Bubble Bubble Without Too Much Toil Or Trouble

It's that time of year when various rooms in the household greet their occupants with a welcoming 'bloop, bloop, bloop' noise. A selection of homemade country wines are fermenting away. Good old glass gallon demijohns sit on available shelves or nestle in corners containing liquids of beautiful colours, ranging from gold to pink,  just doing their thing. It's really very easy to make country wine, in fact so easy I have found in the past that the biggest pitfall is to make too much so that the racking and bottling becomes a chore. So these days I make one demijohn each of my favourite flavours and that way it's all enjoyable and the wines are savoured.

 

Some favourites include elderflower, strawberry, blackberry, nettle leaf, birch sap wine and mead. The whole affair is very cheap, the only real expense being roughly 1.5kilos of sugar per gallon of liquid plus a good quality yeast and yeast nutriment powder. Even with the cost of the demijohns and other minor bits of equipment  in the first year the wine is easily less than half the price and in subsequent years probably under a euro per bottle. That's a significant saving on the weekly shop!

I've been meaning to write an ebooklet on this topic for some time and I finally found the inspiration I was looking for to get me going during the first racking of an elderflower and strawberry wine I'm making ... an unintended sampling was forced upon me during the syphoning process ... accidently on purpose, several times, eh, by me! When I first started out making the wine it took quite a bit of time gathering the information and sourcing the things I'd need, getting to grips with a bit of science, realising lots of information was not necessary and quite a few things tasted disgusting! So there is now a short ebooklet in the Paypal store (see top right column) with instructions on how to make our favourite country wines here at Sallygardens.

Slainte (cheers).

Comments

[allotment blogger]

What a brilliant idea! We have a couple of allotment holders who make extremely good wine and I've always wondered whether I should have a go - but it seems complicated. Maybe an e-book would help me?

[Stacey K]

Hi Rebecca, I came across your blog and spent the last few hours, since about 5ish, reading through every single post. I just reached the end there and its an amazing journey! Doing something similar but on a smaller scale with my partner, so doing my research. I keep chickens and only grow tomatoes and herbs. Were hoping to move to a new place in laois, with 2 acres, I was hoping to get a meat goat. The information contained in your blog makes such an easy and enjoyable read and Im not surprised you were nominated for a blog award! Go neri leat!

[Rebecca (Sallygardens Smallholding author)]

Hey allotment blogger, making is wine is easy, go ahead and give it a go, its also fun and cheap and a wonderful gift if you can bring yourself to give away a bottle!

Thanks Stacey, I'm glad you enjoyed the read. Have you found our forum, join up free for more information and find like minded folk. Scroll down and click on the goat in the left hand column. See you there.