Lavender wine, ginger beer.

Hello folks, it’s been a while! I’m feeling fermenty again though. Mainly, I decided I wanted to brew some lavender wine, because my friend had made some, and I tried it, a little reluctantly, considering his warning ‘Some people say it tastes like soap, some people say it tastes like their granny’s wardrobe…’. But actually, I loved it, and could definitely chug a few bottles of it. I need to be a bit more diligent about the process this time though, the last few wines I’ve brewed failed or turned out just a bit yucky, and I think it’s because I got cocky and thought I could just forget about them, I don’t think I really racked any of them until I was bottling…I shall do better this time. Here’s a pic of the must! 

Lavender flower, some fresh, some purchased from the Wholemeal shop, Well St, E5. Plug plug. It’s a nice shop run by a nice man. Also used sultanas, a teabag for tannin, wine yeast, nutrient and citric acid.

So, it’s as easy to ferment multiple things as it is to ferment one, as long as you have enough space. If you’re gonna be using some kind of radiator based set-up to keep things warm, that’s going to be warming a larger area than just one batch, so I decided to get some ginger beer going too. That’s a short ferment, and I just googled for a recipe and found one for which I had all the ingredients at hand. Really all it is is making gingery sweet water, chucking in some yeast and letting it get fizzy over the course of a few days. There will be some alcohol in the resulting brew of course, and the longer you let it ferment, the more booze there will be. I plan to start drinking this four litre batch on Monday, and see how it progresses by the time I’m finished with it.

Excuse the fuzzy pic, tbh there was no way this was going to be a ‘nice’ pic regardless so I didn’t put in any effort. As you can see, it’s just a re-purposed water bottle, which I found in a neighbour’s recycling. Thank you neighbour! The lids of these bottles are soft enough to pierce quite easily with a nail, a skewer, a metal knitting needle, whatever you got. A pen would do the job I’m sure but then you might get it a bit inky…Then you can shove your airlock into it and Bob’s your uncle.

I think you could do this one without an airlock, if you trust yourself to let the gas off every once in a while. Especially with as much room in the container as you can see here, and since it’s a short ferment, it would probably only fill up with gas a couple of times. But seriously, be careful with this kind of thing, even plastic bottles can hurt you real bad if they explode on you.

 

UPDATE!

I’m currently drinking some ginger beer. Honestly, this recipe was a smidgen on the weak side, both in gingeryness and sugaryness I think. So I drank some yesterday, but didn’t decant the whole lot, I added some more sugar and some dried ginger powder and let it keep fermenting. I like it better today. I’m doing the same again, see how boozy it’ll be by Friday.