How To Make Dandelion Wine

How To Make Dandelion Wine

Making dandelion wine has a history of several hundred years at least.  At one time it was believed that magic was involved and that fairies were involved in turning an unpleasant tasting flower into a light and exquisite summer wine.  Entire families were involved in collecting the flowers to make dandelion wine. The process involves taking the collected flowers and making a tea which was allowed to ferment with the addition of citrus juice, sugar and yeast. 

I have made dandelion wine once and, it was a wonderfully light wine, which I completely enjoyed.  So take a look at this recipe How To Make Dandelion Wine and enjoy some very fine wine worthy of fairy magic. 

Here is a video of the process of making dandelion wine.  Some of the steps are slightly different than those used here as she uses a balloon as an alternative to the fermentation lock and use cheese cloth instead of tubing to siphon the wine into another vessel.

Equipment

With Wine Making, Sanitization is Most Important.  All equipment should be sterilized before use.  So sterilize your jugs, fermentation locks, bottles and plastic tubing before using them.  The equipment can be sterilized with a mixture of bleach for around ten minutes.  Be sure to rinse them completely before using them

• Large stainless steel pot (at least 2 gallon)
• Sanitizer (Unscented bleach or campden tablets)
• Candy thermometer
• Something to stir with
• 1 – 2 1 gal glass jugs (sterilized)
• 1 – 2 fermentation locks (from wine supply store)
• 3 ft 1/2″ clear plastic tubing
• Enough bottles for your batch (use champagne bottles if you make carbonated wine)

Ingredients

• 3 qts Dandelion Flowers (without the green stems)
• 1 Gallon Water
• 3 lb Sugar
• 1 lb White Raisins
• 1 Orange
• 2 Lemons
• Peels of the Citrus
• 1 Packet Winemaking Yeast or Champagne Yeast

Directions

• Pick flowers and remove the stems
• Put flowers in a large container. 
• Set aside one pint of water
• Bring rest of water to a boil.
• Pour the boiling water over the flowers and let sit covered in plastic wrap.
• Let sit for two days (No longer than this)
• Stir two times a day.
• After two days, bring the flowers and water to a slow boil
• Add sugar and citrus peels and boil for 1 hour
• Pour mixture into a crock
• Add citrus juice
• Let stand until cool (About 75 degrees F)
• Add yeast and put in warm place (60-65 degrees) for three days.
• Strain mixture into a jug
• Add raisins
• Insert fermentation lock and let ferment
• Let sit until fermentation ceases completely.
• Rack (siphon into a second jug) and top off with reserved water and refit fermentation lock.
• Let sit until clear.
• Rack again into clean and sterilized bottles and cork these.
• Let wine age for about six months

or

When ready to bottle, to make sure that wine won’t resume fermentation and burst bottles, crush 1-2 Camden tablets and add to wine to stop the fermentation.  Rack into bottles, cork and let age for six months.