Carrot Wine 1

Started 1st July 2012

The local fox raided our tubs of carrots, probably hunting for slugs. Most of our home grown carrots had been dug up, most of them still small, baby carrots. So we decided we might as well make our first carrot wine.

In our ideal world, all our wines will be from home grown or foraged foods - we wouldn't normally buy any fruit or veg to make wine with. But as we only had about 1.5lbs of our own carrots, we bought a couple of bags of cheap carrots while we were out today. 1.5kgs (approx 3lbs) of carrots are only 69p in Morrisons, so not a big expense.

This is a basic carrot wine recipe for 2 gallons. It takes about a year for the wine to clear and be drinkable, so we'll see how it turns out. Some recipes use sultanas, which can give some extra body to the wine, others don't. We decided we would do this, but we didn't have enough sultanas, so used a mixture of sultanas and currants.

Carrot Wine 1
Ingredients:
8lbs carrots
4lbs sugar
1lb currants
1/2lb sultanas
1 pint strong black tea (for the tannin)
6 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons Youngs wine yeast

Step 1:
Add sugar to bucket
Slice the carrots - do not peel or grate them
Boil the carrots for about 20 mins until soft but not mushy
Strain the liquid from the carrots into the bucket to dissolve the sugar
Add the currants and sultanas to the bucket
Add the lemon juice to the bucket
Add the tea to the bucket
Stir well, cover and leave for 12 hours

Step 2:
Add yeast to bucket and stir well
Cover and leave for 10 days, stirring every day

Step 3:
Strain through a sieve into clean, sterilised demijohns
Fit airlocks
Store in a warm place until fermentation has finished

Step 4:
Rack off into clean demijohns
Leave in cooler place for 6 months

Step 5:
Bottle and drink