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......

So what did we do with all that fruit? Part 2 Fruit flavoured vodkas

In August we picked a whole lot of berries from a PYO. The main reason for this was that I wanted to make some jams. But we picked ALOT of fruit. So we had lots leftover for other uses. So we made some flavoured vodkas. We have made strawberry, raspberry and blackcurrant vodkas. The recipes for the raspberry and strawberry vodka were based on recipes from the Cottage Smallholder Blog. For the blackcurrant vodka I used 500g of blackcurrants, 250g sugar and 1 litre of vodka. These were started in August and I think I might strain the fruit in November, so they would have 3 months of steeping.

Its quite funny to think that as part of my PhD I have been extracting fruits (mainly apples) for analysis and at home I am using that same principles at home!

We have made both raspberry and blackcurrant vodka before. The blackcurrant was our favourite before we made the rhubarb vodka, which is now my favourite. The raspberry was a little bitter but I think this was because we added lemon peel which still had some pith attached. Strawberry is new for us.

We had a few people over to the flat for a celebration of the theses being submitted and I have to say that the rhubarb vodka was well received. We will definitely be making more next year.

Happy Birthday Em!

Today is my sister's birthday. For part of her birthday present I made her some skittle vodka. I remembered her telling me about it ages ago and wanted to make some for her birthday. It was so easy, I added 4 packets of skittles (minus the green ones, they make it go a funny colour) to 500 ml of vodka.

The skittles dissolve in the vodka in a couple of days. Then all you do is filter it. I'll let you know what she thinks.

Whilst researching how to go about making this vodka I came across this website by some students at Warwick Uni, who clearly have too much time on their hands!

Pizza

Andrew usually makes the pizzas, apparently he's better at it than me! So after reading We Are Never Full's post about pizza, I had a craving for a decent pizza. Let's face the pizza's you usually get in a restaurant are over-priced and not that great!

We had some fennel salami and olives in the fridge so it seemed like a good topping. Andrew made the bases and sauce whilst I was still at work.


The pizza was great and we have another one for lunch. Yum, yum and it makes a change from soup and a roll.


Andrew used to make pizzas a lot when we at uni, so he is much better at it than me.

I started to filter the lemon and lime vodka last night. So all I have to do is add a sugar syrup. I'll put photos up later and let you know how it tastes!

A wee tipple before bedtime

If anyone starts reading this blog regularly I'm sure they will start to realise that I really like drinks. I don't have a problem, I just really like the feeling of sitting down with you mates and sharing a nice drink and chat. It does have to be alcoholic - there is after all nothing like a good cup of tea...

Anyway, I've gone slightly off track. At the farmers market at the weekend we finally found some British rhubarb on sale (we couldn't believe when our local grocer seemed only to stocked rhubarb from Holland! I thought that Britain had the rhubarb triangle?). We bought the rhubarb to make some liquor, so last night I start the process off. I used a recipe from a book I bought last year called The Alaskan Bootleggers Bible. This is a great book showing how to make all sorts of home brews - I really want to have a go at making cider, but not having an apple tree or the room for a press makes it something for the future. Luckily liquor require little or no space and equipment.

So I chopped up around four stalks of rhubarb and mixed it with a equal volume of sugar and slightly more vodka. This is going to left to steep for about 4 weeks, being shaken everyday. It will then be filtered and left to mature for another 4 weeks. So I'll let you know in June what its like.

Don't worry its not really blue - thats just the bottle!! Its really a pleasant pink colour.

In the need of something comforting

The weather in Glasgow on Tuesday was awful. The normal for Glasgow really, wet and windy. As I was looking out of the window in the office at Uni, I decided I needed something comforting. So whilst on the way home, I bought some honey and mustard ham from Kember and Jones. Andrew was home before me so he started making some potato wedges. Yep, we had ham, egg and chips (well wedges). This dish reminds of the leftovers at Christmas. But it was just what was needed after a busy day.



I also started a batch of lime and lemon vodka, used this recipe from guntheranderson.com. It just uses the zest of 2 limes and 2 lemons, so I need to think of something to use the juice of the fruit. It should only take two weeks. We will taste it after 2 weeks and decide whether it will need some more time. Everytime I am in the kitchen I give it a good shake.




Wednesdays battle with thesis went much better this week. I started the 2nd chapter, as I needed to run a couple more samples before the 1st chapter is finished. In our veg box this week:

• Cauliflower
• Spring Cabbage
• Celeriac
• Swede
• Parsnips
• Potatoes
• Onions
• Carrots

I made soup from the vegbox recipes website for the rest of the week. Dinner was a ham and pea frittata after the boys getting back from climbing.