Rose Hip Wine

[D the Catastrophist]

Have a field of Wild roses staring at me, so I think I may try my hand at rose hip wine.

I probably will do a variation on the Jack Keller recipe:

3.5 lb rose hips.
3 lb sugar
1 gallon water.
1/4 c golden raisens
1 cambden tablet
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
1 tsp acid blend
1 packet wine yeast.

Rose hips will have the ends cut off and be frozen. I think instead of coarsely chopping I will boil and crush them to avoid cutting the seeds.

I do see that this is a wine that needs 2 years aging so will set a reminder to try a bottle 2 years out.

 

[Northerngal]

This sounds like a really cool experiment. I would use white grape concentrate OR white grape juice as a substitute for raisins & water. And what kind of wine yeast? A lot of these delicate floral wines don't do well with EC-1118 (aggressive).

 

[D the Catastrophist]

D47 for the yeast.
Per lalvin:
"D-47 is a vigorous white wine yeast that will leave a wine very full bodied with enhanced mouthfeel. Accentuates varietal character and contributes ripe tropical fruit and citrus notes. Recommended for Chardonnay and Rose as well as mead..."

 

[D the Catastrophist]

Also, for anyone else thinking to do this- freeze the rose hips before you start cutting the tops and stems off, it makes it significantly less messy.

 

[SatchIce9]

I made some Rosehip wine last year, using a very similar recipe to the above, that I found in Judith Irwin's book 'A Step-By-Step Guide To Making Home Made Wine'. I back-sweetened it with about 25g/l of sugar, to make it medium level of sweetness. I had no idea what Rosehip wine would taste like, but I tried a bottle after aging it only for about 7 months. It was amber in colour with slight pinkish hue, and had a sharp citrus flavour due to high amount of Vitamin-C in the rosehips. It actually reminded me of the flavour of tinned mandarin oranges (remember those at birthday parties as a kid, with jelly and ice cream)!
I also made a second batch, but modified the recipe by adding some red grape juice (2 litres per gallon) to make it more of a rose colour, but I think I prefer the first batch without red grape juice, because it had more character.

 

[Rodent]

I used to hybridize roses years ago at a advanced hobbyist level. the best way I found for making the seeds available was to run the hips thru an old blender (not food processer)

when done properly I'd have pulverized rose hip flesh and intact rose seeds that could then be processed and eventually prepped for germinating. no viable rose seeds were chopped up in the process

 

[SatchIce9]

I used to hybridize roses years ago at a advanced hobbyist level. the best way I found for making the seeds available was to run the hips thru an old blender (not food processer)

when done properly I'd have pulverized rose hip flesh and intact rose seeds that could then be processed and eventually prepped for germinating. no viable rose seeds were chopped up in the process

In Judith Irwin's Rosehip wine recipe, she warns: "Do not process them in an electric mixer as this will break the seeds and release the bitterness."

What I do after collecting the rosehips is cut off the woody tip and the stalk, wash them in water with a campden tablet dissolved in it, then drain them and put them in a container and freeze them. When I want to use them to make a batch of wine, I defrost my rosehips overnight, then squish them with a mallet or heavy rolling pin to break the flesh up without breaking the seeds.

 

[Rodent]

In Judith Irwin's Rosehip wine recipe, she warns: "Do not process them in an electric mixer as this will break the seeds and release the bitterness."

What I do after collecting the rosehips is cut off the woody tip and the stalk, wash them in water with a campden tablet dissolved in it, then drain them and put them in a container and freeze them. When I want to use them to make a batch of wine, I defrost my rosehips overnight, then squish them with a mallet or heavy rolling pin to break the flesh up without breaking the seeds.

That's definitely a cautious approach, just not my personal experience having pulverized countless rosehips over many years and using the seeds to germinate my new babies. Maybe she used a commercial grade blender with super sharp blades, whereas I used an older unit that was shy on power and definitely didn't have the sharpest of blades.

I wonder if frozen rosehips could be thawed, mashed up with a big commercial sized potato masher (mine was $12 at a local restaurant supply store), and then passed thru a food mill with a screen sized to hold back the seeds. if so, it could make seed removal significantly less work

 

[D the Catastrophist]

So after almost 3 weeks, primary is complete and racked to secondary. Even with the rosehip being in a brew bag, have a decent amount of particulate.

You can see in the photo a distinct color line. It all started out one color and the darker colored particles began to settle out quickly. These pictures were only taken about 5 minutes apart and you can see how much it settled in that time. Now, not even a week later everything has settled even more, it has maybe an inch of lees and is definitely starting to clear. I will leave alone until late November before racking it off the lees. Right now has a very tart/acidic taste so will probably end up backsweetening later, but considering several recipes called for aging 2 years before drinking, I'm not in a rush.

 

[cottonwoodks]

At what point do you pick the rosehips? Should they have started to soften? Would it work once they're all dried out? (Like rehydrating them?)

 

[D the Catastrophist]

At what point do you pick the rosehips? Should they have started to soften? Would it work once they're all dried out? (Like rehydrating them?)

I had read that it was best to pick in the fall after the first frost as that is when they have the highest sugar content, so that is what I did. I picked the ones that were still plump and unblemished.

They went in a bag and were frozen. This is a pretty critical step as otherwise they are so soft they make a horrible mess when processing.
You may want to pull out in batches so they remain frozen well prepping.

Once frozen I cut off the tips, and the bottom where it attaches to the stem. Some recipes recommend cutting in half and de-seeding. Some don't as the seeds add a bit of tannin. I didn’t de-seed as it would be a absolutely huge pain and add quite a bit of time, and probably double or triple the amount of rosehip I would need to get the same weight.

I know you can buy dried rosehip and make wine with that. I don't believe you have to rehydrate as a separate step,but as I have never done that I don't know. I know when I use dried fruit I do not rehydrate before. If dried rosehip are the same as dried fruit, then by weight you use about 20-25% when dried, so for this, recipe, about 0.80 lbs.

 

[cottonwoodks]

I had read that it was best to pick in the fall after the first frost as that is when they have the highest sugar content, so that is what I did. I picked the ones that were still plump and unblemished.

They went in a bag and were frozen. This is a pretty critical step as otherwise they are so soft they make a horrible mess when processing.
You may want to pull out in batches so they remain frozen well prepping.

Once frozen I cut off the tips, and the bottom where it attaches to the stem. Some recipes recommend cutting in half and de-seeding. Some don't as the seeds add a bit of tannin. I didn’t de-seed as it would be a absolutely huge pain and add quite a bit of time, and probably double or triple the amount of rosehip I would need to get the same weight.

I know you can buy dried rosehip and make wine with that. I don't believe you have to rehydrate as a separate step,but as I have never done that I don't know. I know when I use dried fruit I do not rehydrate before. If dried rosehip are the same as dried fruit, then by weight you use about 20-25% when dried, so for this, recipe, about 0.80 lbs.

Thanks! I have plenty of rosehips I can harvest, including ones that dried on the bushes. I made one batch of pear wine once with rose hips in them, but I couldn't really discern any difference between that and the wine without rose hips. Going to try just rosehips next year. (Or maybe now, depending on what I can harvest.)

 

[D the Catastrophist]

Thanks! I have plenty of rosehips I can harvest, including ones that dried on the bushes. I made one batch of pear wine once with rose hips in them, but I couldn't really discern any difference between that and the wine without rose hips. Going to try just rosehips next year. (Or maybe now, depending on what I can harvest.)

One thing I have read is that rosehip wine benefits from a long aging process(at least a year).

 

[D the Catastrophist]

Racked off the lees today. Pretty impressive clearing in a month.
Flavor is significantly less tart than a month ago. If comparing to a grape wine, I would say tastes like a viognier. I suspect I will end up backsweetening slightly but not much. Now the waiting begins. Probably won't touch until February.

 

[SatchIce9]

So after almost 3 weeks, primary is complete and racked to secondary. Even with the rosehip being in a brew bag, have a decent amount of particulate.

You can see in the photo a distinct color line. It all started out one color and the darker colored particles began to settle out quickly. These pictures were only taken about 5 minutes apart and you can see how much it settled in that time. Now, not even a week later everything has settled even more, it has maybe an inch of lees and is definitely starting to clear. I will leave alone until late November before racking it off the lees. Right now has a very tart/acidic taste so will probably end up backsweetening later, but considering several recipes called for aging 2 years before drinking, I'm not in a rush.

When I racked my 2 gallons rosehip wine from the primary fermentation bucket after 7days, I used a sieve to remove the chunkier pieces, followed by a double thickness of straining bag to trap the smaller pieces, into a temporary holding bucket. I then let that temporary bucket sit with a lid on for an hour for most of the sludgy & heavy sediment to settle out, then syphoned the wine above the sediment into my seconday demijons. This left me with 2 demijons full to the shoulder, which I topped up to the neck with 200ml of sugar syrup of the original gravity (1.084 or 230g/l), and fitted airlocks. When secondary fermentation finished, I had 2 full demijons with only about 0.5-1cm of sediment at the bottom.