I just dug up small section ofJerusalem artichoke patch, still a lot more in the ground. I am wondering if anyone had made wine out of it?? I am curious what the wine might taste like
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Thanks，I will check it out
would love to hear how it turns out. In Europe the are often distilled into a liquor called “Topinambur” “Topi” or “Rossler.”
those are good twice fried and eaten as chips
Inulin the is a fiber that consists of long chains of fructose sugars. Its bacterial crack, yeast have no problem consuming it but you are going to want to take extra efforts to sterilize everything maybe even pressure cooking the tubers in addition to sodium/potassium metabisulfate. You can also likely improve you yields by freezing and thawing the tubers a few times. JA’s naturally convert inulin to fructose becoming sweater and more delicious over the winter this way. Also your going to want to ferment this mash as cold as possible. Using cold fermenting yeast like Whites Labs WLP749 or Lavin D-47 , K1V-1116. high temp fermentation tends to produce more methanol and acetone.
Thanks for such detailed information. I do have D47 on hand. It produce lower alcohol level wine
Sliced thin like potato chips or cut like French Fry’s?
Will report back once the wine is made. I don’t think will distill it into liquor.
sliced like potato chips, fried once in medium hot oil just to cook them until soft, allowed to cool down to room temperature or put in the freezer, then fried again at medium hot until crispy, season with salt
but french fry style might work with the same approach
D47 goes to 14% alcohol or maybe even 16. I usually try to keep mine 11-15% anyway as a rule, unless making a faux port, to keep flavors in balance.
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I pitched the yeast into a gallon batch of cranberry wine this evening. Hope to have some ready to drink next Christmas.
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Just a heads-up, but in my experience at least cranberries make a good wine from juice alone. If you do whole fruit i would consider mincing, or some other means of cracking them, many berries at a week of fermentation refused to burst or macerate well
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Very good tip, that is mostly juice with about a cup of cranberries added to give it a little extra cran, it’s hard to tell in the photo but I cut the berries in half , they kind of float with the whole side up. They really do look like whole berries in the picture. I think it is starting to work, I have read that cranberries can be hard to start as they are so acidic.
By the way I have always hesitated to try my hand at wine making though being interested for years. After reading your post on unemployment hooch I thought heck what’s the worst that could happen so I made a half gallon of cider with bread yeast , not bad . I bought some equipment and now have a few gallon test batchs brewing, thanks for the encouragement.
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Cranberry is a good place to start, so is cans of Welches White grape raspberry. When you’re starting out and antsy You can usually get a pretty solid wine from clear storage us within like three months or even less if you fine it
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I bet white grape raspberry would be good. Hopefully I can get some experience this winter using juice I purchase and next summer maybe get real fruit.
Could not find any white grape raspberry but did find apple raspberry and apple cherry in frozen concentrate. Made two one gallon batches today. I’m getting better at reading/understanding my hydrometer. These small batches are good practice. I increased the lemon juice by a couple table spoons and also increased the amount of dark tea I put in . I put more sugar in as well . I have a start specific gravity of 1.1 on the apple cherry.
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I loathe hydrometers but you can get a solid refractometer on amazon for like $30.
Refractometers only tell you sugar, w hydrometers you can monitor residual sugar vs alcohol so long at you take sg notes…there are converters online to help adjust the % sugar and % alcohol, as they inversely alter hydrometer readings. I just hate filling up the whole hydrometer vessel over and over again, and I’ve had too many hydrometers crack over time So I know I’ll try to get a pretty solid handle on starting gravity with my refractometer by cutting fruit thinly sliced (pears, etc) and or treating heavily with pectic enzyme (berries, a couple freeze-thaws help too), And then giving it at least 24 hours in pectic enzyme and 48 in sulfite to equilibrate, then taking my refractometer reading again to make sure I have a semi stabilized reading of percent sugar…
*edit: I know I have said it before but Paris make a very very good Chardonnay type wine, For us we shoot for about 6 pounds or maybe seven per final gallon. I have not tried peach wine but pears and apples make very good wines as do BlackBerries or blueberries
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Store apple juice is shit for making hard cider, They just don’t use the red varieties. That said combining them with another bold and/or tart fruit helps Immensely. So does adding something to increase the starting gravity. For that reason alone making up a gallon of apple cherry or whatever else, and then adding another can of either apple concentrate or the concentrate that you are using can make a pretty solid hard cider. For example I could see fermenting a gallon of apple cider until it was almost dry and then adding a couple bottles of Ribena, or taking a gallon of apple juice and fermenting it out with a can of grapefruit juice concentrate, but I have not tried either…The only reason I would add Robina towards the end is you want a bunch of yeast in there already and actively going, the Starbit in Ribena colud block yeast reproduction so you might be reliant on the yeast already present and want as many as possible. Alternatively langer or someone makes black currant juice—I HAVE How did that about a bottle per 3 gallons of apple cider along with a couple cups of sugar to boost the gravity and that is very good
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