Among the recipes in the box is one for dandelion wine.
Dandelion Wine
Clean sepals from and wash thoroughly 6 cups dandelion blossoms. Place in a sterilized jar and cover with 3 quarts boiling water. Add rind from 2 lemons and 2 oranges, Cover mouth of jar with plastic wrap and allow to set for 2 days.
Strain liquid into another sterilized jar and stir in: 2 ½ pounds sugar, juice of 2 lemons and 2 oranges, ½ lb raisins, coarsely ground, and ½ package yeast. Cover and set away for one week. Strain into a gallon jug, adding additional water to fill, if necessary. Seal tightly and allow to ferment for 3 months. When it stops fermenting, pour into another jar and allow to stand until clarified. Bottle, and seal, and allow to age.
I would be careful of what kind of yeast I used for this project. I am not sure that ordinary bread making yeast will work. There are special wine making yeasts. If there is a wine making store in your town they might be able to point you to the right kind of yeast.
I’ve got a couple of packets of wine-making yeast in my fridge, so that wouldn’t be a problem, Robert. Should I ever want to try this out, I think my big challenge would be to find 6 cups of un-sprayed dandelion blossoms…
I have a recipe in my box for dandelion wine and one for blackberry wine. We have plenty of dandelions here if you would like me to ship you some in the Spring. Thanks for this.
Seriously, Dan – I might take you up on that. I know of only one place in the ‘hood with plenty of dandelions, but I fear the owner of the property sprays frequently…
My parents made dandelion wine one year. It was tasty. Per St. Mom’s warning about herbicides, my parents did not spray our lawn, figuring that whatever plant varieties showed up in the lawn added variety to life. As we were surrounded by forest,meadow, and swamp, with the nearest neighbor a quarter mile away, we felt no need to keep up the Jones’ lawn.
The very last instruction of the recipe (aging!!) is extremely important. When I was a kid, one of my dad’s buddies gave us some dandelion wine he had made & we all thought it was the most disgusting thing we had ever tasted. My mom banished the jar to the root cellar & we forgot about it for several years. Once we did find it again & tasted it just before dumping it out – we were surprised at how excellent it was. I wonder if it would have eventually turned into vinegar if we had left it for several years longer.
Yes, absolutely – home-made wine has to age in the bottle for at least six months, or even longer. It makes all the difference in the world.
Of course, there is some which is perfectly disasterous, and would not taste any better after a many years. We tried making watermelon wine (melon wine is pretty chancy, anyway – and after a year it was perfectly horrid. The guys at the home-brew shop say that the only way to redeem the two or three gallons of it is to have it distilled, and add some flavoring to it.
OTH – honey mead is fantastic. The longer it goes, the better it tastes. We had a batch which turned out to be faintly fizzy, like champagne. It was fantastic!