Truth be told, I am favoring knotweed wine over dandelion purely for the sake of simplicity. It's 1000 times easier to harvest and process than dandelion flowers. Whether I'll prefer to drink it is another story. Dandelion wine is easily sweet, while the knotweed seems to be much drier. Strange, considering the recipe is practically identical. If, in a year, I find the recipe for knotweed wine much too dry, I'm going to have to tinker with the recipe some.
The process is easy enough. I basically followed THIS RECIPE. The only difference being that I didn't use champagne yeast or yeast nutrient. I rednecked it up just like the dandelion wine, and just used the regular stuff from the grocery store for bread-making. Nothing fancy, and it gets the job done.
Who knows... based on flavor, maybe I should go with the snooty yeast.
So here's what happened...
First I harvested a crapload of knotweed. Pounds and pounds of it. Luckily it's easy to harvest, and fairly quick to cut. Washing takes a few minutes but it's not too tedious.
I decided the easiest way to work with this stuff is to not have to strain it later. These laundry bags were super cheap, and worked perfectly!
As you can see I tossed in some orange slices and a few leftover strawberries. I don't imagine the berries really changed the flavor at all, but I at least felt like they were being put to use.
All tied up nice and pretty!
After the whole steeping process the yeast started to do its thing. It looked pretty funky, and smelled kind of like a bakery for a while. These were kept covered with cloth while they fermented.
Bottling didn't take long (thanks to a handy dandy siphon found at Tractor Supply Co.) I had a bit more than I bargained for and resorted to using every glass container in my kitchen. There will be less wine than this after the sediments settle and I re-bottle. It doesn't have the pretty pink color I was hoping for.
So it appears at first glance I'll have a dry white wine on my hands in about a year. I hope you'll be here with me for the uncorking!
mmmm... would love to try it. I was wondering what part of the plant you used. shoots make sense! so tart!!
ReplyDeletea friend of mine doesn't use yeast at all for his dandy wine... he says after the cook, he adds raw dandies to the mix for the natural yeasts that they harbor. so far it's worked for him.
thanks for this, great info!! can't wait to hear how it turns out!