Where there is a hard green hub to flowers, like Marigolds, Cornflowers, etc., cut the hub off most of them with a sharp knife. It makes less gross matter when clearing the wine.
Wash preservative off dried fruit like apricots, peaches, etc., with a quick plunge in plenty of cold water; also treat dandelion flowers to this plunge to rid the flowers of grit and little black flies.
Use stale bread cut into slices If’ thick from a large loaf and toasted a light brown. This keeps the bread from breaking up into the brew. Spread yeast on after mixing it to a paste with 2 teaspoonfuls of the brew. Float toast on the wine yeast side down. It is easily lifted out when fermentation is completed and, if you like, give it to the birds.
Instead of spreading the yeast, you can crumble it and just scatter it over the top of the toast. White bread gives more to the brew than brown bread does.
Use clean cold water.
Use yeast such as one bakes with from a baker or grocer. Use white sugar unless brown” is stated in the recipe.
See the sugar is dissolved and not settled hard in the bottom of the jar. Keep stirring daily-it prevents mould, gets all the ingredients mixed and dissolves the sugar. Keep covered with a heavy blanket-like cloth.
Gather the flowers and fruit when dry. Never use too much green. You can pick each floret off with a little patience. You aim to get delicious wine fragrantly scented from the flowers used. It should be scintillatingly beautiful, delicate in color and delightful in taste.
Use good corks. New ones are best. Label every bottle.
Scald bottles out and smell them; if in doubt, bake them for a time in a fairly hot oven. Never lay bottles on their sides.
You have to drown the flowers in making flower wines to do that, keep pushing them down in the water; you then gather all their sweetness and scent, but you must take them out before they decay. Just squeeze out.
Leave peel on Rhubarb unless it is likely to spoil the color, then you take a thin skin off and cut it into smallish dice like lump sugar.
Whilst fermenting, keep ail wine in a warm place around 50°F as mentioned earlier and, when slow in clearing, step up the heat a little, say to 60°F.
Ripe gooseberries and ripe plums should be squashed. When making champagne-type wine, it is best to keep to the paler shades in flowers although pink, red, etc. come out very well. All one wants from them is their fragrance individual sweetness and character with its scent.
I have taken the easiest way to make a spirit content. Many of the lanes, fields and gardens will supply much of the material so that the poorest and rawest amateur can make good wine and feel proud of the glass they offer in friendly hospitality.
I had many jars of jam left-even 4 and 5 years old. I usually use these” left overs” from seasons to make jam tarts, puddings, etc., but nowadays my household is so small that I felt I could spare them for wine making.
I have been experimenting. Jam seems to condense into about half the bulk it should be when kept a year or two, going into a hardish block, but retaining all its goodness, color and taste-it needs to be dissolved in the water.
With maize, get the flaked kind-stir well, then you can (after it has settled to the bottom) pour off all the liquid. The maize can then go to pigs or hens. The liquid makes an agreeable drink with a “bite” in it but it should be kept a year to mellow. Keep stirring daily during fermentation to avoid a mouldy crust forming. One cannot emphasize too much how important it is to keep wine covered through this period so that the air does not get to it.
Maize soaks up the water but this type of wine making gives the town folk a chance to make good wine at any time of the year, at little cost or trouble. I have used as much as 5 quarts of water as flowers and maize lap up the water.
Toasting bread both sides keeps it whole so it can be lifted out easily.
I have used rhubarb and lemons to “tart” up the sweetness, making the recipe “tasty” to the tongue.
You get the wine absolutely clear and right for drinking, then to each ½ gallon you add 2 dessert spoonfuls of white vinegar and the juice of half a lemon, or to each gallon 2 tablespoonfuls of white vinegar and the juice of one lemon. You mix it well through the wine then put it into small bottles, say pint size. You can put stoppers in if Tau are using that type of bottle, or you can put ordinary corks well in and then, with a piece of calico, say a 4-inch or a y-inch square, tie the corks in. Put the calico over the cork, bring it down on to the neck and tie the string around firmly, until you want to use it.