Home › Preserving › Dandelion Wine
Dandelion Wine
Over three quarts of dandelion blossoms pour one gallon of boiling water. Let the blossoms stand from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, then strain through cheese-cloth. Add the juice of four oranges and three lemons, four pounds of granulated sugar, and one fourth a cake of compressed yeast. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Put the mixture in a two or three gallon jar. Tie muslin over the top of the jar.
Set it in the cellar for six weeks. Then skim, strain, and bottle. It is now ready for use and is pronounced not only good to the taste but a healthful drink.
A country flower wine that depends almost entirely on the blossoms and on patience. The instructions are sound in outline but assume knowledge that the book never states.
- Pick petals, not whole headsThree quarts of blossoms means loosely packed heads, gathered on a dry, sunny morning when they are fully open. The green base and any stem left attached carry a strong bitterness into the finished wine, and many modern makers pull the yellow petals free and discard the calyx. Take them from ground that has not been sprayed or treated, and well back from roadsides.
- The 24-48 hour steepThis is the weak point of the method. A sugarless flower infusion left at room temperature for two days can pick up mould and wild bacteria before the yeast is ever added. Cover it, keep it cool, and lean toward the shorter end of the range; if it smells sour or shows fuzz on the surface, start again.
- Compressed yeastA small cake of compressed fresh yeast was about 0.6 oz, though cake sizes varied; on that basis a quarter cake is a very small amount, roughly equivalent to half a teaspoon of active dry yeast. Bread yeast will ferment this but tends to stall early and can leave a doughy note; a sachet of wine or champagne yeast gives a cleaner result and better tolerance of the alcohol.
- Sugar and strengthFour pounds of granulated sugar is more than enough sugar to reach 12 to 14 percent alcohol; in fact it is more than most yeasts will ferment out, so expect a sweet wine with sugar left over. The citrus is not only for flavour: the acid from four oranges and three lemons keeps the must in a range where the yeast works and spoilage organisms struggle.
- The jar and the muslinMuslin tied over the top lets carbon dioxide escape while keeping insects out, which is all a vigorous ferment needs. Once the bubbling slows, that open arrangement invites vinegar bacteria; fitting an airlock at that stage is the single most useful change to make.
- Cellar temperatureA cellar would have been cool and stable, typically somewhere in the 50s F. In a heated modern room the six weeks will pass much faster and the wine will taste hotter and rougher for it.
- Before bottlingDo not bottle on the calendar alone. Fermentation must be finished, or the bottles become pressure vessels. A hydrometer reading that holds steady over several days, or simply no bubbles for a week or two, is the signal; rack the clear wine off the sediment rather than pouring the lot.
- Yield and keepingAround a gallon or a little more once the sugar is dissolved -- five or six 750 ml bottles. Young dandelion wine is harsh and improves considerably after six months to a year in a cool dark place; the book's "now ready for use" is optimistic.
- The health claim"A healthful drink" reflects the long folk standing of dandelion as a spring tonic, not any tested property. Treat it as wine.
Flower wines were a staple of British and American farmhouse brewing, and dandelion sits at the head of the family alongside elderflower, cowslip and clover. The appeal was seasonal economics: the blossoms are free, they arrive in enormous numbers in a narrow window in spring, and with sugar and citrus they will support a ferment as well as any fruit. Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, was also long regarded as a spring cleanser in domestic medicine, its leaves eaten as an early salad and its root roasted as a coffee substitute, which is why the recipe closes by vouching for the drink as healthful rather than merely pleasant. The logic of the thing is preserving logic: putting up the produce of a particular week for later use.