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Evgeny Strizh – Dandelion Wine – A Step-by-Step Recipe-
“Take summer in your hand, pour summer into a glass – into the smallest, of course, from which you will only take a single tart sip, bring it to your lips – and hot summer will run through your veins instead of a fierce winter …” Bradbury wrote.
Dandelion Wine is one of Ray Bradbury ‘s most successful and well-known books . And many people who read it perceived the drink of the same name described in the book as a metaphor, a kind of “magic” recipe for the protagonist. For wine in our country, slightly different crops are preferred, and dandelion, like a weed, is a sworn enemy of almost any summer resident. Meanwhile, the recipe for dandelion wine is quite real, available due to its simplicity to any gardener and will help fight the “suns” not for nothing, but for the sake of raw materials for the drink.
Preparation of ingredients
For the simplest recipe, we need:
dandelion flowers – about a liter capacity;
kilogram of sugar;
half a liter of water;
two lemons;
100-150 grams of raisins;
a few leaves of mint or lemon balm (to taste).
Note that you only need to collect yellow petals for wine. We also do not recommend using flowers growing along highways, roads, dusty areas or areas actively flooded with “chemistry” for the recipe.
Making wine from dandelions
Gently pour the dandelion petals into the pan, combining with sugar according to the principle of a layer cake: a layer of petals – a layer of sugar – a layer of petals, etc. Note that the fresher the petals, the better. Then we send it to storage in a dark place for about two days.
We add half a liter of water and put it in storage again – now for three days.
As a result, we should get a cloudy syrup that needs to be decanted into a glass container (best of all – in a jar). If necessary, the petals can be squeezed out, or you can fill it with water again and repeat the infusion procedure.
If you add mint or lemon balm, crush them in a mortar or grind with a knife as finely as possible, then put them in a jar of syrup.
Then we add raisins to the syrup (you don’t need to wash it), and cut the lemons in two and squeeze the juice out of them into the same jar. If you like the taste of bitter zest, you can add it too.
Next, leave the jar in a dark place for the wine to ferment. It is recommended to use the time-tested method and put a rubber glove on the neck of the jar.
Determining that the fermentation is over is very simple – the glove will begin to deflate. After that, you will have a jar of wine and a cloudy sediment, it is important to carefully pour the liquid into the bottles, avoiding impurities of the turbidity.
Next, the wine is sent for maturation – bottles with it should be kept in a dark, cool place for at least a month. After that, it is ready for use.
Indeed, the taste of such wine is especially pleasant on a winter day, as if taking you to a sultry June, it will fill your soul, memory, and dreams with sunlight.
credit: Rannells, Greg
