Rhubarb Wine

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Yooper

Ale's What Cures You!
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3 lbs. rhubarb (stalk only)
1/4 pt. white grape concentrate or 1/2 lb. of light raisins (chopped)
7 pts. water
2 1/4 lbs. sugar
1/4 tsp. tannin
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1 campden tablet (crushed)
1 tsp. pectic enzyme
1 pkg. wine yeast (champagne) I used Montrachet

Use stalk only. Freeze fruit and then place in mesh bag and tie up. Place in primary and let thaw. Dissolve sugar in a little boiling water and dissolve campden and pour over fruit. Let sit 2-3 days, stirring daily, and keep pimary covered. Then, strain fruit out and discard. Add all other ingredients (using cold water) except yeast. Cover. 12 hours later, add yeast and stir well. Cover loosely with a towel. Stir daily, breaking up cap. When s.g reaches 1.020-1.040, rack into secondary, top up if needed, and attach airlock. Rack as needed, adding campden every other racking. This throws alot of lees, so you may need to rack as early as two weeks. When there are no lees for at least 60 days, and the wine is clear and done fermenting, it is ready to bottle. Tastes best after at least one year.

Dry, this tastes a bit like pinot grigio. You may prefer it sweetened, but I don't sweeten.
 
OK, Yoop.....you and I seem to be the mad Michigan winos. I just got 4.8 pounds of rhubarb given to me today, and they're going into the freezer as soon as I type this post!!

Wish me success!:ban:

I made rhubarb custard pies today, but this weekend I'll cut rhubarb for wine! I'll cut it and stick it in the freezer until I make a batch. I think I'll make about 5 gallons this year- I still have 6 gallons to bottle from last year! It's beautifully clear- a nice golden color, believe it or not!
 
No! Never boil fruit for wine making! Just rinse it off, cut off the bad parts and leaves and freeze. Freezing helps break up the cell walls, so the fruit should be very mushy when it thaws.
 
So when you say "sugar", do you recommend white sucrose (table sugar) or something like dextrose? I've got my rhubarb in the freezer to start this on the weekend.
 
Table sugar. It works well for wines, and especially fruit wines, since it's only there to boost the ABV. It doesn't leave behind flavors like honey might.
 
Another Q. Would it be acceptable to knock down the sugar a little in this to make a wine that's 11-12% instead of 15% which your numbers seem to come out around? What's your opinion on that? :)
 
Another Q. Would it be acceptable to knock down the sugar a little in this to make a wine that's 11-12% instead of 15% which your numbers seem to come out around? What's your opinion on that? :)

Mine came out to about 13%- 1.095 to .992 or so. (I can't see the actual numbers once I hit "reply"). I think that it's best to stay at 13% or under- otherwise you have rocket fuel that takes ages to age out!

You want to go 12% or so, to ensure you have enough alcohol to preserve the wine more than a year or so. But more than that is really not necessary, and increases the aging time.

When I make this again in a few weeks, I'll try to hit 1.080-1.085, for a 12% ABV wine.
 
Ok, I'll take your word. I put your numbers for OG and final G into a calculator, and the strongest case scenario was around 15%, but that's assuming that you start off at your max gravity and it goes all the way to your expected minimum gravity.. 12% is what I'm aiming for, because I've got a 16% mead, and it's still like jet fuel after 8 months.
 
I made a two gallon batch based on Yooper's recipe........it's fantastic! Very dry, but still a delicate flavor that's definitely identifiable as rhubarb. What a great wine! Next season, it's gonna be a five gallon batch!:ban:
 
Gotchya, I was just trying to reconcile all the wines and most leave everything in until after fermentation (like the pumpkin wine I was working on today). The 8 gallon fermenter was not enough room for a 6 gallon batch so I had to leave out some of the pumpkin and sugar water and do a 5 gal batch instead. The bucket is filled to the brim (just so much pumpkin!) I'm worried about fermentation.
 
You guys know much about Rhubarb? I was talking to my brother about making this wine and he swore up and down that it was a bad idea, repeating over and over that "anything with rhubarb in it goes bad real fast". I was planning on making a batch and putting a bottle in the basement, i like keeping one bottle of all my batches down there for long periods of time to see how they age out.
 
Most things you're brother makes probably don't have a 12% alcohol rating :) There's proof by at least two members here that it's great after a year even.

My 75 year old neighbor came over yesterday during a brew day to distract me while my pot boiled over :D Really he came over to talk about his son in law making Rhubarb wine and asked if I'd be interested. I said shoot yea. He's going to pick some form his garden and clean it up real good and chop it for me and bring it over. Going to scale this recipe depending on how much he gives me and make this up. This will be my first wine, besides apfelwein, which isn't really a wine. I've never used tannin, campden tabs, or pectic enzyme before or dealt with constant racking and lees. Should be fun. I'm hoping to get enough for a 5G batch since there will be so much time invested in waiting.
 
I started a rhubarb wine some 5 weeks ago and admittedly went a little high on the sugar guess and started at 1.130 but had no room to water her down any more so I just went with it.

I think it stalled as when I racked it over last sunday it was at 1.022 and this sunday I checked again and its still at 1.022. Should I pick up some yeast nutrient or what?

Thanks.
 
I started a rhubarb wine some 5 weeks ago and admittedly went a little high on the sugar guess and started at 1.130 but had no room to water her down any more so I just went with it.

I think it stalled as when I racked it over last sunday it was at 1.022 and this sunday I checked again and its still at 1.022. Should I pick up some yeast nutrient or what?

Thanks.

You may need to get some more yeast- a higher attenuating yeast like champagne yeast if you didn't use that before. You're already at 14% ABV, so you may not get it going again. Starting yeast in a high alcohol environment is not easy. What yeast strain did you use?
 
I used k1-v116. Just what I had in the fridge.

Would it be stable at this point, just super sweet?

Maybe not. The alcohol tolerance of that yeast strain is around 18%, if it's happy. You can try dissolving some nutrients in a little of the wine, and then stirring it in. That may encourage it to get going again.
 
Well I put in yeast nutrient about 2.5 weeks ago and now its down to 1.012.

I don't see any action. How long should I wait to call it close enough?
 
Well I put in yeast nutrient about 2.5 weeks ago and now its down to 1.012.

I don't see any action. How long should I wait to call it close enough?

I don't know! I guess you can just stick it in the corner, top it up and wait and see. Once it's completely clear, and not dropping any more lees, you can probably consider it finished. I would be very hesitant to bottle until it's been clear for quite a while- you'd hate to have fermentation finally restart and shoot out your corks.
 
So its been another month (ish).

Just checked it and its at 1.012 yet. Still taste good. It did drop more lees.

So... should I just go bottle it or do another rack/top up and wait another month?

After taking another taste, I think I should just put a tap on it and drink it... :)
 
So its been another month (ish).

Just checked it and its at 1.012 yet. Still taste good. It did drop more lees.

So... should I just go bottle it or do another rack/top up and wait another month?

After taking another taste, I think I should just put a tap on it and drink it... :)

Well, if it's so clear that you can read a newspaper through it and it's not dropping lees, it's probably done.
 
I think I'll bottle it this weekend.

Thanks for you help yooper_brew. I spent 4 years in Houghton (2004-2008) and met my wife in Marquette. We both wouldn't be surprised if one day we end up living back in the UP.
 
I think I'll bottle it this weekend.

Thanks for you help yooper_brew. I spent 4 years in Houghton (2004-2008) and met my wife in Marquette. We both wouldn't be surprised if one day we end up living back in the UP.

We love it here! Both of my kids were born here, and my grandson also. We are always outside, and love the lakes and rivers. We spend a ton of time on our boat or in kayaks, and hiking. In the winter, I play hockey. This year we'll be spending about 6 weeks away, just because it's COLD here!
 
Yooper,

made this batch up the other night along with some welch's problem is i used all of my pectic enzyme in the welch's batch. is my rhubarb wine going to be okay without the P.E. or is this stuff headed for a long run down the drain?

Thanks
Ben
 
Pectin can cause a haze in a wine. Certainly not something that should make you dump the batch if it shows up. IF.
 
Same neighbor came over today while brewing and said his Rhubarb is about ready. Probably about 3 weeks and we'll have ~15 lbs. So it looks like 5G. I'm a little worried about what his opinion is on what should be done. He said something like lbs and lbs of sugar. and that it definitely needed cooked :eek:
 
question on this recipe- this is my fist go at anything with 'wine' in the title so i just want to make sure. i have made lots of ciders, beers, and bottled liquids that were supposed to be beers. i converted the 1 gal recipe to 5L to fit my small carboys (= 1.3x) and converted it to metric so i could make sense of it, and it has me using 2 kg sugar in 5L, which is 30% sucrose, or around 1.130, is this a bit high? even if it only gets down to 1.012 that's over 15% alcohol. i was sober when i did the math, but did i maybe forget to carry a 1 somewhere? actually it's too late since i already started the batch. it sounds delicious and i am already looking forward to next years rhubarb season when i open the first bottle. thanks in advance for any suggestions, reassurances or belittling comments.
 
Dinner, here's what I come up with for conversion

3 lbs. rhubarb (stalk only) (1.35 kg)
1/4 pt. white grape concentrate or 1/2 lb. of light raisins (chopped) (.12 L or .226 kg)
7 pts. water (3.3 L)
2 1/4 lbs. sugar (1 kg)
1/4 tsp. tannin
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1 campden tablet (crushed)
1 tsp. pectic enzyme
1 pkg. wine yeast (champagne) I used Montrachet


X 1.3 (if you really want to up it... I'd just make 4 L of the stuff and use your current carboy)


1.76 kg rhubarb
160 ml white grape concentrate or 294 grams light raisins
4.29 L water
1.3 kg sugar
1/3 tsp tannin
1.5 tsp yeast nutrient
1.5 campden tablets
1 tsp pectic enzyme
1 pkg yeast

Should be a close conversion to a 5 L batch.



I'm going to start this recipe sometime soon. I just pulled 3.5 lb of rhubarb out of the garden, washed it and stuck it in the freezer.
 
question on this recipe- this is my fist go at anything with 'wine' in the title so i just want to make sure. i have made lots of ciders, beers, and bottled liquids that were supposed to be beers. i converted the 1 gal recipe to 5L to fit my small carboys (= 1.3x) and converted it to metric so i could make sense of it, and it has me using 2 kg sugar in 5L, which is 30% sucrose, or around 1.130, is this a bit high? even if it only gets down to 1.012 that's over 15% alcohol. i was sober when i did the math, but did i maybe forget to carry a 1 somewhere? actually it's too late since i already started the batch. it sounds delicious and i am already looking forward to next years rhubarb season when i open the first bottle. thanks in advance for any suggestions, reassurances or belittling comments.

As Conpewter did the math, I will trust him! I use about one KG of sugar in 1 gallon. I ended up with an OG of 1.090ish.

Ideally, you'd only use enough sugar to get you to your desired OG, but I didn't see your post until just now.

The thing that will help is this- rhubarb seems to drop a lot of lees and requires several rackings. Each time you rack, you can top up (well, MUST top up) with water or a light white wine. If you use water, you will reduce the ABV and the "hotness" of the wine.

Your math is a bit off, I think. 1 US gallon is a tad less than 4L, about 3.79 liters. You could have made a 4L batch with my recipe. Multiplying by 1.3 "upped" it a bit, I think.
 

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