Homebrew Series 2 - Making Dandelion Wine - Part 2 - Fermentation

Part 2 - Straining and Racking the Wine

After about 10 days (this blog post is quite late) of initial fermentation in a large bucket, the early stage wine was ready to be transfered to a new fermenting jug. To my surprise, the blossoms, as well as most of the fruit, was floating at the top of the original bucket. I scooped out most of the blossoms, squeezing the liquid from them through a cloth steeping bag.

After most of the fruit, blossoms, and debris were scooped out, and with some help, I transferred the wine to the new jugs through a large funnel with a mesh screen. When purchasing the plastic carboy I under estimated the amount of wine that I had. Luckily, I had some extra jugs left. The jug on the left is 4 liters and the jug on the right (not full) is 1 gallon.

With airlocks in each of them, they are continuing the process of fermentation. According to the recipe, I should let this next stage of fermentation go for about 30 days. After that, I will rack the wine to new jugs (probably to a bucket temporarily) to sit for another 90 days before bottling.

I plan to keep an eye on them during the 90-day period. If the wine starts to become clear, I will rack the wine again to leave as much sediment behind as possible. The more times the wine sheds some sediment is racked, the clearer the final product will be. As you can see, the wine has a lot of time ahead of it.

The three-gallon carboy undergoing vigorous fermentation one day after it was transferred from the bucket where the initial fermentation began.

A large bubble of carbon dioxide escaping the carboy through the airlock. The staff at the homebrew store suggested the 'S' shaped 'bubble-type' airlock be used on the carboy. I used the 'three-piece' airlock on the two glass jugs.

An closeup photo of the active fermentation in the carboy. The yellow scum around the neck of the carboy is primarily pollen from the dandelion blossoms. The large amount of pollon from the flowers also stained the inside of the food grade bucket I used for the start of the fermentation. I plan to keep the bucket, but use it primarily for dandelion wine in the future.

See the other parts in this series:

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Part 1 - Beginning the Wine

Homebrew Series 2 - Making Dandelion Wine - Part 1 - Beginning the Wine

Part 1 - Beginning the Wine

On Sunday I took advantage of the beautiful weather and the copious amounts of dandelions in Bushnell Park in Hartford, Connecticut and decided to make a batch of dandelion wine. I spent about an hour and a half in the park, picking 3 gallons of dandelion blossoms (the third gallon-sized bag is not pictured here). The weather was great, the picking was easy, and people were surprisingly interested. Most of the people I talked to had either heard of or had dandelion wine, and everyone thought it was pretty cool.

After picking the dandelions, I washed them in batches and trimmed off some of the green and stems from the blossoms. Working with only petals makes the wine sweeter, but with a limited amount of time and manpower, I only trimmed the most obvious stems that I noticed. Given more time or additional help, I would've trimmed them more closely.

Added to the dandelions, the recipe (to make about 5 gallons of wine) calls for a 3 cut up oranges, 2 cut up oranges, and 1 pound of raisins.

About 4 gallons of boiling water are added to the dandelion blossoms and the fruit is added on top.

The mixture is stirred together and ready to cool overnight, while soaking. The recipe called for sugar to be added the next day.

Because so much sugar is necessary (the recipe specified by measured original gravity, but others called for anywhere between 2 and 4 pounds per gallon of water), I added between 40-50% of the sugar on the first day (all of the sugar I had). I decided that dissolving many pounds of sugar would've been too much of a hassle when the whole mixture was room temperature.

 The first day I used 4 pounds of large-granule pure cane sugar and about 2.5 pounds of brown sugar. On the second day I ladled some of the mixture into a large pot. I heated it on the stove and disolved (approximately) an additional 8 pounds of brown sugar, while the yeast primed in a small portion of the mixture. I reincorporated the portion with the added sugar, mixed it well, and added the yeast. 

The entire mixture is waiting, sealed with an airlock, as the fermentation begins. The next step, in about a week and a half, will be to strain the fruit and blossoms from the mixture.

See the other parts in this series:

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Part 2 - Fermentation

Homebrew Series 1 - Making Mead - Part 5 - Bottling and Labeling

Part 5 - Bottling and Labeling

So, after my failed attempt at racking the mead to remove the yeast from the bottom of the jug, I decided to take a different approach and bottle the mead into 12 oz. beer bottles. Starting with 8 bottles, not enough to use all the mead, I saved some to drink and a bit of waste to avoid bottling tons of yeast as well.

I used a sanitized plastic hose to siphon the mead from the jug to the bottles. I started the hose with some water which I poured into the glass seen in the picture above. This is an easy, much more sanitary, way to begin a siphon. Alternately, using a solution of no-rinse sanitizer and water to start the siphon is cleaner yet. 

As the jug started getting closer to the bottom I was careful to keep the hose hovering just above the sediment in an effort to leave as much behind as possible. These are also crucial moment. As the jug begins to empty, it is much more difficult to restart the siphon because of the vertical distance that the mead has to travel to begin a continuous flow.

After all of the bottles are filled to about mid-way through the neck, its time to cap them. This nifty contraption is used to crimp the edges of the cap on top of the bottle creating the seal.

After capping all of the bottles I decided to use some of the 'Hello my name is' name tags that I've had laying around since Halloween to label the bottles.

Once they were all done they went back to the refrigerator for future enjoyment. Now I'll just have to find out what professional mead tastes like and if my homebrew attempt at it was indeed as successful as I think it has been.

Keep an eye out for future homebrew series here at Musings on Beer. It's been quite a while since I last attempted to brew beer, so maybe I'll get a new project going soon.

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See the other parts in the series:

Part 1 - Mixing the Ingredients

Part 2 - Pitching the Yeast, Beginning Fermentation

Part 3 - Racking the Mixture
Part 4 - Final Racking

Homebrew Series 1 - Making Mead - Part 4 - Final Racking

Part 3 - Final Racking

After a few weeks of fermenting away in my refrigerator, my mead is actually mead. I originally planned to leave the finished mead in a jug, so I decided to rack the mead one more time to remove some of the yeast sediment from the mead.

 I poured the mead through the funnel again, which has a fine mesh screen in it. I had naïvely hoped that this would catch a majority of the yeast, but it didn't, what I ended up with was essentially all of the sediment mixed in with the final batch. In the future, if I decide to try to filter out yeast from mead (or beer) I might opt for several layers of cheesecloth instead of the screen.

Before shaking up all of the yeast on the last rack, I poured myself a small sample to try. Unfortunately, I don't have much to go on for comparing this mead to the professional stuff.

For now, though, I know that this honey wine is quite sweet, but not cloying. The spices that I added in the original boil come through quite clearly. The cinnamon as well as the cardamom seem to be most prevalent. There's a minor citrus note from the lemon zest and an interesting waxy honey-comb like essence near the finish. I'd say its certainly enjoyable and there's nothing about it that I see as off-putting. So, at this point I'd say my experiment in mead-making was a success. I also think any future attempts will benefit from the experience I gained this time around.

Stay tuned for one last installment of this series, where I bottle up the mead and label it.

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See the other parts in the series:
Part 1 - Mixing the Ingredients
Part 2 - Pitching the Yeast, Beginning Fermentation
Part 3 - Racking the Mixture
Part 5 - Bottling and Labeling

Homebrew Series 1 - Making Mead - Part 3 - Racking the Mixture

Homebrew Series 1 - Making Mead

Part 3 - Racking the Mixture

After the yeast has worked some of its magic in the brew pot it was time to move it to a jug to continue fermenting. To do this, I siphoned most of the liquid from the pot using a plastic hose, while making sure to leave as much yeast sediment behind as possible. Unfortunately I was unable to siphon and photograph at the same time.

To the jug I added a few cups of water (boiled and cooled) to reach the neck. Now, the jug is sealed with a rubber stopper and an airlock. The airlock is filled with a liquid (in this case vodka, but water, no-rinse sanitizer, or other similar liquids would do), which allows carbon dioxide (a by-product of fermentation) to escape the jug, without allowing air in.

For the next few days the yeast will continue to work its magic. Once the most vigorous foaming has slowed it will be time to move the jug to the refrigerator. Before then, I’ll have to make some room, I’m not sure there’s even enough space with the shelves in.

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See the other parts in the series:
Part 1 - Mixing the Ingredients
Part 2 - Pitching the Yeast, Beginning Fermentation
Part 4 - Final Racking
Part 5 - Bottling and Labeling

Homebrew Series 1 - Making Mead - Part 2 - Pitching the Yeast, Beginning Fermentation

Homebrew Series 1 - Making Mead

Part 2 - Pitching the Yeast, Beginning Fermentation

On day two, once the mixture has sufficiently cooled its time to strain the spices and add the yeast to begin fermentation. First, I added the yeast to a small bowl of warm water (about 100°F). This begins to activate the dry yeast and gets them ready to be added to the liquid. Next, I poured the mixture through a large funnel, with a screen, into one of my glass jugs.

This strained out a lot (but not all) of the sediment. A lot more will be created by the yeast.

Although it looks good in the jug, this is only an intermediate step. The liquid got added back to the pot where I next added the yeast.

After two days the yeast will have begun to make some progress. Once this is done, I’ll transfer the liquid (trying to leave as much sediment behind) to one of the glass jugs to begin the bulk of fermentation.

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See the other parts in this series:
Part 1 - Mixing the Ingredients
Part 3 - Racking the Mixture
Part 4 - Final Racking
Part 5 - Bottling and Labeling

Homebrew Series - Making Mead

Homebrew Series - Making Mead

Part 1 - Mixing the ingredients

This will be a series about my first attempt at making some homemade mead. The process overall should take between three and four weeks. Most of the time is waiting for fermentation to take place, while the first few days have the bulk of the work.

The process seems simple enough and I’ll be using a recipe posted by Elizabeth Scheyder. Mead, for those who may not be familiar with it, is a type of honey wine, often thought to be the first ever fermented beverage. The recipe includes the addition of some spices that technically make this a ‘metheglin,’ but just mead will do.

To help the flavoring process, fresh cinnamon sticks should be lightly cracked. I used a paper towel and a thick pint glass. Very high-tech.

Similarly, the whole cloves (I used four) need to be lightly cracked.

Important to the process is using cleansed utensils. I used a warm light bleach mixture, but other sanitation products could also be used. 

The spices, including lemon zest and cardamom are simmer in 2 quarts of water to add aroma.

After the water is scented an extra quart of water is added with 2 lbs of raw honey.

The mixture is combined fully, the white foam is skimmed off, and the pot is removed from the burner.

The next step is to add yeast, but the mixture needs to cool first. I left the pot overnight, but an ice bath could achieve the same result in much less time.

Tomorrow I’ll show the next steps which include straining the spices and pitching the yeast.

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See the other parts in this series:

Part 2 - Pitching the Yeast, Beginning Fermentation

Part 3 - Racking the Mixture

Part 4 - Final Racking

Part 5 - Bottling and Labeling