OhCripes.com

I have wanted to make it for a long time and seeing as I have a fine crop of fresh “flowers” in my front yard; I decided what better time to give it a try.

I did a few searches around for easy recipes that didn’t call for a bunch of exotic ingredients and that also wouldn’t require a year or better of aging before I could actually drink it.

I used the following recipe which I found on hombrewit.com:
_____________________________________________________________________________
2 quarts dandelion flowers
3 lbs. granulated sugar
1/2 oz. yeast
1 lemon
1 orange
1 gallon boiling water

Pick the dandelion flowers (heads only) on a fine day when the flowers
are open. Wash the flowers very well to remove any insects, etc., and
put them in a large bowl. Thinly slice the lemon and orange and add
the slices to the dandelion flowers. Pour one gallon of boiling water
over the dandelions and stir well. Cover the bowl and let stand for
10 days.

After ten days, strain the liquid off into another bowl and stir in 3
lbs. granulated sugar. Spread 1/2 oz. of yeast on a slice of toast
and float on top. Cover the bowl and leave it set for another 3 days.

After three days remove the toast and strain the liquid again, put into
bottles but DO NOT cork or cap. Cover bottles and let set until fermentation
stops, this could be up to three months. Then cap or cork.
This wine is very nice when new, but of course will improve
with age.

Note: I believe that the idea of spreading the toast with yeast and
then floating it on top was probably a way of trying to keep the
wine mixture clear. I really believe you can mix the yeast in a
little of the juice mixture and put into the liquid.
Either way shouldn’t cause any major problems.
_____________________________________________________________________________

I started by wandering around my yard plucking the blossoms off the dandelions until I had what I perceived as two quarts worth much to the bemusement of passerbys.


I decided that I would just use the entire blossom with the green portion rather than cutting it off and consuming an immense amount of time. After seeing some discussion of a few homebrew sites that said there wasn’t a noticeable difference between batches with and without I figured why waste the time.
I thoroughly washed the blossoms while waiting for the 4 quarts of water to boil and I also sliced two lemons.

I didn’t have any oranges so rather than make a special trip to the store I just used a second lemon. There both citrus so what can it hurt right?

Once the water was boiling I poured that onto the dandelion/lemon slice mix where it will sit untouched for 10 days as prescribed by the above recipe.

This is going to take a while. No whining, now is not the time.

5/10/07

Ok, today I strained all of the dandelions out of the mix making sure to squeeze all of the juice out.

Then, per the recipe I mixed 6 cups (3#) of sugar in the juice. Next I mixed a packet of yeast with some luke warm water and spread it evenly on a piece of toast.

Once satisfied that there was enough yeast I carefully floated it on top of the dandelion juice.

5/13/07

Tonight I removed the toast/soggy bread and filtered the mix with the very lively yeast into a 1 gallon carboy(jug).

Now it truly is a time to sit back and wait. I fit the carboy with an airlock, labled it with the todays date and placed it in a nice warm, poorly lit area in my upstairs office. Yeast doesn’t like cold temperatures and sunlight.

Now, according to the recipe this could take up to 3 months to finish fermenting. I used some Lavlin champaign yeast so it may be done sooner. Check back for my soon to be posted Lilac wine endeavor.