Rhubarb Wine and Rhubarb Sparkling Wine Recipes

Why make your own rhubarb wine?

There are many reasons to make your own rhubarb wines, including, the satisfaction of creating your own alcohol, showing off to friends and family, making a good use of the rhubarb patch, getting a flavour that is just right for you and perhaps most compellingly the cost is significantly cheaper as you don’t have to pay any tax on the alcohol. As an example of the tax savings, a bottle of our Rhubarb, strawberry and elderflower has £6 of tax paid on the bottle price of £18.

You can in fact make enjoyable wines from a very wide range of ingredients including – fruits, flowers, grains, vegetables, stems, leaves, spices, teas as well as many others.

Some commonly home made wines include rhubarb wine, elderflower, elderberry, plum and dandelion.

Rhubarb wine key requirements for still or sparkling

Essential equipment:

The basics will mostly be things that can be found around the house with the rest easily available online:

• A 10 litre food grade bucket
• Kitchen scales
• Measuring jug
• Tea towel
• A fine mesh bag (or other straining cloth)
• 2 x 5 litre screw top disposable plastic mineral water bottles (made of PET)
• A food processor
• A large sieve
• A funnel
• Closed top bottles for the finished rhubarb wines

The Ingredients:

• water
• sugar
• rhubarb (providing flavour, tannins, some yeast nutrition, minerals)
• a small amount of vinegar. The rhubarb will provide acidity but as you experiment with your rhubarb wine you can consider choosing to add other sources of acid, for example lemon juice, allowing additional ester formation

Special ingredients

• wine yeast (especially important if you are looking to make a rhubarb sparkling wine)
• yeast nutrient this is important to help the yeast react to make the alcohol 
• campden tablets

The alchemy:

The yeasts change sugar into ethyl alcohol, some glycerol, a little acetic acid and small amounts of 100s of other compounds.  The temperature affects the balance of the outcome. With the addition of time, (and pressure for your rhubarb sparkling wine) some of the alcohol reacts with various acids present to form esters providing additional taste and smell.  Some of the initial acids change into others.  Body for the wine comes from glycerol, alcohol, remaining sugars, tannins and minerals.

Rhubarb wine recipe: 

It results in a pink to straw coloured, refreshing, 11% alcohol, dry wine.

Ingredients:

1.5kg rhubarb (flavour, acidity, tannin like compound)

1kg sugar (forming alcohol, glycerol and residual sugars)

20ml white vinegar (forming an important ester)

water (cooled boiled to remove dissolved oxygen is best) 2.6 litres.

Sachet (5g) of wine yeast

Yeast nutrient (as per manufacturer’s instructions)

• Make a yeast starter as per packet instructions in a little water
• Meanwhile place water, sugar, vinegar and yeast nutrient in the clean food grade bucket. Stir a little to begin dissolving the sugar.  Leave (for 1 day) in a warm place such as an airing cupboard.
• When you see bubbles collecting at the edge of the liquid surface in the bucket then all the oxygen in the water should have been used up.
• Wash the rhubarb and chop up. Place in food processor and blitz until well mashed before adding immediately to the bucket contents. Leave at 15-20C, covered with a tea towel or lid (to keep off vinegar flies)
• Break up any fruit that forms at the surface daily (or you can float a plate on the top to keep the fruit pulp in close contact with the liquid). The sugar will dissolve fully over a few days, or you can stir up a little each day until fully dissolved.  If you have one then you can take a hydrometer reading every day or so.
• When the fermentation has passed its peak, (you will know this by tasting the wine if it is significantly less sweet, and is taking longer for the fruit cap to reform after breaking up) or a hydrometer reading of less than 1.025 is achieved, run through the scalded jelly bag and funnel into the clean 5L plastic water bottle. Squeeze out as much juice as you can.  Loosely screw down the lid so that a small pressure increase allows escape of gas.
• Leave to ferment at 15-20C until the bubbles produced slow to very few and most of the yeast falls to the bottom.
• Into the second clean 5L bottle crush half a Campden tablet
• Pour the liquid through the clean funnel onto the crushed tablet in the second bottle, leaving the yeast/ sediment mostly behind. Squeeze the sides of the second bottle until the liquid comes to the very top.  Then lightly screw on the lid so that air does not enter but gas could escape if there is excess.
• Leave to clear. Dissolved CO2 will fill the head of the bottle.
• When fully clear pour the liquid into clean closable bottles/ containers. Make sure to fill the containers to within 1cm of the top and close with airtight seal.  Screw top plastic or glass bottles are good, or you can use swing top bottles.
• Leave for a minimum of 3 months before drinking (to allow ester formation to occur), this is probably the hardest part as you will want to taste your work as soon as possible!
• When it is ready serve it chilled as you would a Rose wine and then enjoy.

Rhubarb Sparkling wine recipe

To make a rhubarb sparkling wine, follow the recipe above with the following simple amendments

• Definitely use a wine hydrometer
• When in the first 5L bottle and still fermenting – carefully monitor the hydrometer readings – possibly daily.
• At a reading of 1.010 now bottle into sealed containers. Swing top bottles are good.  Recycled champagne bottles with push in plastic champagne corks and wire cages are almost ideal.  Otherwise plastic bottles with the tops screwed down lightly (just bighting) to allow escape of any excess pressure.
• Keep the fermentation at 15-20C for 2-3 weeks.
• Drink within a couple of months
• Serve by first chilling the bottle upright in the fridge for a couple of hours and then pour into your champagne flute, leaving the small amount of yeast sediment behind.