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How to Make Pumpkin Wine – A Unique Pumpkin Recipe

September 29, 2018 by Laurie Neverman 45 Comments

Did you know you can make wine out of just about any fruit or vegetable with a fairly high sugar content – even pumpkin wine? One of my foraging mentors, the late Mike Jacisin, was willing to experiment with cooking and fermenting just about anything. One year he was blessed with an abundance of onions, so he made a batch of onion wine. Alas, said onion wine went down in infamy as the worst brew he ever concocted, and has become a running joke in our extended circle of family and friends.

This year we've been blessed with such an abundance of sweet onions that I'm seriously considering a small batch of the infamous brew, since I missed out on tasting the original, but thus far my husband has vetoed the idea. 🙂 Since he won't let me ferment onions, I'd like to share how to make pumpkin wine. Like Mike, I'm willing to bulk up my food and beverage storage with a wide variety of foodstuffs, and it's fun to break out a bottle of an unusual brew for friends. I am not a big wine drinker, but I love the rich, yeasty smell in my kitchen as the wine ferments. Wine is pretty forgiving, too. I've made batches that are better or worse, but nothing completely skunky like some of my beer brewing friends have encountered.

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How to Make Pear Wine – Easy Homemade Wine Recipe for Ripe Pears

August 15, 2018 by Laurie Neverman 50 Comments

When life gives you too many overripe pears, it's time to learn how to make pear wine. This wine recipe is dry, with a light pear flavor, and is a good use for very ripe and lightly damaged pears.

This recipe is adapted from “How to Make Wine in Your Own Kitchen” by Mettja C. Roate. “How to Make Wine in Your Own Kitchen” is old and hard to find, but if you can find a copy, snatch it up. The recipes use common kitchen ingredients instead of specialized wine making ingredients, which is great for the novice or incidental brewer. I did tweak the recipe a little to include winemaking yeast. You can make homemade wine with wild yeasts, but it's easy to make a mistake and go from homemade wine to homemade vinegar.
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Rhubarb Cherry Wine – A Fun Twist on Rhubarb Wine

June 16, 2018 by Laurie Neverman 17 Comments

When rhubarb is abundant, I like to use it in recipes like rhubarb pudding cake and rhubarbade, but I hadn't tackled rhubarb wine. When looking through my favorite old school winemaking book, I came across a rhubarb cherry wine recipe that looked like a perfect combination to use the rhubarb harvest and the stash of Door County cherries in my freezer. (You could use canned cherries, but the color won't be as bright.) I think it's fun to add some color to a basic rhubarb wine recipe, too.

If you'd like to give an easy homemade wine a try, this recipe is for you. (Look here for rhubarb growing tips.) [Read more…]

How to Make Elderberry Wine and Identify Wild Elderberry Bushes

September 2, 2016 by Laurie Neverman 53 Comments

How to make elderberry wine – it's something I've wondered about since watching Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail many years ago. 🙂 (“Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries.”) It turns out that making homemade elderberry wine is pretty easy, as long as you have elderberries. If you don't have wild elderberries nearby, you can buy plants and grow your own. (Seeds are not very reliable. I wouldn't waste my time or money on them.) I also make up elderberry jellies and syrups, too, but this post is all about the finding the berries and making wine. [Read more…]

Dandelion Wine Fruitcake – Fruitcake That Actually Tastes Good!

July 2, 2016 by Laurie Neverman 4 Comments

I have been asked a number of times if you can make a fruitcake from the discarded fruit leftover from dandelion wine making. People just hate to throw it out. I can now confirm that, yes, you can make dandelion wine fruitcake – and it tastes pretty good. My brother gave it a thumbs up and said it was some of the best fruitcake he ever tasted. The boys were more lukewarm in their reception. They could still taste too much of the wine, and they don't care for the flavor of wine.

First, if you want to try this recipe, you need to make a batch of homemade dandelion wine. (Fruit strained from other homemade wine making forays is likely to work, too.) When you strain the fruit out of the wine, set it aside for this recipe. It'll keep easily in the refrigerator for several weeks, if needed, because of the alcohol content. Think along the lines of “brandied cherries”, except in this case we have a wine soaked citrus and raisin medley. So, without further ado – dandelion wine fruitcake. [Read more…]