https://stream.echo6.co/videos/watch/465f826a-980c-4f84-b759-6f08ce6d84da Dandelion Wine Recipe - from a website that no longer seems to exist (winemaking.jackkeller.net) - Pick the flowers just before starting, so they're fresh. You do not need to pick the petals off the flower heads, but the heads should be trimmed of any stalk. Put the flowers in a large bowl. Set aside 1 pint of water and bring the remainder to a boil. Pour the boiling water over the dandelion flowers and cover tightly with cloth or plastic wrap. Leave for two days, stirring twice daily. Do not exceed this time. Pour flowers and water in large pot and bring to a low boil. Add the sugar and the peels (peel thinly and avoid any of the white pith) of the lemons and orange. Boil for one hour, then pour into a crock or plastic pail. Add the juice and pulp of the lemons and orange. Allow to stand until cool (70-75 degrees F.). Add yeast and yeast nutrient, cover, and put in a warm place for three days. Strain and pour into a secondary fermentation vessel (bottle or jug). Add the raisins and fit a fermentation trap to the vessel. Leave until fermentation ceases completely, then rack and add the reserved pint of water and whatever else is required to top up. Refit the airlock and set aside until clear. Rack and bottle. This wine must age six months in the bottle before tasting, but will improve remarkably if allowed a year. [Adapted recipe from C.J.J. Berry's First Steps in Winemaking] Some thoughts on Sugar - - Always a bit of a question how much sugar to add to a wine-to-be ... How dry do you hope for/ how sweet? - The recipe calls for 3 Lb. sugar, and also an additional 1 Lb. of raisins added to the fermenting vessel - When we've put 3 lb. of sugar into this wine it has always resulted in a very sweet wine, not undrinkable but quite sweet - however, very nice for a lot of kinds of cooking - 2 lb last year resulted in a very dry wine, so dry in fact that sometimes when using it for cooking Sasha would add some honey to give a bit of sweetness. Something to experiment with and keep experimenting, noting different commercial or wild yeast wines and how they work out with whatever amount of sugar is added. & A bit on adding "nutrient" - The idea of adding "nutrient" being that the yeasts need a lot more than just sugar to thrive - but is the only way to provide this a commercially produced nutrient pack, or can we achieve this through other additions - in the video we tried adding the dried elderberries to introduce some potential nutrition source for the yeasts, but it's unknown to us how the yeasts will be able to utilize the nutrients in the dehydrated berries (has the cell wall been unlocked/ does it unlock through soaking in the brine?) --- many more questions to ask - older wine recipes add raisins to introduce nutrient, modern people say this doesn't do the trick - there are probably invisibles and mysteries at play here so it's worth just using one's intuition and making some attempts, or understanding the chemistry in a more technical way and going in that direction. We have had wines turn out great using this recipe as a guide but omitting "nutrient" altogether - as the recipe itself calls for raisins, and surely there are nutrients galore in the flower petals and bits of green that remain on during the harvest. Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:27:53 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://stream.echo6.co https://stream.echo6.co/client/assets/images/icons/icon-512x512.png https://stream.echo6.co/videos/watch/465f826a-980c-4f84-b759-6f08ce6d84da All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://stream.echo6.co/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.