Oregon Grape Mahonia Wine

Once you have identified a Mahonia Bush and picked enough Mahonia berries (oregon grapes), you can get started processing them into even more exciting things. You can do many things with these little berries but my favourite so far has to be turn them into wine. They do not call these little fantastic berries Oregon Grapes for nothing! We used a 1 gallon demijohn to test out our recipe this year but the resulting wine was so successful we are definitely planning to fill a couple of 5 gallon drums next year instead.

These berries make a full flavoured red wine that is simply scrumptious and high professional quality. We found it went nicely with game meat in particular.

Minimum Equipment Requirement

1 Gal Demijohn or Drum/Tub
1 Airlock
1 Siphon Tube

Ingredients for 1 Gallon Mahonia Wine

2kg Oregon Grapes
1350g Sugar
2 stewed tea bags
top up with water

Method

Sterilise your equipment
Pass Boiling Water through the grapes and mash them up
Strain off the juice – do this several times to get the most out of the berries. It should be a super dark red.
Place into the primary fermentation bucket/Demijohn
Add sugar
Top up with water
Allow the mixture to cool until it reaches around 21C
Add yeast and yeast nutrient
Cover and place airlock
Keep in a warm dry place
After 8 weeks, test the mixture with a hydrometer. Add sugar according to taste if it’s ready to bottle.
Add a crushed Campden tablet to clear according to the tablet instructions and allow to settle
Rack Off and bottle.

As you can see from our current demijohn we have been so surprised at the wonderful flavour of this wine we have started taking one too many “Test Samples” before bottling! Oh dear!

Silver Birch Sap Wine

So now you have your Silver Birch Sap you may think what could you possibly do with such a sugar rich liquid. The answer is of course, make wine! Unfortunately we do not have any pictures of the batch we made this year but I can tell you it ended up being an off-white coloured wine and one of our more enjoyable brews. We will definitely be making this one again next spring.

Minimum Equipment Requirement

1 Gal Demijohn or Drum/Tub
1 Airlock
1 Siphon Tube

Ingredients for 1 Gallon Silver Birch Wine

1 Gallon Silver Birch Sap Unprocessed (not boiled down or anything).
1133g Sugar
2 Lemons
277g Raisins

Method

Sterilise your equipment
Boil the Sap and Lemon together for 20 minutes
Add the sugar and raisins and stir in while still warm
Strain the flowers – keep the liquid but not the flowers themselves
Place into the primary fermentation bucket/Demijohn
Allow the mixture to cool until it reaches around 21C
Add yeast and yeast nutrient
Cover and place airlock
Keep in a warm dry place
After 8 weeks, test the mixture with a hydrometer. Add sugar according to taste if it’s ready to bottle.
Add a crushed Campden tablet to clear according to the tablet instructions and allow to settle
Rack Off and bottle.

Dandelion Flower Wine

Dandelion Flower wine is best made when the dandelion flowers are in full bloom in the spring and fully open on a sunny day. The wine requires acidifying for the yeast so it tends to become a very citrus flavoured wine. For this reason we called this batch the Citrus Bang. We aren’t usually very fond of overly citrus flavours so we may change or ignore this recipe next year or use it as “Filler” wine only (wine we make only when we have made everything else available and have spare drums/demijohns).

Minimum Equipment Requirement

1 Gal Demijohn or Drum/Tub
1 Airlock
1 Siphon Tube

Ingredients for 1 Gallon Dandelion Wine

1.136 Litres of pressed dandelion petals (follow the instructions for how to prepare the petals in our post on dandelion cordial if you are unsure)
340g Raisins
907g Sugar
3 Lemons
3 Oranges
Water as required

Method

Sterilise your equipment
Boil the Petals
Allow petals to steep for a minimum of 2 hours (we did overnight to increase flavour)
Strain the flowers – keep the liquid but not the flowers themselves
Add raisins, Lemon Juice, Orange Juice, sugar and orange/lemon zest to the liquid and place on a low boil for 30 minutes.
Allow to cool.
Mix thoroughly and add to the Primary Fermentation Bucket/Demijohn and top up with water.
Allow the mixture to cool until it reaches around 21C
Add yeast and yeast nutrient
Cover and place airlock
Keep in a warm dry place
After 8 weeks, test the mixture with a hydrometer. Add sugar according to taste if it’s ready to bottle.
Add a crushed Campden tablet to clear according to the tablet instructions and allow to settle
Rack Off up to three times, or less if you don’t mind it cloudy. Top up with water and bottle when finished.

Elderflower Wine

This turned out to be an Excellent wine. In fact it was so delicious the 30 odd bottles that we made were quickly whisked away by friends and relatives. For basically the cost of the sugar, you can have a brilliant, slightly sweet and flavourful and strong white wine.

This is the recipe we used:

Elderflower Wine – 1 Gal

500ml Picked Elderflowers pressed lightly. Remove green stems.
1.5kg Sugar. White granulated to avoid changing the flavour
250g washed raisins
1/2 Mug Strong Tea
3 Lemons Squeezed
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
4.5L hot water

Sterilise your equipment
Dissolve the sugar in the hot water
Place the flowers, raisins and lemon juice in the primary bucket
Add the sugar water
Mix thoroughly
Allow the mixture to cool until it reaches around 21C
Add yeast, Tea and yeast nutrient
Cover and place airlock
Keep in a warm dry place
After 8 weeks, test the mixture with a hydrometer. Add sugar according to taste if it’s ready to bottle.
Add a crushed Campden tablet to clear according to the tablet instructions and allow to settle
Rack Off and then bottle!

Strawberry Wine

The strawberry wine I made last year was not my best batch and was the first one I had made in some years.

I made a 1 Gallon batch last year and produced 5 bottles. It was hard to clear the sediment and they ended up fizzing up a bit in the bottle. We tried one last bottle almost exactly a year later and the flavour definitely improved. I’m glad to say we have perfected our technique by leaps and bounds over the last year, please stay tuned as I will be putting up the best of these recipes when they are successful enough to share.