No.71 – So what’s brewing?
A view of the Bachmann Scenecraft Brewery with the local ‘pick up’ goods setting back to pick up some empty coal wagons from the boiler house. Note the trailing connection with the ‘main line’, much safer than facing points?
Bachmann Scenecraft Brewery
It is summer and rather than completing the scenery effort
has gone into brewing real beer and making wine. Is there time to look behind
the scenes?
Maturing Wine (Rhubarb and Parsnip)
We have been making our own ‘country wines’ for over forty
years and now seems to be an opportune moment to share some ideas. I think
there are no hard and fast rules to making wine. However two books which have
provided us with guidance and inspiration are listed below. Sadly both books
are probably long out of print.
- ‘Pick, Cook and Brew – food from the hedgerows’ by Suzanne Beedell, 1975, Mayflower Books Limited.
- ‘Food for Free – a guide to the edible wild plants of Britain’ by Richard Mabey, 1972, Fontana/Collins
Gallon container, stainless sieve and plastic funnels
A good starting point might be the equipment that we use to
make our home made wine? A lot of our equipment was bought from Boots the
Chemist (when they were a proper shop), the first demijohns being purchased
from the now defunct branch in Peebles in 1973.
Lots of plastic, glass and stainless steel – all
scrupulously clean. Usually the wine will be stored for twelve or more months
before drinking so it is essential that all utensils and storage vessels are
carefully cleaned before use.
All our wine is made to the same basic recipe. The starting
point is a sugar syrup made from two and a half pounds of granulated sugar
dissolved in a little over one and a half pints of water. With experience the
quantity of sugar used to make the syrup can be changed, two and three quarter
pounds to make a sweeter more syrupy wine, two and quarter pounds to make a
lighter drier wine.
The sugar syrup is then flavoured with the fruit or flowers
of the moment. The flavour is extracted by covering one gallon of the prepared
fruit or flowers with boiling water and letting it stand for 24 hours. The
resulting fruit or flower syrup is referred to as the ‘must’ and should be
covered with a muslin or tea towel to prevent the uninvited attentions of
insects and other organisms.
One gallon of strawberries covered with boiling
water.
After 24 hours the fruit syrup can be poured off and placed
in a demijohn along with the sugar syrup.
To each gallon demijohn we add the juice of half a fresh
lemon and a small teaspoonful of a quality wine yeast.
Lemon juice and wine yeast
There have been lots of strawberries this year and the
liquor has a nice red colour. Elderflowers also seem to have been much in
evidence and produce a more delicate wine.
Fermenting – Elderflower and sugar syrup after about one
week.
After about a fortnight the initial vigorous fermentation
should have calmed down and the loose paper towel in the neck of the demijohn
can be replaced with a more permanent airlock. Later, after about a month the
fermentation should appear to have ceased and the demijohn can be stored in a
cool place and the wine left to mature. The wine should be left in the demijohn
for at least twelve months, with occasional checks on the airlock to ensure
that it still has its water seal in place.
Testing – Rhubarb 2012
After twelve months the wine is ready for drinking – cheers!
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