spinnychick
Junior
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
- Messages
- 26
- Reaction score
- 0
I'm going to be honest. Dandelions are what convinced me to finally start making wine. This spring my backyard was probably visible from the space station as a yellow dot, there were so many, and since I have always heard about how wonderful dandelion wine is, I picked a bunch and cleaned them, then froze them while I made a couple of practice batches of a gallon of berry wine and a batch of skeeter pee. Dandelions may be free, but they're only available once a year and its a lot of sticky work to de-green them, so I didn't want to screw it up too badly.
If anybody had told me about the smell, I might not have been able to wait. HOLY COW!!!
I used one of Jack Keller's recipes - the one without raisins. When I started the must, it smelled like dandelions and orange peel. Its been burbling away in a corner for about a week, and today I cleaned the dust off the bottle and took off the airlock to clean it and change the water. Of course I took a whiff, expecting to smell yeast and dandelions and orange peel, or possibly the latex smell a few people have mentioned.
Wrong!
It smells like sunshine and happiness! Is that what its' going to taste like too? If it tastes half as good as it smells, then next year it'll definitely be at least a 5 gallon batch. Is it better dry, or a little on the sweet side? How long do you usually let it bulk age after its done fermenting?
Vikki (who is way too excited over this)
If anybody had told me about the smell, I might not have been able to wait. HOLY COW!!!
I used one of Jack Keller's recipes - the one without raisins. When I started the must, it smelled like dandelions and orange peel. Its been burbling away in a corner for about a week, and today I cleaned the dust off the bottle and took off the airlock to clean it and change the water. Of course I took a whiff, expecting to smell yeast and dandelions and orange peel, or possibly the latex smell a few people have mentioned.
Wrong!
It smells like sunshine and happiness! Is that what its' going to taste like too? If it tastes half as good as it smells, then next year it'll definitely be at least a 5 gallon batch. Is it better dry, or a little on the sweet side? How long do you usually let it bulk age after its done fermenting?
Vikki (who is way too excited over this)