Bottled: Two Wines. Parsnip and Elderberry

Bottling day today for the Parsnip wine and the Elderberry wine.

The Parsnip wine is nice and clear and the Elderberry is a very dark thick red.

Ten lovely bottles of booze all ready to age a bit in the cool. Had, as you do, a quick sample of each while bottling, the parsnip wine is sweet and quite nice even at this stage, the Elderberry is superb very fruity and medium dry.

RACKED: Mutant Parsnip Wine & Elderberry Wine

Grabbed a hour from the day today to rack the Parsnip and Elderberry wines. Fermentation has slowed down on both of the wines now with just the odd bubble now and again. Racked both the wines on top of 1 tsp of bentonite mixed into 1/4 of a pint of hot water that was allowed to cool for 30 minutes.

I add this direct to the clean demijohn and then rack the wine straight on top. Both these wines will now sit in the warm for another few weeks just to make sure they have finished fermenting. Once they are a bit clearer, I'll hit them both with a campden tablet each, slosh them both back up and them move to a cool place to fully clear before getting ready to bottle them both.

RACKED: Mutant Parsnip Wine

Well the parsnip wine has been 10 days fermenting in it's bucket and as the recipe says today's the day to transfer the wine into a demijohn. So it's all been strained through a sieve into a nice clean demijohn

Fermentation has slowed down quite a lot, but I'll keep it indoors for quite a while. Haven't taken a SG reading at this stage as I tend to let the wines ferment out, then shift it to a cooler place to let it clear.

This wine will need racking again in a few weeks so I'll have a quick taste test then, not that I'm looking forward to that much as I'm not a huge fan of parsnips. But I sure the wife will like it, well she better, as there will be 4-5 bottles that will need to be drunk.. lol

Brewday: Mutant Parsnip Wine

My good lady Jane has been wanting me to make a Parsnip wine for a while now and we had been growing some parsnips down on the allotment for just that purpose. Unfortunately we have had to harvest them early as we have had some issues on the allotment we have had to deal with. Anyhow we dig them all up and they are small and rather freaky looking things indeed.

I have followed +Andy Hamilton's recipe for Parsnip wine on page 260 of his book Booze for Free. I think it is the most complicated recipe that I have done thus far, only due to the fact of the amount of pans and pots used, and making up a raisin syrup.

Anyhow it's currently cooling in a fermenting bucket, I'm not a big fan of parsnips myself but from what I have heard this wine doesn't taste to much of them, but we shall see in a few months or so.