Making Dandelion Wine Step-by-Step #1 - Supplies

[eredien]

ab3nd and I are making Dandelion wine this spring, because for once I finally thought of it before the dandelions were all gone, and ab3nd has the right equipment already so there wasn't a huge outlay for, say, specialty labglass, so if it all goes wrong then I won't have started an expensive new hobby only to find out I don't actually like it.

We are using the first recipe on this winemaking website. Most of the recipes we found on the internet when doing research involved Welch's Grape Juice Concentrate; this was unacceptable to me. I wanted my wine to taste like dandelions and maybe grass, not be reminiscent of Communion and full of reconstituted grapes and corn syrup...even if I wanted my wine to taste like it was made with grapes, I would make wine from grapes.

Stuff we had to get at the beer store:
- 1 three-gallon bucket with spigot on top
- 1 packet wine yeast. I chose "Vintner's Harvest" brand SN9, Saccharomyes bayanus, because it claimed it was good for flower based wines and also was much less delicate than the other type of yeast recommended for flower wines, which had a special note about how it was kind of finicky and needed TLC.

The local beermaking store also had a load of weird spices and cooking ingredients mostly last seen in things like the medieval cookbook I have--like juniper berries, dried rosehips, candy sugar in both brown and white varieties, oak pieces, and cacao seeds. If I need really weird spices, now I know where to go. Unfortunately, the helpful guy at the store told me that they don't have fresh yeast suitable for bread making, so my search continues for fresh bread yeast in the Boston area. They also had a half-gallon of agave syrup for 13.00, so I know where I am getting my agave syrup from now on. :)

Yeah. More pictures soon.

Comments

[kelkyag]

What do you mean by "fresh yeast suitable for bread making"? I've gotten bulk bread yeast from Harvest coop in Central, or I could revive my sourdough culture and give you a share of it.