How to Make Dandelion Wine

hello and welcome to gapy's grub this is a video that's been in the making for an entire year i'll take you through the entire process of how i made my dandelion wine from harvesting the dandelions all the way to tasting the finished product i hope you enjoy [Music] did you know that all parts of the dandelion are edible from the roots to the flower the roots actually taste a little bit nutty and bitter and it's used a lot for teas while the leaves are extremely bitter and not my favorite part but people do enjoy eating those in salads and frying them up in a stir fry but today we're going to be using the flower petals which have actually 115 times the polyphenols of the roots so it is one of the most nutritious portions of the dandelion and it tastes a lot like honey because it is loaded with nectar bees really enjoy dandelion because they make some delicious honey out of it if you know somebody that's got a property that's loaded with dandelions like our neighbors take advantage of that just be sure to ask them for permission first i'm sure they wouldn't mind at all you want to harvest the dandelion blossoms when they're still young and bright yellow and the best time of day to harvest is in the morning once the flowers have opened so i did my harvesting around 10 o'clock in the morning and it took about a half an hour to an hour to harvest the flowers and then another couple hours after that to remove the petals from the stem i ended up harvesting about half a gallon of flower petals for this recipe which makes about 1.5 gallons of dandelion wine you don't want to use any of the green part of the flour because that is going to give it a more bitter taste today i'm going to be showing you how to make a dandelion wine from start to finish [Music] i want to take a moment to tell you that it's really important that you sanitize everything that your ferment comes in contact with from this point forward that means the bucket that you're fermenting in any testing equipment you're using any tubing any spatulas any basters everything you don't want to risk contaminating your ferment with some bad bacteria [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] all right it's been about a month since we started our batch of wine and i need to admit something so when i started this i wanted to make it as simple as possible possible with as few ingredients as possible so that everyone can make this pretty easily and unfortunately i discovered that the fermentation stopped pretty early on in the process so i took some gravity readings for the first several days and it went down a little bit but it didn't go down as far as it should have and it was still very very sweet a lot of sugar content which is not a good thing so i waited a few more days and the gravity reading did not change at all so there's a few things that can happen if your fermentation stalls so one of those things is the ph level and i've had that happen before where the ph was not in an ideal range and the fermentation stalled so the first thing i did was check the ph and the ph was totally fine so i knew that wasn't a problem another problem might be your yeast has gone bad but i had just used this yeast on a the same packet i used half of that yeast on another batch and there was no problem with that batch so i was pretty sure the yeast wasn't a problem and then the only other thing that i did differently this time was i didn't add a yeast nutrient so i know a lot of people make wines and meads without yeast nutrients so i wanted to do that as well even though that's not something i normally do but i just wanted to try it to show people that you don't really need one but that was a mistake so i went ahead and added a yeast nutrient and all of a sudden the fermentation kicked back up and things were back to normal so that is one thing i highly recommend you get is a yeast nutrient because it's not always going to work without one and i've got a couple of different ones to show you this one here is by ld carlson so this one is a it's got food grade urea and diamonium phosphate and you just add one teaspoons of this to a gallon of wine or mead and this one is not organic so i don't particularly like using this one but this one came with a wine making kit that i got when i first started making mead so that is one option and then the other option i've been using for a while now is called fermaid o and this one is organic it has well it says it has organic sources of nitrogen and it says it does not contain dap so dap is that diamonium phosphate that the other one has so apparently that's not an organic substance so i do prefer like using this one however this tends to get really gummy after a while so i don't know if you can see that in the package but it gets pretty it's almost like gum in there but when i first bought it it was a nice loose powder so when it's in a nice loose powder it's really easy to mix into your wine but when it becomes this gummy texture it's really really hard to dissolve so that is one problem i have with with this one so for this particular batch i did go ahead and use this non-organic one it was just really easy to add and it dissolves really easily so i just added about a teaspoon of this to the batch and after i added that the fermentation kicked back up and everything was fine so we are back on track and we're going to go ahead and take another reading and hopefully we're close to the final gravity reading and we can go ahead and get that wrapped off of the yeast and onto a glass carboy so we're looking at right around 1.006 which is actually very good so we are definitely about at our final gravity reading so i'm going to go ahead and get this transferred into a glass carboy so here we have what's called a racking cane so this is kind of like a siphon or is a siphon that we use to move our wine from our fermentation bucket into our glass carboy and i've also got this little red thing here attached to it and this is an optional add-on that i just got last year but this attaches to your carboy so that keeps this in place so it doesn't slip out i've made quite a bit of a mess in the past before i got one of these so if you have another person that could help hold it or you could get one of these or prepare to make a mess so we're going to go ahead and get this racked so we need our bucket here in a higher position and then our glass carboy is on the floor and i did sanitize everything i sanitized the tubing as well as the racking cane here so i'm just going to put this in our bucket and then i move this wand in and out and that will get it flowing [Music] and then once it starts flowing just let it go [Music] all right looks like that is all of it so you will have a little bit left behind which is fine you don't want the the yucky stuff on the bottom so we got almost a full half gallon there so the next step is the easiest part and that is just to letting this age so now that they're in these containers you can see that it's a little bit cloudy and that is going to be normal so after we let this age for about a month or two we'll notice these start to clear up and we'll see more of that dead yeast sitting on the bottom after a few months and we'll want to do another racking at that point just to get rid of that stuff on the bottom that we don't want so we're going to go ahead and add these fermentation airlocks to the top so we've got this one here and then we also need one for our half gallon container now i got these fermentation lids on amazon that i use for fermentation or fermenting vegetables and this works perfect for wine and meat as well so they use the same type of airlocks on top just the different lids here alright so now i'm going to do since these are going to be aging for so long i like to use vodka to fill these up and that keeps it nice and clean and no mold forms on those if you add just regular water you could get mold in these airlocks after they've been sitting for so long you can use any old cheap vodka i'm using tito's that i got from a local grocery store so you don't need to fill these up all the way you want to fill them up about halfway you just want to check these every so often because they will evaporate a little bit so you just want to add a little bit more as the level goes down so now i'm just going to move these to a kind of a cool location you don't want these getting too hot and you definitely don't want these indirect sun so i'm going to move these to our laundry room which usually stays pretty nice and cool i have just enough room on my mead shelf to put one more batch i like to use a chalk marker to mark what they are so this one is our dandelion so i'm just going to put dandy on these and the other three batches i have aging here is a traditional mead made with maple honey and then i've got a raspberry mead and then this one is a plum wine and these three have been aging for almost a year well these two are a year and then this one is a little bit newer that i started this spring all right so we're just going to let this age for a little while and we'll check back when the wine clears up and we'll do our first racking to get off of the sediment that's on the bottom so that should take a month or two all right here is the current state of our fermentation shelf here's our dandelion wine we've got some traditional maple mead and then we've got some bottled blackberry or black cap raspberry mead and then this one here is a plum wine so going back to our dandelion wine here this has been aging for several months there is a bit of a layer of dead yeast on the bottom so we want to get that racked off you can see it's actually cleared up pretty nicely you can see through through the bottle which is what you want to see so let's go ahead and get that racked and off of the it's called lease that dead yeast that's at the bottom you can see that in both jars you don't want to leave it in there for too long because that dead yeast could give some off flavors to your wine or mead we're looking at right about 1.004 so that means there is a little bit of residual sugar in there which is it's not too bad if we're at 1.0 that is considered pretty dry so normally most of my meads and wines are pretty close to 1.0 this might be the sweetest one i've had 1.004 isn't super sweet so i'm interested to see how this one tastes so let's go ahead and give it a try before we do our racking it's got a nice smell to it i can definitely taste the sweetness it has a really good flavor i could probably go ahead and bottle this today but i think i'm gonna go ahead and rack it and leave it to age a little bit longer in these larger containers really happy with how that turned out so far let's see what a little more aging will do so now we're going to put this in very gently trying not to disturb the bottom and we'll start drawing up the wine once you hear it start going into the jar then you can stop and it'll just go in by itself now these do have a little rubber thing on the bottom so you can actually gently put it on the bottom and it won't suck up any of that stuff on the bottom so it should only take a couple minutes to fill up [Music] once we get to about an inch from the bottom i'm going to start tilting it very gently so that we can get as much of that in there as possible without disturbing the bottom and once i see it starting to suck up stuff then i'll stop and pull it out so we do leave a little bit behind which is okay we got all the good stuff and we'll let this rest for another couple months now you definitely don't need to do this for as long as i have this is more out of i don't know laziness i guess but i like to do my ferments for a long time aging the main reason i like to bulk ferment my meads and wines for so long is because i don't want to have any chance of bottles exploding i've heard a lot of horror stories where people have bottled their meads or wines early and they didn't do anything to stop the fermentation so they had their bottles explode so there's a few different ways to avoid bottle explosions one is to just ferment for a really long time so i like to go eight months to a year and you definitely don't need to do that that long but if you don't want to have bottles explode without doing any additional measures that might be your your best option and that's just what i go with another option is to pasteurize your mead or wine and then the other option is to add chemicals so there's two chemicals that you would need to add to stop the fermentation and that is potassium sorbate and metabisulfite and you really need both of those ingredients to help the fermentation and i prefer not to add any anything like that to my wines and meads because that could give some off flavors and it's probably not the healthiest thing to be drinking i like to do it as naturally as possible and go the long fermentation route but it's really up to you there's a lot of different ways you can do it so let's go ahead and put these back on the shelf to ferment for a few more months [Music] and with the magic of video it's now a year later it's been a whole year since we started our dandelion wine we've actually got a few more things here on our aging shelf so here's our dandelion wine here and then we've also got a quince mead that i started in i think november of last year and then we've also got a traditional maple honey mead that is also a year old so i need to get that bottled up here pretty soon so let's go ahead and get this bottled now there's a few supplies that we're going to be using to fill our bottles to make it a little bit easier we've got our tube here and we've got a siphon on one end and on the other end we have a bottle filler that has a stopper on the bottom so this is used you stick this in the bottle and that little stopper will stop the wine from flowing when you pick it up and when you push it down the wine comes out so that makes it a lot easier to fill and then we've got our bottles down here so we're going to be using bordeaux bottles and we have number eight corks that we're going to be corking with and we have already sanitized all of this equipment we're using the bottles and all of the tubing the siphon as well as the wine filler now there is a little bit of lease at the bottom not very much but we want to be careful not to stir that up when we're filling our bottles [Music] it's a little bit easier to do with two people but you can do it with one so we're just pushing down on the bottle filler to let the wine flow and when it's filled up enough then we're just going to lift it up and that's going to stop the flow of wine and we want to fill it to just above the the narrow part of the neck and when we lift that out it's going to lower the the wine level quite a bit so i usually like to kind of press it up against the neck of the bottle to add just a little bit more to the bottle and that should be good on to the next one and when we start getting close to the bottom of the carboy i'm just going to tilt it back a little bit so that we can get every last drop that we can without stirring up the lease on the bottom all right looks like that's going to do it there is a little bit left on the bottom but that is just fine here are our corks and they are in a sealed bag now you want to use these when they're dry i know some people say to sanitize them or boil them and i have actually tried that my first time bottling but i learned my lesson um if you get these soaking wet they're not going to stay in the bottle they're just going to slip right out and there's a lot of debate on the different forums on whether or not to sanitize them but when you're buying these they should come already sanitized and as long as you leave them in a sealed bag like this they should be just fine and also people say if you soak them or get them wet it will also make the corks deteriorate faster so from now on i have not been soaking or sanitizing my quirks all right so we're going to be using a floor corking machine so this is really really easy to use there is also some hand corkers but those are a lot more difficult to use and they usually leave a big dent on the top of your cork whereas with the floor corker it does not this is actually kind of fun [Music] all right we're all done now let's go have a taste all right the wait is finally over it's time to take a taste so when we started this it was a 1.118 gravity and it ended at 1.002 so that means the alcohol content is up to fifteen point twenty three percent so it's not a weak wine and it since it ended at 1.002 there should be a little bit of sweetness in there normally most of my wines and meads go all the way down to 1.0 so they're very dry so this one will be a little bit sweeter than the wines i normally make and this is the first time i've i've made this dandelion wine so i'm looking forward to trying it it is definitely sweeter than my normal wines which i just mentioned but i'm surprised how much sweeter it is even though it's only 1.002 it is very good i'm really enjoying this i mean it's not bitter at all normally when you think of dandelions you think of bitterness but the leaves of the dandelion are very bitter but the blossoms are not bitter at all so this is actually really really good i would definitely make this again really good so hopefully if you have a lot of dandelions in your yard or know of a place that has a lot definitely give this a try it's delicious if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe you can also find me on instagram twitter and facebook

Channel: Gapeys Grub

Views: 55,785

Keywords: gapeys grub, gapeys garden, dandelion, dandelion flowers, wine making, dandelion wine, making wine, how to make wine, how to make dandelion wine, dandelion benefits, polyphenols, fermentation, fermenting, dandelion wine recipe, wine recipe, dandelions, removing petals from dandelion, harvesting dandelion, when to harvest dandelion, bottling wine, fermenting wine, racking wine, testing wine, wine gravity, hydrometer, sanitizing, Star San

Id: 4Tg54sEYeSU

Length: 25min 39sec (1539 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022