Gallon of wine for £2.03

Patrick20

I've just started my very first wine batch today. Bought a small fermenting kit on ebay and if all goes well I shall be taking advantage of all the natural resources the woodland around this little village has to offer.

My first batch is a gallon of....wait for it....Tea Wine. If you think booze from Aldi and Lidl are cheap for all the ingredients this recipe works out to be £2.03 a gallon.

The kit was only £20 as well and included two 5 litre fermentation vessel with lids, two air locks, hydrometer, thermometer, spoon, siphon, and sterilliser. Well worth it.

Next on the menu is Plum Wine (fresh plums from my plum tree), rosehip wine, and blackberry wine.

N9eav

Nice one. I used to do a lot and it's great fun. The down side is waiting for the wine to mature. Parsnip for example takes 2 years before you can drink it for best flavour. I would suggest strawberry if you can source cheap berries. It matures in six months and always tastes great. In the winter when you have nothing to pick, cheap tinned peaches can make a nice wine.
Make sure you sterilise everything and 'rack' off the wines regularly as the dead yeast will make it taste a bit musty otherwise.

[Deleted User]

My late ma-in-law used to make tea wine and it was delicious, she also made a mean sloe gin that would rock your socks off using her sloes from the garden.

N9eav

I am almost inspired to make some myself. I have 20lbs of blackberries I picked last year still in the freezer. Just need some fresh yeast and some sterilising powder and away I go.... Pottering day today, so I might just get it done.

GooeyBlob

Orange wine is very good, using 1 litre of value orange juice from concentrate and 1 kilo of sugar per gallon. My local Instore sells sugar for 69p per bag, and Farmfoods are doing 2 litres of orange juice for £1.

N9eav

I did it. I cleaned up my stuff and put on 5 gallons of blackberry.

otterspasm

My first batch is a gallon of....wait for it....Tea Wine. If you think booze from Aldi and Lidl are cheap for all the ingredients this recipe works out to be £2.03 a gallon.

Hi Patrick20,
I'd love to have you recipe for tea wine if you wouldn't mind posting it. It sounds fab and I think I probably have everything in to make it.

In the winter when you have nothing to pick, cheap tinned peaches can make a nice wine.

Hi N9eav,
Could I have your recipe for tinned peach wine too please?

You are all inspiring me to make some vino collapso :-)!

Good luck with all of the wine you are making. Hope its delish.
Tess

champys

Patrick20 wrote: »

Next on the menu is Plum Wine (fresh plums from my plum tree), rosehip wine, and blackberry wine.

Patrick20 - once you come to make the plum wine, could you let me know how you do it? We have plum trees too and every year we say wouldn't it be great to make plum wine with the glut, but we never quite know where to start.

Plum season is way off yet, but please do keep us posted! Many thanks.

Patrick20

I didnt expect so many replies at once.

N9eav - Great glad this inspired you to get one going. I would like to hear about how it goes. Blackberries are great and theres plenty of sources from my area.

JackieO - Thanks, everyone i've spoken to havent been keen on trying tea wine, i'm happy to hear that it tastes nice.

Gooeyblob - I'd like to try an Orange Wine, but I don't know about doing it from concentrate. I'm mainly focusing on Wild wines or Weird Wines. If the tea wine is successful I'm going to brew different batches with different tea bags and a few additions to compare the flavours. And as for wild wines I'm trying everything that grows around my area. I might even try nettle wine.

Otterspasm - Yes, I'll post it, but I would rather wait till its a proven recipe. Remember this is my first wine so theres a good chance it wont work. Thats the main reason I decided to post about it. If it goes wrong I dont want to say i've failed so it'll push me to try again to get it right.

Champys - Yes i'd love to. In fact, It would be great if we could both do it at the same time and see how each others turns out.

Nitha

I loved doing the lidl grape juice wine. Also enjoyed Tesco Value apple juice wine! I don't home brew at the moment as I've no place to hide it from my 1YO DS! Can't wait to move to a place with a garage to brew again!

Whistling_Gypsy

Hi - thought I'd share the teabag wine recipe I use (probably from another thread on this forum) whilst we are waiting for Patrick20's to ferment:rolleyes:! Loads of teabag wine recipes around - but I've used this one sucessfully...:rotfl::rotfl:

8 x fruit teabags of choice, 1kg sugar, 1 teaspoon yeast, 1 teaspoon nutrient, 2tsps lemon juice.

Pour boiling water onto teabags and sugar in a large jug and leave until lukewarm. Discard bags and pour liquid into a demijohn. Top up with water to the 'shoulder' of the demijohn. Add yeast and nutrient. Fit a suitable airlock - and away you go!

I've made this a few time with various tea-bags (including builders tea and Earl Grey) - but the red-fruit bags ones always produce the nicest looking wine though! Supposedly around 10%abv, and should be ready in three weeks - though does get better if you can leave it longer to mature slightly:D

I've been collecting the ingredients for Atomic Lemon wine and Lychee wine to add to my collection of carrot, apple, tinned peach, tinned pineapple, rice & raisin, potato & barley, mixed berry...... my new hobby and I just love it:j:j And its very much in the spirit of MSE - teabag wine is one of the most economical too!!:p Can't wait to go foraging in the summer months for potential (free) wine ingredients:D

The demijohns bubbling away and the change in the wine as it ferments out.....like magic!! I have been lucky so far and not produced anything undrinkable (touch wood!) in 8 months of brewing.

The hardest bit is leaving it to mature so I try and alternate a 2 - 3 month wine with one that needs to be left for a year or more.;)

Hope this helps for now - there have been a couple of threads about wine making/brewing but I'm bit of a Luddite and can't do links.

N9eav - would you be so kind as to share your Blackberry and your Strawberry Wine recipes - hoping to gather many pounds of these later in the year!!

Nitha - have recipes for fruit juice wine - but would love to hear what you did with the TV apple juice - cos thats what I'm going to be using when I have a demijohn free!!