Dandelion Wine

This year, I'm going to expand the Balcony of Eden's output potential by including local foods I can easily forage for. Blackberries grow like the bloody dickens here and, in fact, are pretty much considered pests as plants. I love eating them though! Over the past few years, I've usually spent a couple of mornings picking wild blackberries and then freezing them, to be used as a snack for later in the year... well, that's the plan, but I've usually run through my supply of blackberries by the end of September already. When I hunt around the house for something to eat in the evening, there really is nothing better than a ziploc bag of frozen blackberries - they take about a half hour to eat in their frozen state, taste great as they melt in your mouth, and are certainly healthier than potato chips or popcorn. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

Click Pic for Trail Peak's Description of Tea Pot Hill

So, this year, I would like to spend a bit of attention on foraging for wild food that lives in the Fraser Valley. For example, a few years ago, I hiked up to the top of Tea Pot Hill near Chilliwack, and discovered that along the trail were numerous amounts of fiddleheads, which of course, are edible and even considered somewhat of a delicacy. I don't know what they taste like, but perhaps I should give them a whirl, eh? (That's a project for later in the summer).

Be Sure Your Dandelions Have Not Been Sprayed with Chemicals!!!

In the meantime, since it is still April, what IS in season right now are dandelions. Yes, the mighty weed that is the bane of lawn manicurists everywhere.

However, I've been doing some research on eating dandelions, and have read that if you soak them in butter and fry them, they taste much like mushrooms. Hmmm. But also, of course, you can make Dandelion Wine.

So, today I visited my almost 80 year old mother and said, "You remember all those times I picked you dandelions when I was a young boy? How about for a change, we go for a drive in the countryside and you help me pick dandelions?" And... that's what we did, although, her back got sore after picking one bucket. But, she got an "outing" for the day anyway.

When she asked why we were picking dandelions, I told her I wanted to try to make wine with it - and then she told me a story about when her friend Evelyn used to make such wine, and she remembered it being "very potent." Lol! Cool! I've never tried it before.

So, that's what this post is going to be about - although - you'll have to be a bit patient, since the wine takes between six months to a year to complete. But, you've got to start somewhere, and for today, this blog post is it! I found a simple recipe on WikiHow for making dandelion wine - without all the fancy gear - and decided I'd try it out.
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The first step(s) I did today. First, picking the dandelions, then washing them and now, they are being left to soak in water for the next two days.
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Let's keep our fingers crossed and see how this experiment works out!
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Saturday, May 2, 2015
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Okay, so after washing the dandelions and letting them soak for two days, it's time to start making some wine. Here are the directions and ingredients I am using to make my first batch:
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1 Package Yeast (8g)
8 Cups of Whole Dandelion Flowers
(Approximately One Ice Cream Pail - The less green left on them will make the wine sweeter)
4 Litres of Water
1 Cup (250ml) of Orange Juice
6 Tablespoons (90g) of Lemon Juice
1/2 Teaspoon (1.25g) of Powdered Ginger
6 Cups (1200g) of Sugar
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In a large pot, add together the Dandelion Blossoms, Water, Orange Juice and Lemon Juice, then stir in the Ginger and Sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil for an hour. This infuses the ingredients together into what will become wine after fermentation. My recipe here is pretty simple, but there are many other ingredients that can be added to experiment with different flavourings. Eg. Lime Juice, Lemon Peels, Orange Peels, Raisins, Dates, Figs, Apricots and Rhubarb. (I actually added an orange peel to this as it was cooking - I only had one orange left in the fridge, lol).
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Strain the mixture, using coffee filters to keep any large particles from passing through, then let everything cool off for a while. Stir in the Yeast when the mixture is still warm, but below 100 degrees F. Then cover it and let it stand overnight.
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Sunday, May 3, 2015
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Alrighty, my greedy little alcoholic readers, it's time for the great pouring of the wine! As you can see, I've got a pretty tiny little funnel, so I scooped it out with my coffee carafe first to make pouring it a little easier.
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After you've got the wine in the bottles, take a balloon and prick a few holes in it, then stretch it out over the neck of your bottles. This creates and airlock and keeps out unwanted wild yeasts. After this is done, stick it into a dark closet for at least three weeks so it can ferment, then rack the wine a few times and cork it. (Racking means pouring the liquid from one bottle into another, leaving the sediment at the bottom so it gets further removed from the wine). After this, the longer you leave it before drinking it, the better. Six months is good, a year is even better.

The wine might take longer than three weeks to ferment if your storage area is cool, but also note that if you store it in temperatures higher than room temperature, it can change the taste of the wine and cause higher fusel levels - which are the cause of hang-overs (Also, the wine might turn rancid and be unpleasant to drink - not that such a thing would matter to my Lysol and Vanilla swilling readership, eh?). Fermentation temperatures should be between 10 to 24 degrees Celsius (50 to 75 degrees Farenheit).

Hey! Guess what? That's all there is to it! It takes a few days to complete, but it's really not all that much work. Altogether I spent about two hours of time - including driving around to find and pick the dandelions - and I still have two ice cream pails of dandelions left over to make a couple more batches with. Money wise, I'd say this batch cost me $4 to $5, and if after racking it a few times, I'm left with 3.5 litres, that would be a pretty good return, since buying 3.5 litres of wine at the liquor store would cost around $30 to $35.

Later in the summer, I'll see about making some Blackberry Wine as well. 
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Saturday, May 30, 2015
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Alrighty, it's been about four weeks now since I made the Dandelion Wine... let's pull it out of the closet and see how it looks!

You can see the sediment that's built up over the past weeks, which is what we're going to try and get rid of by "racking," which is basically just pouring the wine into different containers while leaving the sediment at the bottom - and indeed, a good deal of sediment did build up. As was recommended in the original recipe, it might have to be racked several times over the next months.
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It sure smelled like wine while I was pouring it - hopefully it tastes like wine this fall when I'll be drinking it! I've already been contemplating a Yuckaflux wing-dinger on my birthday in September, when my watermelon and cantaloupe should be ready as well.
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I've been thinking that if this works out okay, maybe next year I'll see about making homemade wine in larger quantities... like perhaps 26liters of Dandelion Wine in the Spring and 26liters of Blackberry Wine in the Fall (a batch a weekend). That would make a litre of wine a week for the following year, and around $500 in market value... and the liquor store with its exhorbitant government taxes can kiss my sweet ass.
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Hmmm... I wonder if tobacco would grow on the balcony, lol!
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(I took a small sip, and it didn't seem to taste too bad... in fact, it was quite good - sweet, though). 
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Related Resource Links:
16 Ways to Eat Dandelions
10 Foods You Can Grow To Make Alcohol.
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A Garden on the Grow!

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We've had some nice weather lately - in the low twenties celsius - and it really helped to give the garden a kick in the pants. Below is the still very dead blueberry bush, which will soon be pulled and replaced with a tomato plant, but the raspberry bush looks like it's struggling to make a comeback!
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Dead Blueberry Bush (Left) and Struggling Raspberries (Right)

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The strawberries have started to flower, and the radishes are plugging along, although I thought they'd be bigger by now. Perhaps I planted them too early... I hope I don't get a repeat of the Great Radish Famine of 2014!
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Strawberries (Left) and Radishes (Right)

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I planted a few of the pepper seedlings I had growing on the window sill, and as you can see, the kale is filling into those two pots nicely. In a week or two, I should start some more seedlings so I have something ready to go into those containers once the kale comes out.
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Peppers (Left) and Kale (Right)

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The carrots have come up well - and early. I left much more space between them this year, so hopefully they grow larger than they did last year. The two tomato plants seem to have survived the one night of exposure to the frost in the beginning of the month - it looks like they'll make it. 
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Carrots (Left) and Tomatoes (Right)

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The five cucumber seedlings, however, didn't make it. They struggled for a couple of days after the frost and then gave up the ghost. I had two seedlings still left inside, which I transplanted, and for the rest, I just planted some more seeds directly into the soil in the pots. I put a wire mesh behind the containers and planted close to the edge of the container. Hopefully I can get ten cucumber plants growing up there in total and get a good crop of them while still leaving most of the pot open to grow other vegetables.
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Cucumbers & Mesh

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Well, that's all for now. See you next time!
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Aaargh! Frosted Seedlings!

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So, my five of my cucumber seedling and two of my tomatoes have been growing quite well in my little pots on the window sill since I planted them back in the end of February...
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Tomatoes sprouted up!

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I'd been watching them every day... watering them... talking to them... loving them...
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Tomatoes (Left) and Cucumbers (Right) growing bigger

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And the weather had been so nice over the past few weeks... it must have been a month since the last frost, so I started bringing them outside to harden them up before transplanting.
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Tomato Seedlings (Left) and Cucumber Seedlings (Right) Hardening on the Balcony

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Strawberries

And finally, after a few days of hardening, I proudly planted my little darlings, excited to get such an early jump on the growing season... until the next morning when I went out to my car - AND HAD TO SCRAPE FROST OFF THE WINDOWS!!!

Aaargh!
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Oh well, what can you do?

The strawberries have perked up and the radishes and kale have poked up nicely, so I guess that's the silver lining to this cloud.
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Radishes (Left) and Kale (Right)

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... But I don't think I'm going to get much from these raspberry and blueberry bushes I bought last year. Gesh! $60 between the two of them, I didn't get more than a few berries to eat of off them, and they're toast by the next year.
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Dead Blueberries (Left) and Condition Critical Raspberries (Right)

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Those things were such a waste of time, effort and money, I think I might just take them completely off the "garden cost list" and write them off as a mistake of nature. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
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