Rhubarb Wine 2015 - The Making Of ....

Our rhubarb plants, particularly that from Claire's grandmother's garden, are doing well this year. This is despite great sections of them having been put in pots in anticipation of the house move (which finally appears to be speeding up a little). It has been a dry, warm spring so far and all our rhubarb has flowered. I understand that this is a Bad Thing, but the flowers are pretty, in a vaguely alien, threatening way.

I pulled and chopped the first two pounds of rhubarb at the beginning of this month and stored it in the freezer. Today, Sunday 17th May, is our first full day back at home after a wonderful week in Suffolk and Claire's first gardening job was to prune the rhubarb. This produced another 2½ lbs, all from her grandmother's plant. Shirley's rhubarb is far pinker so I got most the remainder from that, even though it has put out less growth and I have seen both our cats pissing on it. I washed this rhubarb with care.

All rhubarb - 6 lbs of it - was cut into thin slices and went into the bucket. I reached for the sugar. There was a space on the shelf where the sugar should have been, which is poor planning. I poured 7 pints of boiling water into the bucket, dashed over to Sainsburys to get sugar, returned, put 6 lbs sugar into the bucket and the remaining 7 pints of boiling water.

Rhubarb in bucket with water and yeast (Champagne variety)

 I put the yeast and 2(ish) teaspoons of nutrient in on Monday morning, stirred twice a day until Friday 22 May, and then put the liquid into its demijohns. Using a collander as a scoop in the first stage made this a rapid job. Claire was going to sit in the kitchen and be companionable, but got bored during the sterilisation and rinsing process, so went to bed instead.

The rhubarb having a particularly frothy ferment

I could have used a pint less water for this wine. At this point it is its usual Barbie pink.