Ingredients for Making Nettle Wine:
- 1 bag nettle tops
- 1 gallon water
- 2 kg sugar
- juice of one orange
- juice of one lemon
- 1 heaped teaspoon wine yeast
- sterilising solution (for cleaning equpment before use)
- Instructions for nettle wine
Instructions for Making Nettle Wine:
- Remove bugs and bits of grass.
- Put nettle tops onto the stove in a large pot.
- Cover the nettles with about 4 pints of water and bring to the boil.
- After 15 minutes gently simmer
- Turn off the heat and after allowing it to cool for about 20 minutes
- strain the now light green juice into a large fermentation bucket.
- Add another 8 pints of boiled water, 1.2kg of sugar and the juice of one lemon and one orange.
- Stir until the sugar is dissolved
- Cover the bucket and leave it to cool.
- Later the same day, once the mixture has reached approximately blood temperature check the specific gravity (1080) which means that if all the sugar turns to alcohol the wine will be approximately 9%-12% alcohol.
- Add a heaped teaspoon of wine yeast and stir it in. Stand the bucket on some insulating layers of newspaper and wrap a blanket around it.
- The next day the mix will begin to bubble and continue to do so vigorously for 3 days.
- Then syphon off the juice into a sterilized demijohn and top it with an airlock.
- Three weeks later a sludge will have settled in the bottom of the demijohn, so siphon to wine to a clean demijohn and leave it another 6 weeks.
- Once the fermentation has finished bottle it and leave the bottles
- 2 weeks later open a bottle. As there will be no sweetness left, add two tablespoonfuls to the wine and drink a glass.
- Your nettle wine should now be ready