So what did we do with all that fruit? Part 4 - Blackcurrant wine

Well now, where to begin. Serena has been on at me to write this post for ages and I have finally run out of excuses. Its not that I haven't wanted to write it - I just haven't found the time. Well my blogging laziness is another story. Way back in August we pick a whole load of fruit, from which we've made jams, jellies, vinegar and liqueurs. What Serena hasn't mentioned in her previous post was my little side project.

As I think I mentioned before, I'm very interested in drinks and have wanted to have a go at home brewing (both wine and beers) for a while. In our flat we didn't really have the space to store a load of demijohns and fermenting buckets. As soon as we moved in early August I was off down the local brew shop hatching plans like a for future concoctions.

Seeing as it was still summer, I decided to start by making some country wines instead of beers. The first was a blackcurrant wine. This used about 1.5 kg of the blackcurrants that we picked. The fruit was roughly crushed in a bucket with a potato masher, over which 4.5L of boiling water (into which 1.75 kg of sugar had been dissolved) was poured. When this had cooled to room temperature a tsp of pectic enzyme was added followed by wine yeast the next day. The must was left for 5 days before being strained into a demijohn.

It being the first time that I've done this, I was a little unsure at which point to rack the wine. After a lot of uncertainty I racked the wine after 1.5/2 months. Maybe I could have left it longer but I figured racking too much couldn't be too bad.


We have also been out picking as much fruit from the hedgerows this summer/autumn as we could. I think Serena is going to post about that soon so I will say no more, except that I also have a blackberry and elderberry wine on the go. This time I merged the recipes from three different books as I couldn't find an individual one that I liked the look of. I used 1kg of blackberries, 1kg elderberries and 1.5 kg of sugar dissolved in 4.5 L of boiling water. This wine is the most amazing purple colour. Really hope that they both turn out ok......