Chili wine

[scmgre]

I have been going through Judith Glover's inspirational book from 1979, drink your own garden,
I have made blackberry wine; Victoria plumb wine, Raspberry wine, Greengage wine, Elder-flower champagne, elder flower wine. Basically anything i can find growing somewhere in abundance and pick although i have steered clear of the lettuce wine as it sounded a bit boring,
I currently have a huge crop of chilies comping on Peruvian Purples and normal green chilies (SWMBO banned me from ever growing scotch bonnets again).

It's nuts but i quite fancy turning them in to wine does anyone have a recipe/experience with this? I get the feeling 500 grams for a 1 Gallon batch might be pushing it.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

I developed a lime and chilli wine for a Korean company some years ago, we used way less than that but then we were using Habanero. Do you know the approximate Scoville score of your chillies?

 

[scmgre]

The Peruvian purples are 50,000 to 60,000 i don't find them that spicy. the others are 20,000 to 30,000. The scotch bonnets were 200,000 so will not be using those.

 

[wynnum1]

They put a whole chili in beer when bottling could probably do the same with wine have you tried potato wine .

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Ok, so at roughly 10% you would get you either around 5000 SHU with the Peruvians or around half that with the others. I'd have thought 5000 would be a bit one dimensional; all you'll see is the chilli heat.

One thing to remember is that capsaicin is pretty hydrophobic so if you ferment on the chilli it will extract slowly at first and then more quickly as the alcohol rises. You could exploit this effect to give you more flavour upfront and then pull the chillies when it gets to the heat level you want.

IIRC we went with about 1000 SHU, but I really wanted the lime to dominate early and then the chilli to kick in late, hence the use of a moderate amount of Habanero (they have a really good late kick).

 

[scmgre]

Thanks for all the advice:
[SIZE=10.5pt]I made it after having to defrost the freezer 4 weeks ago, ended up doing a blackberry and chilli wine. They either had to be used or chucked I ended up making far too much as I had 4.5 kg of blackberries, but only 2 demijohns. I went for about 200 grams of chillies (including some scotch bonnets as I just couldn’t bear throwing them away) in 12 litters of must sitting in the primary for 2 weeks. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=10.5pt]I have 2 gallons (9litres) in carboys fermenting away and I had to chuck 3 litres as i didn't have a spare carboy [/SIZE][SIZE=10.5pt]L[/SIZE][SIZE=10.5pt] .( My raspberry wine was still going in the third). Tasting during the transfer and there was a bit of heat but the blackberry was definitely in the fore ground so will have to wait and see what it turns out like in 8 months.[/SIZE]

 

[Dave70]

Hey Gareth, does she deal with Mulberry wine in that book? Ours are coming into fruit now and I'll have buckets of the stuff (fruit).
Can you share your method for blackberry wine? I assume the process would be fairly similar.

 

[scmgre]

Yes she does her words:
Mulberry pg 61

Mulberries make a good sweet red wine which needs maturing well. Gather the berries when they're quite black and at there ripest.
Mulberries 1.8kg
Sugar 1.6kg
Camden tablet 1
Pectin enzyme 1 tsp
Water 4 l
Strip the mulberries from the stalks crush well add five pints 2.8 litres of boiling water
When cool add crushed Camden tablet
Bring anouther 2 pints of water to boil 1.1 litre and dissolve sugar in it
When syrup has cooled to blood heat add it to mulberry pulp with yeast and nutrient
Cover in a warm place (for the uk measure of warm so Sydney a cool place ) to ferment for 3 days stirring twice daily
Strain the liquid off the pulp into a 1 gallon Demi John and top up with cool boiled water if necessary
Fit Bing and airlock and leave to ferment on, racking when wine starts to clear.
When fermentation has finished and wine has cleared, bottle and store in a cool dark place to mature for at least 9 months preferably a year.