HomeBrew Recipes

[Noakesy85]

Ok so i know a few members have allotments etc and many people enjoy growing their own fruit and veg, but what do you guys do with any excess fruit you may have?

We harvested roughly 5 Kilos or rhubarb from our allotment this year and as you can imagine that's a lot of fruit to use, some of it is frozen (but that takes up space) and some gets used in crumbles. I've recently decided to get back into home brewing after several years out of the game. For my first batch i decided to give Rhubarb Wine a go...

2.5 Kilos or chopped and frozen Rhubarb
2 Kilos of Sugar (Another option would be to use half the sugar and top up with Grape Juice Concentrate)
Zest of 1 lemon
Camden Tablets
Yeast Nutrient
Wine Yeast

So i sterilised all my equipment prior to starting.

Added my part defrosted Rhubarb into my brew bucket along with Sugar and the lemon zest.

I crushed 2 camden tablets and sprinkled these on top before giving everything a good mix.

I left the bucket for 3 days in a warm room (giving it a little mix every 24 hours allowing the sugar to extract as much juice as possible).

Once enough juice was extracted I again sterilised my equipment along with a straining bag and a potato ricer.

I poured the contents into a second brew bucket through the straining bag. once the Rhubarb was separated I used my potato ricer to extract as much juice as possible from the left overs. This gave me just over half of what i needed to make the 4.5 Litres needed.

I boiled a kettle and topped up to the desired level. Once it had cooled to roughly 30 degrees I checked the ABV (came out approximately 13% once adjustments had been made for temperature).

Once everything had cooled sufficiently I added the yeast nutrient and Yeast, put a lid on the bucket and popped in my bubbler.

That was about 3 days ago and I'm happy to say its been bubbling like a trooper meaning the fermentation process is going well. Ill give it until Tuesday, test the ABV again before transferring it into a Demijohn to continue the process.

Thats where I am up to so far, I'm interested to hear what you guys have on the go/any recipes you fancy sharing?

 

[BUDFORCE]

I'm going to be a bit of a killjoy but having experimented with this in the past, I honestly find it a lot of hassle for what it's worth.

If you have the equipment, it might be worth it if you are making hundreds of litres a time, as the amount of work and time required doesn't increase that much for the volume, but doing all that to make 5 litres... I mean it would need to be bloody good.

I grow my own hops and mix those in with ready made home brew kits that do 25 litres at time I find that a good faff to drink ratio.

I'd love to get into small scale commercial brewing at some stage, it's not the right time for me now though.

 

[Noakesy85]

I'm going to be a bit of a killjoy but having experimented with this in the past, I honestly find it a lot of hassle for what it's worth.

If you have the equipment, it might be worth it if you are making hundreds of litres a time, as the amount of work and time required doesn't increase that much for the volume, but doing all that to make 5 litres... I mean it would need to be bloody good.

I grow my own hops and mix those in with ready made home brew kits that do 25 litres at time I find that a good faff to drink ratio.

I'd love to get into small scale commercial brewing at some stage, it's not the right time for me now though.

I see what you're saying, i used to do brewing a few years back but because I've had a bit of a break from it i didn't want to go big straight away in case it all goes horribly wrong. Id much rather waste 5 ltrs over 25ltrs any day. If it works out well, I'll make more next time.

 

[poosemon]

With some of my excess Rhubarb I've made some Rhubarb Gin, really simple, just need a large airtight jar.

1kg Rhubarb, 400g caster sugar in a jar for 24 hours.

After 24 hours just pour in a bottle of gin and leave for 4 weeks.

Last batch was great, proved to be a hit with the family.

Current batch have tries adding some ginger in so couple of weeks to go on that one.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Ive just started. Used a couple of kits so far and the second I added some raspberries.
I actually bottled it last night, I can deffo tell the difference between the one with raspberries and without, the one with clearly needs more time to rest before drinking.

We have around a kilo of raspberries every other day now and they normally carry on until around early/mid oct.
Our blackberry bush planted late 2017 cropped properly this year, its thrown up 5 canes this year vs the one from last, and we got around 1kg of fruit from the 1 cane so next year I may look to make some blackberry wine.

I am freezing everything right now and will play over winter. At the mo I only have a 1gall to play with, but actually have a 5 gal and a couple of airlocks etc coming today.
I picked up a 25ltr food grade (new) bucket from work the other day. i can get loads of these so was going to test grometing the one I got at some point, if thats easy I can get quite a few on the go.

Intrigued by the gin angle. We have a load of Rhubarb right now so I could replicate. I assume the point is just to allow the Rhubarb to infuse the gin, so why add extra sugar? If your attempting to brew then whats the yeast, if your not giving any and its actually fermenting then your relying on a wild yeast surely? Yeasts struggle above high teens alc% so I am not sure what the sugar is really specifically doing?

 

[Noakesy85]

Ive just started. Used a couple of kits so far and the second I added some raspberries.
I actually bottled it last night, I can deffo tell the difference between the one with raspberries and without, the one with clearly needs more time to rest before drinking.

We have around a kilo of raspberries every other day now and they normally carry on until around early/mid oct.
Our blackberry bush planted late 2017 cropped properly this year, its thrown up 5 canes this year vs the one from last, and we got around 1kg of fruit from the 1 cane so next year I may look to make some blackberry wine.

I am freezing everything right now and will play over winter. At the mo I only have a 1gall to play with, but actually have a 5 gal and a couple of airlocks etc coming today.
I picked up a 25ltr food grade (new) bucket from work the other day. i can get loads of these so was going to test grometing the one I got at some point, if thats easy I can get quite a few on the go.

Intrigued by the gin angle. We have a load of Rhubarb right now so I could replicate. I assume the point is just to allow the Rhubarb to infuse the gin, so why add extra sugar? If your attempting to brew then whats the yeast, if your not giving any and its actually fermenting then your relying on a wild yeast surely? Yeasts struggle above high teens alc% so I am not sure what the sugar is really specifically doing?

I've been picking Blackberries for a while now, and just like you I've been freezing them. I've also got a friend on our allotment that has a large Raspberry batch and hes kindly aloud me to pick any raspberries i want. So far I've got almost 2 kilos between the 2.

I'm going to start the Blackberry/Raspberry wine in a couple of weeks as we are moving house next week and need to get settled before i start anything new.

I've just racked off my rhubarb wine for the second time to remove any sediment, its now covered and clearing. I'll leave it for a couple of weeks before bottling.

I've left my Rhubarb growing for a couple of months no as I plan to move the crowns to another bed next month. I'm going to have to harvest the rhubarb that's currently on it in order to move it though. That should give me another couple of Kilos to play with over christmas.

 

[The_Abyss]

Intrigued by the gin angle. We have a load of Rhubarb right now so I could replicate. I assume the point is just to allow the Rhubarb to infuse the gin, so why add extra sugar? If your attempting to brew then whats the yeast, if your not giving any and its actually fermenting then your relying on a wild yeast surely? Yeasts struggle above high teens alc% so I am not sure what the sugar is really specifically doing?

It entirely depends on whether you're adding your flavours and botanicals before you distill, or just adding some flavour after you've finished. The former will be far better and more durable, the latter is what many gins are bringing to the market in the past couple of years. Like flavoured vodka, or morning coffee.

 

[poosemon]

If i'm honest, not sure technically why the sugar is added, but was in a recipie and liked the end result so not going to argue with it . The sugar does seem to draw out some of the liquid content of the Rhubarb so doing this might just infuse more of the gin flavour.

Currently got a glass of my second batch in my hand. Chucked in Rhubarb, Lime, Ginger and Vanilla don't think it's going to last long as rather drinkable! My Rhubarb patch is crazy, way my Rhubarb then i can find use for!

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I have changed my mind on playing with the fruit now. I am using it in crumbles! Far better use I think.

I've got a good kilo of blackberries and probably 3kgs of rasps to get me through the winter.

Rhubarb I may still look to infuse some gin though. Going to have a chat with out Beverage flavourist at work to see what he thinks would give the best effect.
I was thinking about the sugar and I guess its probably to contra the natural sourness of the rhubarb (forced early season wont be anywhere near as near this). It cant be adding to the alchohol content.
You do get a wicking effect from the sugar on the rhubarb, but likewise the juices from the rhubarb dissolve the sugar so they are helping each other.

 

[Abraxaz1]

Currently have 18 litres of normal cider and 26 litres of apple and BlackBerry cider in my utility room, just waiting for it to start clearing before I bottle it.

Plus I picked up 3 kilos of honey from a organic shop that was closing down for a fiver. So will be making something when a few ingredients turn up.