Quick crafting!

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

AJH89

Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2020
Messages
93
Reaction score
33
Hello fellow wineo's and/ or crafter's! If you have patience issues like me (and I know a few in this group do) name your delicious recipes that clear up quick and can taste good right off the bat! The only ones I know of are Skeeter Pee and Dragons blood. Let me hear it guys!
 
Grasshopper ... the secret to aging wine is making more than you can drink ...

I don't have specific recipes, but in general lighter wines age faster and are drinkable sooner. You can use commercial drinking juices, such as apple juice. Avoid ones with preservatives which will include sorbate.

Lower end white wine and some red wine kits also work -- avoid anything containing oak products as they require longer aging.

You're on the right track, looking to make quick drinking wines first. Do yourself a favor and put 2 bottles away from each batch and don't open them until 6 months after the last bottle from the batch is consumed. In addition, make a few that require longer aging and bulk age them longer -- it's harder to drink from the carboy than the bottle.

The decision when a wine is ready to drink is yours. If you are satisfied, no one else's opinions count.
 
Having a pipeline - in other words having many batches of wines you have made means that waiting for a wine to properly age is not an issue. If you make one batch a month for 18 months then you will be able to drink from whatever batch you want even as you continue to make more. But that said, t'ej, a traditional Ethiopian mead that uses gesho (buckthorn) to add bittering notes is made to be drunk immediately. Historically, t'ej was not made commercially but was always made at home and served at family celebrations or at religious festivals. Like ale in the late middle ages in Europe, t'ej was made by women.

A basic t'ej recipe for one gallon might be (assumes you know all about sanitation and stabilization)
2.5 - 3 lbs of honey
Spring water to make 1 gallon
4 oz of enchet (gesho twigs)
Yeast (your choice)
A bucket as the primary (removing gesho from a carboy is a PITA)

Mix honey and water. (I use a blender to incorporate air into the must).
Add gesho
Traditionally, the gesho sits in the must 3 days and then is removed with some of the must which is then boiled and returned to fermenter when cooled ( think hops in brewing where the boil time might be around 10 minutes to extract flavor rather than the acids from the hops)
Pitch yeast (Traditionally, fermentation was caused by yeasts in the honey and yeast and bacteria in the gesho but you will have a more controlled fermentation if you use lab cultured yeast).
Allow gesho to sit in t'ej 2 weeks and then remove
Rack t'ej to secondary and allow to clear.
Traditionally turmeric may be added to the t'ej to make this a very bold golden color.
You may want to stabilize and back sweeten
 
Hey Bernard pretty interesting recipe. I'm friends with a group that have all adopted children from Ethiopia. It would be fun to make this for them. Do you think I could use our local Buckthorn which is one of the worst invasive weeds around or should I try and find the actual Ethiopian twigs.

Thanks for posting this.

Mark
 
Thanks, Mark. Great question. I honestly have no idea about the relationship between Buckthorn in the US and Ethiopian Buckthorn. I do know that you can get gesho twigs (enchet) and leaves, known as kitel, online.
 
I searched on "buckthorn" -- according to Wikipedia there are 110 species that grow in diverse areas. Interestingly enough, there are deciduous (drop leaves) AND evergreen species.

It's probably best to identify the US species that's available and determine if it's safe to use and if it produces the desired result. If it were me, I'd follow Bernard's advice and get the right materials.
 
The alternative is to "bitter" your mead with hops. Won't be a t'ej but it will be analogous to one. AND what fascinates me is that hopped meads are neither new nor "American". I have seen references to adding hops to mead in historical Eastern European cook books (Cook books - not wine making books).
 

Latest posts

Back
Top