Dandelion wine recipe – oh, so sunny!

Good morning,

Today I’d like to challenge you to make dandelion wine.

To be honest it sounded kinda weird for me, but it was one of this recipes which just stay in your head and don’t want to leave it!

So, one sunny day I decided to try it – and as you can see, the effect (visual effect at least) is just stunning!

It has so nice, deep yellow color, delicate flovery and citrus scent – thanks to addition of lemons from Sicily and juicy oranges. Additional depth of flavour is added thanks to raisins.

I made this wine using wine yeasts which you can easily buy in your food market (at least in Poland) – the only drawback is that you have to wait at least 3 months (preferably 1 year) to try your mixture.

But, if you feel courageus, give it a try!

Here you can see a short movie, where I collect dandelions with my little sister. Well, the movie is in Polish so you won’t be able to understand it anyway, but, well, you can still see my Grandparent’s meadow.

If you want to prepare this mixture be warned – patience is a virtue and you need to wait!

The recipe itself is  quite straightforward, but you need at least six days to finish it – but don’t worry! If you plan the work ahead everything will go smoothly :-)

Making dandelion wine – my tips.

• making dandelion wine is not very labour-consuming, but you need to plan ahead – you will need 6 days. You can launch it in one weekend and finish in the next
• before harvesting dandelions make sure that the field where you gather it pesticide-free and far away from major routes. You just need clean and healthy flowers:)
• one hint about fermenting – this recipe is adapted from Jekka McViccar book, Cooking with herbs. She advices to ferment it in bottles – I trust her, but you can as well keep it in a demijohn for about 5 months and after yeasts stop working, pour it to bottles.
• it is extremely important to harvest flowers in a sunny day, when flowers are open and full of pollen. This way the colour will be yellow and clean.
• although   original recipie doesn’t call for demi-john (fermentation is taking place in bottles) I would recommend using one and bottle wine after fermentation is complete. It didn’t happen to me, but I know that bottles tends to crack when fermentation goes wild.

That’s all you need to know: here is your recipe!

Dandelion wine recipe

recipe adapted from: Cooking with Flowers

Ingredients

(for around 1 gallon, 3.5 litre)

•      3 liters of whole heads of dandelion – you will need only petals from them.
•      4.5 liters of hot water
•      1.2 – 1.5 kilograms of sugar
•      2 lemons, carefully washed (preferably eco)
•      2 oranges , carefully washed (preferably eco)
•      1 teaspoon of wine yeast
•      1 teaspoon of wine nutrient
•      300 g of raisins

You will also need:

a larger container  about 5 liters capacity, with a lid (I had a demijohn , but it may be, for example plastic container),a  strainer, clean bottles, buttercloth or muslin

Making dandelion wine – step by step

Making dandelion wine. Step by step.

Day 1.

Harvest dandelions heads – you  should do it in warm, sunny day, when flowers are open and full of pollen hence the wine will have so nice colour.  You only will need petals – the easiest way to get them is to use scissor (see: tips above). Put petals in a pot, pour 3 litres of hot water into the pot, cover pot with a cloth and put it in a cool place.

Day 2.

You do nothing. You can gently stir petals once of two a day. The mixture will have a specific scent of dandelions – don’t worry!

Day 3.

In the evening we can prepare the wine to ferment {you can do it in the fourth day morning if this is more comfortable for you}. Take a pot with thick bottom, put into it petals and water mixture. Add 1.5 litres of water (more or less). Add the zest grated from lemons and oranges, lemon juice and orange flesh.  Add all the sugar and prepare sugar syrup – it is easy: just warm the pot carefully over  low heat and stirring the mixture from time to time wait until sugar is melted. Put aside to cool.

The mixture will be very sweet but don’t worry – after the fermentatnion it will lose it’s sweetness and density – just let nature do all the  magic!

Add  a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and wine yeasts to the mixture – you can also prepare yeasts according to manufaturer instructions. Mix thoroughly.

We add the teaspoon of yeast nutrient and wine (or previously prepared yeast, according to the manual), mix thoroughly.

Move all  the mixture into a cointainer or to a demijohn – there the wine will mature. Important thing is, that the pot can’t be made from alluminium – it will react with the mixture and spoil our precious wine.

I just poured the wine to the demijohn:

Day 4.

Yeasts work for us. We do nothing.

Day 5.

We do nothing, again. Easy-peasy, neh?

Day  6 or 7.

We pour the mixture into sterilised bottles. The syroup is less dense, you should see air bubbles on the surface, it will smell with yeasts.

Prepare bottles. Lay the strainer with a muslin or cheesecloth (I just buy it in a pharmacy – I’m not sure where it is aviable in your country). Strain the mixture into a large and clean container.

Distribute raisins equally into the bottles. Now, using a funnel, carefully pour the mixture into separate bottles.

We put bottles with wine into some cosy, dark and cool place to mature  – we leafe it preferably up to 12 months, but friend of mine claims that the wine is excellent after 3 months – well, you can try it!
Straining dandelion petals:

Day 8 – 180

We enjoy that we did such a great job and wait for a degustation!

ps. there is a music which accompanied me while writing this post. Hope you will enjoy it as I did!