looking to make a wine with a local chinese feel...

And I'm looking for help. I live in China and I was thinking about some local ingredients I can source cheap and that are in season.

I came up with some things that would either make a good wine, or atleast interesting additions.

Hawthorns or haw berries
Green tea
Jasmine tea
Chrysanthemum flowers
Chinese dates aka jujube
Pomelo
Rice?

I do not have access to concentrates and I can only get fruit that are in season now. I can buy apple, orange, peach, pear, and grape juice if needed.

Anyone have any ideas of a wine I could make that showcases one or a few of those ingredients?

Mead. Its made with honey. I think they have honey in china.. Make a melomel or a spiced mead (I forget the name for spiced mead, but I know there is one). If your interested PM me and I will give you my recipes. There is also a mead forum that more complete then what they have here.

Yeah honey is available, and i personally thought a green tea mead or a pomelo melomel would be great, however I have two concerns.

1. It can't require a lot of aging. I want to use them as gifts, and Chinese people love to drink haha. A couple months is fine, but id doubt theyd last longer than that. From what ive read on meads is they require a bit of aging to be good. Is that true?
2. Ive personally have never had mead, so although I have a heavy background in cooking and I can pair flavors well, its hard for me to pair a flavor im not familiar with. In my head a tea mead sounds nice, but maybe all the mead drinkers are cringing at that thought right now. Haha i have no clue.

What do you think?

You got tons of ginger, 4 ounces to a pound of ginger in a gallon, some sugar and yeast and some kind of nutrient, maybe from your Pomelo which will also add acid and off you go, wont take to long to age, everyone likes ginger. Also excellent in stir frys and as a merinade. WVMJ

Ooo ginger thats good, didnt think of that. I can get that nice and cheap.

ezzellca said:

1. It can't require a lot of aging. I want to use them as gifts, and Chinese people love to drink haha. A couple months is fine, but id doubt theyd last longer than that. From what ive read on meads is they require a bit of aging to be good. Is that true?

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Mead does not have to take a long time to age. It does get immesurably better with age but a propper recipe and steps taken can be drinkable after clearing.

You want a cooler fermentation like close to 60*F.
Use yeast nutrients like DAP and Yeast hulls or Fermaid K & Go Ferm While using a stepped nutrient addition regiment.
Finally make sure to make a good yeast starter in a low gravity must so the yeast colony have a chance to strengthen before going into your higher gravity must.

ezzellca said:

2. Ive personally have never had mead, so although I have a heavy background in cooking and I can pair flavors well, its hard for me to pair a flavor im not familiar with. In my head a tea mead sounds nice, but maybe all the mead drinkers are cringing at that thought right now. Haha i have no clue.

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Tea is a good tource of Tannins and can benifit a lot but too much and you end up with a very bitter flavor. I did a Chamomile mead once and it is a year old now and still pretty bitter for having too much tea.

With proper proceedures it is possible to have good mead in a short(ish) time but wine is better known for servfing more quickly.

Ginger and peach are known to go very well together. A ginger peach wine would be nice. Here are a couple gallon batch ideas you can gleen on and see if you like:



1 Gallon Peach juice
4oz fresh ginger grated and not skinned
1lb table sugar
1oz green tea leaves
1tsp Yeast nutrient
2tsp pectic enzyme
1 Camden tablet
Yeast (Red Star Cote De Blanc, Lalvin 71b are both good choices)

or if you dont have peach juice

6 lb Fresh peaches cut into 8th or smaller
4oz fresh ginger grated and not skinned
1.5lb table sugar
1oz green tea leaves
1tsp Yeast nutrient
2tsp pectic enzyme
1 Camden tablet
Yeast (Red Star Cote De Blanc, Lalvin 71b are both good choices)

Add your crushed Camden Tablet to the muct befor pitching the yeast and the pectic enzyme. 12 - 24 hours later add in pectic enzyme & then 12 - 24 hours after that pitch your yeast. It would be good to rehydrate dry yeast with 1/4 cup water and 2 TBS of your Must.

I made a jujube mead. Used 4# per gallon. I literally crushed them, placed in straining bag and added to 2 quarts hot water and then when everything was room temperature I started the rest of the assembly. The OG was 1.090. The fruit was removed and pressed on Day8, which was the day that my OG had dropped by 2/3.



I backsweetened some with 4oz honey per gallon and some with six ounces, and it is aging until at least June. It was ready to consume 3 months after starting, but I want to try to hold out as long as I can. It would be fabulous with a bit of vanilla and/or ginger. If you have dried jujube, simply steep them in hot water, or a cold steep in refrig for a few days.

Also made a mead using dried honeysuckle flowers. I had the flowers sent to me via a tea shop in China. It is quite nice, still young, but should age well. Looking forward to sampling again in June.

And there is a long, useful thread here--- https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/making-traditional-rice-wine-cheap-fun-different-361095/ This rice wine is ready for consumption within 21-30 days and can easily be flavored with any fruit/herb/spice you desire. I have been making it and rapidly consuming it! You just need yeast balls, they come in cake form like a big Mentos candy or more commonly in 10gm balls. It seems that most major provinces in China have their own variety, some yeast balls yield a sweeter wine and others a more sour wine. So far I have only used what seems to give me a sweet wine(see shared thread). Commonly you use 20gm of powdered yeast ball per 2.2kg dry rice which has been steamed, no water, but the thread will provide more details--we have been making it a few different ways & sharing details.

Gogi or wolfberry wine is also very good, dont know if you guys have it fresh or dried there, worth it for a unique taste. WVMJ

Wow so many great responses, thanks!

My father in law wants me to teach him something, and he has jujube trees in his yard. That wine will be perfect for that!

Yes we have wolfberries, they put them in poultry soups and in herbal teas sometimes, nice nutty flavor if i remember correctly.

Those ginger peach wines sound great. Really interested in making one. Quick question about the tea. I assume i add them in primary correct? When i move to secondary should i rack the wine off them or throw them in a mesh bag so i can use them in secondary too?

ezzellca said:

Wow so many great responses, thanks!

My father in law wants me to teach him something, and he has jujube trees in his yard. That wine will be perfect for that!

Yes we have wolfberries, they put them in poultry soups and in herbal teas sometimes, nice nutty flavor if i remember correctly.

Those ginger peach wines sound great. Really interested in making one. Quick question about the tea. I assume i add them in primary correct? When i move to secondary should i rack the wine off them or throw them in a mesh bag so i can use them in secondary too?

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its correct that mead is drinkable after clearing .............however, some meads clear more quickly then others. Ancient Orange will clear in about a month. That is honey, oranges, cinnamon, cloves, raisins and yeast. you can use dry bread yeast, but I would use 71b, The recipe is available on the Internet. I just cant remember it off the top of my head.

Ginger peach however will take alot longer then a month. I would give it about 6 months to drop out. Chinese might not care about clarity, but I would. I still have to bottle mine, in fact. If you want something quick Ancient Orange is the way to go, but another recipe will take longer.

you might also consider making 2 gallons of each, one for you and the other as a gift. One Ginger Peach and one Ancient Orange, and experiment as you go making other meads.

just my 2 cents

ezzellca said:

Those ginger peach wines sound great. Really interested in making one. Quick question about the tea. I assume i add them in primary correct? When i move to secondary should i rack the wine off them or throw them in a mesh bag so i can use them in secondary too?

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I do add the tea loose leaf in the primary. I usually let primary go for 1 - 3 months and rack off all sediment and clear from there. For a few wines and meads I have done with tea I did not see a need to bag the tea after primary and place in secondary.

johns said:

Ginger peach however will take alot longer then a month. I would give it about 6 months to drop out. Chinese might not care about clarity, but I would. I still have to bottle mine, in fact. If you want something quick Ancient Orange is the way to go, but another recipe will take longer.

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In my experience the opposite is the fact. Ancient Orange mead requires to use Bread yeast because it leaves a lot of residual sugar to balance out the Pithy flavor you get from fermenting the whole orange. Bread yeast is really bad at clearing because the yeast will not settle to the bottom well. I let my JAOM go for 3 months in primary, VERY carefully racked to bottles and there was still setiment in the bottles. I think if I really wanted it perfectly clear it would have taken 4 - 6 months.

If you use 71B to make the clearing faster I first highly suggest not doing that. The recipe is as it is for a reason. It can be seen in its full glory on the GotMead web site under the "NewBee" guide. But if I absolutley had to venture to say to use the 71b then I would up the honey from 3.5lb to 4lb per gallon and make sure to use the max amount of spices in that recipe since it does say they are "optional".

Peach wines only have a bad reputation due to terrible pectic haze. I did a White grape peach wine most recently and it was close to 2 months before it was super clear. It has now been in bottles for about 9 months I think and no sediment at all in the bottles. The trick is the use of Pectic enzyme correctly in that recipe. You use a bit more than is normally directed and make sure to add the enzyme before you pitch your yeast but after any use of Camden tablets. Oh and never heat the peachs at all. That makes fresh peaches a bonus because with canned peaches who knows what temps they are subject too.

I know this is an old post buutttt- Taobao. You can litterally get anything you need there. I just ordered some jasmine flowers for my Jasmine Pale Ale I'm about to make here... You can also get your hops, grains, whatever no matter what the season. I'd stick with Australian stuff tho, unless you're short on cash then you can go local. Just my opinion tho...