# Wild fermented young country wine



## TimT (26/3/14)

Saw this recipe yesterday - a method for making a wild yeast fermented wine from some fresh picked fruit, water, and sugar.

Link! 

The advice given is to stir regularly, getting rid of bacteria that might settle on the surface, and presumably with an added benefit of giving yeast oxygen.

Wonder what folks think? A similar method could presumably be applied to beer, cider, etc etc....


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## Airgead (26/3/14)

Its not so much bacteria you are inhibiting with the stiring but moulds. Moulds are aerobic (need oxygen) so submerging them will kill them.

It will certainly work. The aeration will encourage aerobic processes like yeast growth. You stop stiring once the fermentation kicks off so it becomes anaerobic then which prevents acetobacter. You are likely to encourage lactic bacteria as well as yeast so this would possibly have a sournerss to it but its made to drink young rather than be aged so that shouldn't be a problem. Should make it nice and tart and refreshing.

Whether this is any better than good sanitation and a closed fermenter I don't know. Its pretty old school.

Mr Katz sports a damn fine set of whiskers though. A man with whiskers as fine as that must be correct.


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## Airgead (26/3/14)

Oh yeah... would work for cider certainly. Think scrumpy. Beer though not so sure. The yeast for this sort of thing comes mostly from the fruit, not the air. The boiling will kill off anything that came from the grain so you are relying on whatever is in the air. That's going to be a real lottery unless you are a 300 year old Belgian brewery that has built up a helpful microflora in their coolship rooms.

You could thrown in some unboiled grain but grain has vely little yeast on it (its mostly starch so inaccesable to yeast) but is covered in lactic bacteria. It will definitely end up a sour beer.


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## Not For Horses (26/3/14)

I knew as soon as I saw the thread title that it was started by you TimT!

My parents used to do this kinda thing when I was a kid. They stopped doing it before I was old enough to drink but some of their friends still use a method much like this so I have tried a few over the years.
Rosehip wine and plum wine are the two I remember but there must have been others. Some were very good, some a bit rough. Never had one that was undrinkable though.


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## Dave70 (26/3/14)

I think three things.

1 - That's a super sexy thread name.

2 - The gentleman making the wine is wearing the ugliest shirt I've seen in quite some time. 

3 - On the other hand, he sports a fine pair of mutton chops and I bet he belongs to an historic society and on weekends wears a top hat and rides a penny farthing bicycle. 


Supplementary thing I think - This kind of fermentation sounds to me to be very random in regard to the finished product. 
But I've got a mate with a plum tree and I own a few mason jars, so what the hell.


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## TimT (26/3/14)

Woah! Rosehip wine!

Couple of friends have mentioned this sort of thing too, so it must be pretty commonly known.

Maybe you could start off an ale wort fermentation just by chucking in fresh fruit. Insects spread lots of yeast too, I hear.... in fact I think I read that some fleas have been found to have saccharomyces cerevisae living comfortably in their innards...


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## Not For Horses (26/3/14)

I thought rosehip wine was a fairly common thing.
Never made it myself but maybe while the wife and I are out picking sloe berries this year I'll grab a few bucketfuls and try it. They're free so why not!


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## TimT (26/3/14)

_I thought rosehip wine was a fairly common thing._


Yeah, but I still find the concept _completely cool_!

I want to do an ale aged over rosehips fairly soon.


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## Not For Horses (26/3/14)

That is exactly what I am doing in a few weeks!
Hawthorn and sloe berries in a dark ale. Quite delicious.
Maybe I'll chuck some rosehip in as well.


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## TimT (26/3/14)

A Tasmanian brewer - Van Diemen's Brewing, I think (or a variation on that name) - had a short release amber ale aged for a few months over hawthorn and rose hips. So yeah, kind of got the idea from them.

I got some ground rose hip powder (intended for teas) from a organic food shop a while ago and used a few spoonfuls in a micro batch of porter I was brewing a few weeks ago. Initial taste tests good, though we'll see how it ages (an infection might have got into it).

Doing a Scottish light brew at the moment and intended to age it for a while over blackberries, juniper berries, and hawthorn berries. Hopefully the bitterness from some of the darker malts I threw in will complement/bring out the tastes of the fruit.


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## Not For Horses (26/3/14)

This one:

http://craftypint.com/beer/beer/van-dieman-hedgerow/

I like it. Some don't. Fruit does that to people.


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## Mardoo (26/3/14)

Yeah, I had that one. Tasted like a hedgerow smells in autumn. Wished the flavor was a bit more intense.


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## Airgead (26/3/14)

Dave70 said:


> 2 - The gentleman making the wine is wearing the ugliest shirt I've seen in quite some time.
> 
> 3 - On the other hand, he sports a fine pair of mutton chops and I bet he belongs to an historic society and on weekends wears a top hat and rides a penny farthing bicycle.


That gentleman is the great Sandor Katz. Author of THE book on wild fermentations (for all sorts of stuff.. kraut, kimchi, wines etc). He lives apparently in an organic, queer and transgender commune somewhere in the US. So probably no to the penny farthing and top hat.

He does indeed rock the whiskers. I grew a set like that once for movember but mine were nowhere near as amazing.


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## Mardoo (26/3/14)

Airgead said:


> That gentleman is the great Sandor Katz. Author of THE book on wild fermentations (for all sorts of stuff.. kraut, kimchi, wines etc). He lives apparently in an organic, queer and transgender commune somewhere in the US. So probably no to the penny farthing and top hat.
> 
> He does indeed rock the whiskers. I grew a set like that once for movember but mine were nowhere near as amazing.


A bustle and lace parasol then?


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## TimT (26/3/14)

Think Katz left the commune some time ago. Though he writes with a great deal of detail on all manner of fermentation process, you can still see the gleeful kid in him.... he likes fermentation because it's just damned fun. Whee! Look at those lactobacilli go!


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## Airgead (26/3/14)

He writes a mean book as well. The Art of Fermentation is amazing.


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## Mardoo (26/3/14)

Indeed. Great book.


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## philmud (26/3/14)

I saw Katz speak last month, he does indeed still live in a Radical Faerie commune in Tennessee, though he often says communal living is intense, so he takes extended breaks now and then.

I'd been dabbling with fermented foods anyway, but I've stepped it up since seeing him speak - beet kvass, misozuke, water kefir with various sugars and juices, limes, olives from the tree on my nature strip. His enthusiasm is infectious!

I even got a photo with him, though I ought to have known better than to be photographed with such a formidable set of chops!

Tim, would be interested to hear of your progress with the country wine - what fruit do you have in mind?


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## TimT (26/3/14)

Ha, no, I have no immediate plans for a wine of this sort. It could be fun to do next summer though.

in my copy of The Art of Fermentation Katz says he doesn't live at the commune, so evidently it was written during one of the away stages. My mistake


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## Hintadupfing (28/3/14)

TimT said:


> A Tasmanian brewer - Van Diemen's Brewing, I think (or a variation on that name) - had a short release amber ale aged for a few months over hawthorn and rose hips. So yeah, kind of got the idea from them.
> 
> I got some ground rose hip powder (intended for teas) from a organic food shop a while ago and used a few spoonfuls in a micro batch of porter I was brewing a few weeks ago. Initial taste tests good, though we'll see how it ages (an infection might have got into it).
> 
> Doing a Scottish light brew at the moment and intended to age it for a while over blackberries, juniper berries, and hawthorn berries. Hopefully the bitterness from some of the darker malts I threw in will complement/bring out the tastes of the fruit.


Planning exactly this (amber/ darkish ale with rosehips and hawberries) at the moment. Both are growing in abundance in Canberra at the moment.

What I really want are sloes, though. Anyone?


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## Hintadupfing (28/3/14)

Also, I really should check on those bottles of rosehip wine I have stored away from last year.


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## Airgead (29/3/14)

They grow wild round Bundanoon...

I think you are a bit late though.


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## Not For Horses (31/3/14)

Not sure about Bundanoon but it is tradition now for my wife and I to head out on the first Saturday afternoon of April to pick sloe berries.


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## brewtas (31/3/14)

This is pretty much how Jester King in Texas got the house yeast & bacteria cocktail they use for all their beers. They blogged about it the other day and I'm very keen to give it a go.


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## TimT (31/3/14)

Lovely! I think I'll give that a go sometime, definitely.


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## Not For Horses (10/6/14)

Sooo I gave this a crack kind of. Not the Katz method but more of a rosehip wine. But with sloe berries.
1kg berries, 1kg of sugar and 4ish litres of water.
Most recipes called for pectic enzyme but I didn't have any so I grated some apple and added it to the crushed berries and left it for 24 hours hoping that pectinesterase would achieve a similar outcome. No idea if this was worthwhile.
I added some of the wild yeast I've been culturing lately so it's still kind of wild fermented.
It is super sexy and looks a little like this:


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## Not For Horses (2/8/14)

I just had a sample of this one and it is very delicious. The wild yeast is going a bit sloe (pun very much intended) but it is still visibly fermenting.
Also tried the rosehip wine I made the same day but with a commercial flower wine yeast. That is more dry but has a really nice floral/earthy aroma and a subtle tannic finish.
Oh and it looks like this:


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## TimT (2/8/14)

I bottled my rosehip mead a week or so back. The taste was very dry and because I didn't have that many rosehips to start with their taste was quite subtle (by which I mean, I couldn't taste that much at all). I expect they've given the mead a little tannin and flavour which will become evident when it's matured a bit. Next step, to make a rosehip beer....


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