Cure-All

Here's the recipe for a small (2 gallon) batch I bottled and corked yesterday. I tasted the hydrometer's share to make sure it didn't need to be sweetened (FG was 1.001!) and it was amazingly smooth, especially considering the high alcohol content. My fiance doesn't like chamomile or mint, but she loves this wine. I'm excited to see what age will do to it!

With the antioxidants and beta-carotene of carrots, anti-inflammatory and soothing effects of chamomile, and digestive healing powers of mint, who's to say it isn't a cure-all? If you use tea bags for your chamomile and/or mint, make sure the only ingredient in the tea is its respective herb. The measurements are in grams because each Bigelow tea bag I had contained one gram of material.



Cure-All

SG: 1.121
FG:1.001
ABV: 15.75 percent

Ingredients:
-10 g dried chamomile
-8 g dried mint
-2 black tea bags
-5 lbs carrots, chopped but not skinned (you can save these to eat!)
-handful of raisins (optional)
-2 tsp yeast nutrient

Yeast:
Montrachet dry wine yeast

Sugar:
5 lbs white granulated

Directions:
Boil the chopped carrots in a little over 2 gallons of water, or as much as your container will hold, until they are soft to the touch. Remove carrots through straining and throw them in the fridge to heat up as a quick side dish later (throw some butter and chili salt on there!) Turn off heat and steep all tea bags/herbs in carrot water for 10 minutes. Remove tea bags, stir in 5 lbs white granulated sugar. Pour into fermentation vessel (I used two 1 gal glass jugs from commercial crapper wine), top off with water if needed, pitch yeast and nutrient, fit with airlock.

My batch was started on 12/30/09 and bottled on 2/7/10, with fermentation at 64-66 degrees Fahrenheit. You could ferment at a higher temperature to finish it quicker, but I'm not sure if it would taste quite as smooth as it does this way. It's a full-bodied elixir, silky smooth...mmm!

That. Sounds. Really. Good.

hmmmmm........ sounds interesting indeed.....

Yeah I bet Cure-All Mead would be incredible...Somebody make it and tell me how it turns out! A buddy of mine just dropped by and left with a bottle, he's digging it like hell.

What, no belladonna? (Grin) Just kidding - that stuff is also known as deadly nightshade for a reason. But I saw it listed as an ingredient in a homeopathic cold remedy used by a guy I once worked with. It didn't cure anything, it just made you so loopy you didn't care how bad you felt.

Cure-All Mead does sound good. I wouldn't have thought to use carrots. What gave you the idea?

Dave

P.S. Where in southern Ohia? I grew up near Athens. D.

Hinermad said:

What, no belladonna? (Grin) Just kidding - that stuff is also known as deadly nightshade for a reason. But I saw it listed as an ingredient in a homeopathic cold remedy used by a guy I once worked with. It didn't cure anything, it just made you so loopy you didn't care how bad you felt.

Cure-All Mead does sound good. I wouldn't have thought to use carrots. What gave you the idea?

Dave

P.S. Where in southern Ohia? I grew up near Athens. D.

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I wanted to make a carrot-based beverage after reading that they gave a good body to wines. One source for the inspiration was Terry Garey's "The Joy of Home Winemaking," in which there is a recipe for "Optimistic Sibling Carrot Wine." The recipe calls for 5 pounds of carrots per one gallon of finished product, but I wanted to stretch them (being the ever-frugal one), and the idea of the Cure-All came about. I'd been digging the soothing properties of chamomile for months, and came across a good deal on chamomile and mint tea bags at Big Lots. This whole batch cost me 6 or 7 bucks to make.

Right now me and the lady are posted up in Kettering, just south of Dayton, but I was originally a Cincinnati boy. I gotta say, it's nice up here though.

I am sooooooo trying this!

Carrot juice would work, but the final flavor/color would be different. If you boil carrots some time, taste the water. Compare that to your juice. The juice is bolder, which would lend itself to a stronger flavor in the end, possibly overpowering the chamomile and mint. And unless you've got an industrial-sized juicer, juicing 5 pounds of carrots will probably take a while. Then you'd have to sanitize the juice...

But who knows, it could be way better! I cooked them because every carrot wine recipe I've come across says to do it that way, and we didn't have a juicer.

I think fermenting on the carrots would work fine, my problem would be cleaning all that carrot gunk out afterward (my fermenting vessels for wine have very narrow necks)! I bet fermenting on the carrots would give the flavor more complexity, and you might want to cook them for less time, or maybe not at all, to get all the subtleties of the flavor. Of course, you would want to sanitize them before adding to the primary.

I personally wouldn't ferment on top of the carrots unless it was "Carrot Wine", because I don't want to risk the overpowering flavor, I don't want the extra cleaning, and most importantly, the waste factor involved. I know it's not much, but when you're making small batches like me (2 gal in this case), five pounds of carrots soaks up a lot of liquid! I don't want to make 2 gallons of wine just to end up with a gallon and a half of product and a heap of soggy, strange-tasting carrots. So I boiled them first and put them in a tupperware for later. Next batch I'm making will coincide with vegetable soup day!

Parsnip Cure-All sounds great! And honey too! I was thinking about adding honey and ginger and making a Cure-All metheglin soon. Tell me how yours turns out, hope it cures what ails you!

So does this have a really carroty taste? Or does it all blend flavorfully together? I still have trouble trying to picture vegetable mead!

Mine doesn't taste very carroty at all, the carrots seemed to just give it body. The mint and chamomile really came through as strongest flavors, but the carrot definitely morphed it into something new entirely. It doesn't taste thin or tea-like at all.

I haven't tried the mead version yet, but I think honey would definitely be a complimentary flavor, dry or sweet.

Quick question before I start this

You never mentioned any racking and I am not too familiar with wine making. Is this like JAOM where you just let it sit for 2 months then bottle it? Or should it be racked when fermentation slows?

Thanks

I just let it ferment out then bottle it. I don't think racking would hurt it, but I haven't tried yet.

Have my perfect cure-all for cold and flu season brewing, Unfortunately, I won't know until next year how well it cures! Hibiscus/Elderberry/Blueberry Pomegranate. I can not wait until this summer to incorporate some of my herbs into wine. I might have to use this carrot wine as a base. Any ideas how to utilize an overabundance of Lemon Balm and Lemon Grass?

MzAnnie said:

Any ideas how to utilize an overabundance of Lemon Balm and Lemon Grass?

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Mince the herbs, douse with just enough water to dampen, and then pack into ice cube trays. Freeze until solid, then vacuum pack.
As far as incorporating into wine, etc., I have found that they go well with apple juice/cider, traditional mead, Skeeter Pee, niagara, ginger and hibiscus. I think carrot would be great! I failed to write down how much I used per gallon though, I am pretty sure I used an amount from a recipe via Jack Keller.
I am getting ready to make a batch of Krupnik to ease some cold/flu symptoms. It is a common Lithuanian and Polish honey-spiced vodka or pure grain based liquor. Recipes all over the web. This company has perfected many spice blends/varieties---www.krupnikco.com.
If you buy their 'pick three' you can currently use a coupon found on their site and take a nice percentage off. Definitely takes the wondering out of your recipe formulation, plus saves $ if you do not own all the spices called for.
I remember getting a tablespoonful of this when I was a child and I had a chest cold, etc. She would add more honey to it for us kids as she gave us a dose. Watched my grandmother make it all the time, but no one has the recipe, and she died when I was just nine. It is great added to tea, or served over ice or warmed up...just to sip and enjoy.

saramc said:

Mince the herbs, douse with just enough water to dampen, and then pack into ice cube trays. Freeze until solid, then vacuum pack.
As far as incorporating into wine, etc., I have found that they go well with apple juice/cider, traditional mead, Skeeter Pee, niagara, ginger and hibiscus. I think carrot would be great! I failed to write down how much I used per gallon though, I am pretty sure I used an amount from a recipe via Jack Keller.
I am getting ready to make a batch of Krupnik to ease some cold/flu symptoms. It is a common Lithuanian and Polish honey-spiced vodka or pure grain based liquor. Recipes all over the web. This company has perfected many spice blends/varieties---www.krupnikco.com.
If you buy their 'pick three' you can currently use a coupon found on their site and take a nice percentage off. Definitely takes the wondering out of your recipe formulation, plus saves $ if you do not own all the spices called for.
I remember getting a tablespoonful of this when I was a child and I had a chest cold, etc. She would add more honey to it for us kids as she gave us a dose. Watched my grandmother make it all the time, but no one has the recipe, and she died when I was just nine. It is great added to tea, or served over ice or warmed up...just to sip and enjoy.

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Oh My, while I was reading this, my husband found a boatload of sweet potatoes while getting ready to till the tater bed. I can't believe we missed them all. Instead of carrot wine, I guess I have to try sweet potato wine...ooohhh, maybe I will dig up some carrots and use them both!!! Got the recipe saved!!!

Emerald said:

I have heard of parsnip wine being a very popular country wine to make-a friend from the UK said that his grandpa used to make it with some of the older men in the neighborhood.

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My grandfather did it, results were pretty lousy.