14 Februrary 2021 - Update. Loads of people are looking at this post today. Can someone drop me a comment to explain why? Thanks!
For several years I have been thinking about the letter J for my wine alphabet. I had rejected 'Jam' as a cheat, though there is a recipe and we have many jars of ancient and random jam in our attic. Jack-fruit comes in tins, is fibrous and has an odd, meaty texture. Much as I would like to turn Jerusalem Artichokes into wine, I don't think we are growing them in sufficient quantity. The solution presented itself at my wine party last week. Rodney suggested Jasmine flowers, which would be expensive and difficult to obtain. Liz refined this to Jasmine Tea, which is sold in Sainsbury's and works out at 10p a bag.
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| The ingredients, plus a gate-crashing orange |
On checking
my diary for Tea Wine, I noticed that I had written "Never make this wine again", or words to that effect. Advice is there to be ignored. Anyway, that was black tea, and this is Jasmine Green Tea, so it is bound to be different. I remember that my previous tea wine had too much flavour - it was cloying, strong and too sweet - so I have cut down the quantities of most ingredients.
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| Measuring the tea |
It being the end of October and with me not having made any wine so far this month, I started the wine this morning, 29th October. This time I have used 1
¼ oz of tea (which was 15 tea bags, ripped open and shaken out), 3 oranges (just the juice), 1 lb minced sultanas and 2
½ lbs of sugar. I boiled 2
½ pints of water and poured this over the tea in my bucket. This brewed while I squeezed the oranges and minced the sultanas (in the food processor). I put these in the bucket, added the sugar and then poured in another 5
½ pints of boiling water. I can't imagine that adding the water in two stages will have made any difference, but this is what I did last time (and that was obviously such a success).
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| Stirring the tea |
When I came to put in the fermenting aids on Sunday evening, I found my wine-making tin bereft of yeast. A quick Facebook message to Liz and a saunter down
Bentcliffe Drive saw me returning with her tub. I added a teaspoon plus nutrient and pectolase. The wine went into my demijohn on Thursday evening, 2nd November. Currently its colour is an unattractive greeny-beige, and I fear this will taste awful. But now, at least, the alphabet is complete!
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| The end of the alphabet |
If you want to see how this wine turned out, click
here.
Hi Ben, hilarious just saw your updated comment. I'm a few days later than your rush of Feb 14th but are people are homebrewing due to lockdown? Or there's some secret code embedded here? I've been making philistine wine for a while, I tried a jasmine green tea mead which was nice but too slow so I typed in JGT wine and yours was the first search result! Also white, english, middle-aged (44 is that the middle? I guess we'll see, if I don't drink myself to an early death with dodgy homebrew and not sure if I have any class...😆) keep rockin the Internet with your wine porn Ben! Lynne of Brighton.
ReplyDeleteHello Lynne of Brighton! I think that something about Jasmine Tea and liqueurs was mentioned on Alan Titchmarsh's Sunday morning television programme - or that is what I get closest to on Twitter. But it was truly bizarre. I get about 40 hits a day generally (on the blog as a whole, not just on Jasmine Tea), and within 20 minutes, I had about 180 people all looking at my recipe for Jasmine Tea wine (which is by far from my best - it is bordering on the 'Punishment Wine' category).
Delete44 is 'young' these days - I turned 50 last year. And thank you for stopping by and particularly leaving a comment.
Ben of Leeds.