water to the pot . Was easy , I just measured the water in the empty maple syrup tins. I then brought it up to where it was just steaming , not boiling , for about 5 minutes. I let it cool a bit , added some nutrient and put it in my jug . In a separate container (about a pint ) I started the yeast when it had cooled to 90-100 degrees F. Maple syrup is high in malic so I used Laven 71B . Once the yeast was going , after about 20 minutes , I dumped it in the jug and then cast more yeast on top. Then air locked it . I did not use any campden , just heat. There was an internal heat that kept the yeast warm for hours as the whole thing cooled off .

A mixture was a dark brown colour , but a straw coloured layer started at the top and for days it slowly moved downward . A very distinct line separated the two colours. I kept it at 70 F , racked it at 30 days and after another 80-90 days all yeast activity stopped . I racked and waited another month before bottling it.

Anyone who tries it , this is a sipping wine and I don't say what it is until they ask , think it's a liqueur . It is sweet, a light straw colour and it has a maple flavour. The total cost was under $30 for 5 quarts of finished wine.

Try it but save some for at least a year. It changes a lot.

I've used vanilla in mead but nothing else. It was an experiment and it's still not finished. I gave it a quick sample after the second racking and the vanilla is present but not overwhelming. I used 3 ~6 inch beans in 5 gallons of mead. That was with the insides cut open and the whole mess thrown in the carboy during secondary fermentation (3 weeks).

Then again, that's mead . . .

Real vanilla is pretty strong stuff so I wouldn't expect to use a ton of it and make wine from it. It would also cost a fortune. Why not making saffron wine while you're at it? ;)

Never Used Gator-aid. I would think that it would have preservatives in in making it unfermentable.I have how ever made onion wine. It is a wonderful marinade for any meat dish. The recipe is in The Winemakers Recipe Handbook by Massaccesi.

Or brewed into beer, as in the George Washington recipe. It comes out thin and a bit bitter, but it's drinkable as a summer beer.

It will indeed. Some texture too, I think.

:-*

AP