I've never made wine but really want to make dandelion wine this year. I found some recipes online. Some recipes say to use the whole flower head but most say to trim the tops. Exactly, what am I trimming? Just the things with the pollen on them? Just the petals with no greens? If so, can't I just pull out the petals? Or is the bottom part of the petal (which is sometimes white fluff) not suppose to be included?

Any help will be GREATLY appreciated!


Tags: make dandelion wine

Dandelion wine is very labor intensive pulling all of those little yellow pedals off. I spent an entire day picking dandelions, pulling off yellow pedals and making 5 gallons of wine. Plus as the dandelions sit in the bucket waiting to be processed they start wilting making the job even more difficult. After making the wine it was OK. Considering all of the labor I am not sure it was worth the effort. wyo wino

Ive yet to taste it. is it worth it?

I spent all day pulling those yellow pedals off. Took days to get the yellow off of the fingers. There are so many good flavorable fruits, juices and grapes out there I just don't think it is worth the high intensive labor. I got my acid a little high. Lowered it with potassium carbonate. It didn't taste much different than dandelion I had tasted before that was made using a balloon instead of an air lock. I just think it was the dandelion flavor that I didn't care for. wyo wino

I just didn't care for the medicinal taste of the dandelion wine. I tried some made by someone else. I thought maybe they hadn't set their acid and sugar correctly so I made some making sure all was set properly. Way too labor intensive and I just didn't care for the medicinal taste.

Some people may like it. Fun to make and inexpensive. I just felt there are so many fruits etc. out there. I wouldn't make it again. If others haven't tried it I would recommend they give it a try.

Jack Keller web site has a lot of wine recipes for those that may be interested.

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request.asp

It is good to see more posts on this blog with great info on different types of wine.

Home-made yeast??? I didn't know you could make your own yeast....anyone ever do it? How?

I made dandylion wine sometime ago, It wasn't a bad wine but there are some tips for making it.
1 = Make sure it's a sunny day when you pick them, so that they are fully open.
2 = Dont soak them more than 3 days, or the wine will have a foul taste. 2 days will do.
3 = Make sure you use the right amount of flowers.
4 = Make your wine the same day you pick the flowers, when they are still fresh.

The recipe I used, didn't pull off the petals individually, it just said to pull the heads off the stalks leaving as little stalk as possible.

I am making some into a port, it seems to be pretty good. It smells like a white wine.

ms8miranda wrote:Home-made yeast??? I didn't know you could make your own yeast....anyone ever do it? How?

Most fruit will ferment by itself. I would just prefer to use wine yeast and know where it is going. I use 1 campden tablet per gallon after I have the fruit in the primary ready to ferment. The campden kills all bacteria. I then add my wine yeast 24 hours later.

Large commercial wine makers make their own cultures. Keep in mind they have chemists on staff that really know what they are doing. Plus they have a lot of equipment to measure everything that is going on in the must. As hobbiest we are limited to a few measurements depending on our finances and it is much more economical to use wine yeast so we will know what the results will be.

When I worked in Los Angeles we used to catch the inmates making wine with oranges. They just put orange juice in a container and let it ferment by itself. Most fruit will tend to ferment as it over ripens. However it may also just rot
depending on the acidity. Oranges have acid that helps them ferment properly.

Most fruit will ferment by itself.

This reminds me of a tv program I saw a while back about wild pigs, every year they return to this apple tree after the fruit has fallen and its started to ferment, the pigs were legless but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.