Sweetening the Rhubarb Wine

 A few days ago, I picked up two bottles of Sweet Reserve from +Jim Miller at the St. Albert Wine Kitz store.  He also offered some thoughts about rhubarb wine and it's extreme acidity.  I learned that it can be advisable to add chalk to the must, just to neutralize the acid.  (Now, why have I never seen that in any posted recipes for rhubarb wine?)

Sweetening the rhubarb wine.  Carboy, bottle of sweet reserve,
wine glasses with different amounts of reserve (sweeter from
left to right), measuring spoon, and notebook)

This morning, I got to work on sweetening my rhubarb wine, which was too dry and acidic to enjoy.  Using a wine thief, I removed approximately 250 mL of wine and placed it in a measuring bowl.  Then I poured out 1/4 cup (62.5 mL) into each of four wine glasses.  Using a 1/2 tsp (2.5mL) measuring spoon, I added different amounts of sweet reserve to each glass, stirred each, and then tasted them all.  Here are the results:

 

Glass #2 was the winner.  The addition of 5 mL per 62.5 mL of wine is a 0.08 added volume equivalent.  Using some algebra, I determined that I needed to remove 840 mL of wine from the full carboy, and replace it with an 840 mL of sweet reserve.  This step went smoothly.  I stirred up the new mixture with my plastic mixing 'stick', and sealed the carboy with an air lock.  My plan is to let it sit for a few days just to make sure it's stable, and then I will clarify it.

Just for fun, after sweetening, the specific gravity was 1.010.  (I haven't worked it the exact amount yet, but this was a LOT of added sugar.)

Happy Canada Day!

It's a Learning Curve

For a number of reasons, I waited until today to rack and stabilize the rhubarb wine.  This was partly due to just being busy, and partly a conscious decision to let this fermentation go to virtually 100% completion.  This afternoon, the bubble rate was about one every four minutes.  If that's any indication, then this fermentation was awfully close to being 100% complete.

The racking went smoothly.  I took a specific gravity reading (0.990), which would correspond to 16.3% alcohol.  Hmmm.  This is pretty strong stuff!  I also took a small amount in a glass for tasting...

Oh dear.  It's rhubarb mouthwash.  The last time I tasted the wine, at the first racking, there was still some sugar present, and it was delicious.  The acidity of the rhubarb and the residual sugars balanced each other and gave some nice flavours.  At this point, all the sugar is gone.  There is no more sweet!  It's just pure acidity.  This is a dry, acidic wine, probably only good for marinating fish or something like that.

So, what would I do differently next time?  In hindsight, I should have stopped the fermentation and stabilized it a few days after the first racking, when there would have been some sugar left to balance all the acid from the rhubarb.

In any case, I went ahead and stablized the wine.  When I added the potassium metabisulfite, I noticed a colour change.  This compound certainly appears to be causing a bleaching of the colour (see below).  It remains to be seen whether this is reversible, like it was the first time:  http://randomfermentations.blogspot.ca/2014/05/rhubarb-wine-beginning.html

(1) Rhubarb wine after racking and addition of a small amount of postassium metabisulfite (left).  The photo on the right was taken about 1 minute after the first one.  Notice the colour change.

This really is a bit of a bummer.  I put a lot of work went into making this rhubarb mouthwash!  On the other hand, I learned a good lesson:  Listen to what your taste buds tell you!  If the alcohol level is close to where it should be, and it tastes good, then it's time to rack and stabilize.

Just like many things in life, there is a learning curve to this.  It's important to continue and try to get it right the next time.  My rhubarb plant has grown back (it's gigantic), so I have the materials to start again.  Next time, I'm going to listen to my taste buds.

Rhubarb Wine: Interim Satisfaction

Twelve days ago, I started the rhubarb wine.  I've been out of town for half of that time.  Today, I got around to checking on the progress.  When I opened the lid on the plastic bucket and looked at the surface, I could tell that fermentation was on the tail end.  There just wasn't a lot of "activity" in terms of bubbles.  I quickly sterilized a 3 gallon carboy and my auto-siphon and got to work racking the wine into a carboy.

Some observations:

1. Specific gravity = 1.012.  The initial s.g. was 1.097.  Therefore, the approximate alcohol content at this point is somewhere between 13.0 and 13.5 %.  (It's getting close to being done!)
2. The colour!  There is a nice peachy pink colour now.  I thought the colour had been totally  bleached by the campden tablets, but there might be something else going on.
3. The taste!  (Naturally, I tested it!)  There was no tartness at all, just a mild rhubarb flavour, along with a gentle grape taste from the concentrate that I added.  This has the potential to be a very nice dessert wine.

Front: Rhubarb wine, with some colour.  

Back: Mead, just prior to adding kieselsohl.

Mead v.1 has been sitting in a carboy for about 12 days as well, and there was a nice build up of lees at the bottom.  I racked it into another carboy and then added the kieselsol, which is step 1 of the finings.  And, I sampled the mead too.  It's getting better!  The taste has mellowed out a little and I think it will be really nice when it is chilled.

Rhubarb Wine - An Inauspicious Beginning

The forced rhubarb thing actually works! As you can see in the picture below, the stalks are pale looking, and the leaves have very little green pigment. The forced rhubarb stalks themselves are very tender, and have none of that celery-like fiber that makes rhubarb so tough.  This is all good, but my  forced rhubarb was not a 100% success.  In places where the rhubarb had received a bit of light before I covered them up, or from imperfectly dark conditions, the rhubarb grew to an intermediate state.  It wasn't quite like the forced rhubarb in the picture below, but it wasn't like normal rhubarb either.

 

(1) Me and my forced rhubarb.

So, having collected all the rhubarb I could, I chopped it all into thin slices.  The result was 17 cups of chopped rhubarb.  I placed it in a big white plastic bucket and added 6 L of water and two crushed Campden tablets.  The Campden tablets are added to keep the bacteria at bay.

(2) Chopped rhubarb in water.

The next morning, I scurried off to the store to get some pectic enzyme.  Pectin is a carbohydrate in cell walls.  Pectic enzyme helps break it down and that, in turn, releases more of the sugars and flavors.  When I returned, and opened the lid on the bucket, I was very surprised.  Overnight, the red colour of the rhubarb had been bleached!

This was initially a mystery to me.  The bucket was rinsed well before use (i.e. perish the thought that there was any bleach leftover from sterilizing).  Campden tablets, however, contain potassium metabisulfite, which is a reducing bleach - something I just learned.  That means it bleaches colours by removing oxygen as opposed to adding oxygen (which is how household bleach and peroxide work).  So, for now, I'm going with the idea that the culprit was the small amount of metabisulfite in the Campden tablets.  It's going to be a "white rhubarb" wine.  At least it still smells like rhubarb!

(3) Bleached rhubarb

I added 1/2 tsp. of pectic enzyme and stirred the mixture occasionally for the next 36 hours.  At 48 hours, I removed the rhubarb from the water by straining.  Then, I added 1 L of white grape juice concentrate, and 14 cups of white sugar.  This was not some magic recipe: I simply kept adding sugar cup by cup until the specific gravity was between 1.095 and 1.100.  The final value was 1.097.

I added 3 tsp. of yeast nutrient and a packet of activated yeast.  And then I went to bed.  The fermentation is now underway in the bucket.  It smells good!

Forced Rhubarb

A couple of weeks ago, my dear wife attended a local talk on perennial gardening.  She came home and reported on "forced rhubarb", which involves covering a head a rhubarb in the spring, just as the ground begins to thaw.  Apparently, this forces the rhubarb to grow sweet, tender shoots that can be used to make very good rhubarb wine.  This got my attention, as I have been musing about making rhubarb wine since last summer.

From a cursory internet search on forced rhubarb, I learned that this cultivation method goes back to 19th century England.  Rhubarb farmers took heads of rhubarb and placed them in dark, coal-heated sheds. The rhubarb plant would then grow stunted, pale shoots.  Under these conditions, carbohydrates from the roots are converted to glucose, which makes the rhubarb very sweet.  There must be some very interesting plant physiology behind this!

We have a very healthy rhubarb plant in our backyard.  (In Alberta, has anyone ever seen an unhealthy rhubarb plant?)  Typically, I harvest the rhubarb three times every summer.  Sometimes, I dice it up and freeze it.  Most of the time, I can it.  Canned rhubarb is great for making desserts throughout the long prairie winters.  Rhubarb-apple crisp is delicious.  It's a bonus that our oldest son likes to make it for the family.

So, I am attempting to "force" the rhubarb this year.  The rhubarb is just starting to poke up from the ground.  It may be a week too late to "force" the rhubarb properly, as the plant has already made leaves, and they have been exposed to sunlight.  I really don't know for sure, but it's worth the attempt!

(1) Rhubarb head, with new shoots.

In any case, I covered two rhubarb heads with black PVC pots.  These are just cheap garden-centre pots for larger plants.  With black duct tape, I sealed up the drainage holes in the bottom of the pots.  This is meant to keep all of the light out.

(2) Black plastic pot/bucket to cover a rhubarb head.

My plan is to keep the plants covered for the next 4-6 weeks and see if I get any "forced rhubarb".  After that, I will harvest it and make wine.  There are a number of recipes for rhubarb wine.  I like the fairly simple one posted on "Rhubarb-Central.com":

http://www.rhubarb-central.com/wines-rhubarb-wine-recipe.html