Mint, Lavender and Elderflowers

Mint, Lavender and Elder

Went to ‘rents and noticed huge pot full of mint so I asked what they were using it for and they said nothing! I grabbed a bag and scissors and filled half the carrier bag. At home I hung them to dry in garage, bundled in bunches with hair bands and with paper clips as hooks to attach them to an old hanging basket chain.

Also put a few on a tray in the freezer as an experiment to add whole leaves to drinks etc.

Picked the few lavender flowers we have and hung to dry in porch

After tea(not in midday sun , better for me but not for the elderflowers) me and the kids went for a drive to collect some elderflowers. Picked enough to make elderflower cordial, elderflower wine (used 4pts of boiling water, will add the rest of the water when I make it up in a demijohn) and a test run of drying flowers. They are on a hanging airer, in the garage with a laundry basket underneath to catch any falling flowers. All recipes from selfsufficientish.com and reproduced below.

Later, we went over the lotty and the kids watered the seedlings, beans & peas and the sweetcorn. Not sure it’s done properly but it’s done..!

Elderflower Cordial

An easy to make drink that can be frozen in plastic bottles, leaving room for expansion, so it can be enjoyed all year round. It will keep for almost a month if just bottled, although is best to drink within 2 weeks. To ensure no mould, it is better that you freeze elderflower cordial and it can be enjoyed as a christmas drink. I also will be showing you how to make this soon on selfsufficientish.tv

Ingredients

20 elderflower heads

1 sliced lemon

2 tsp of citric acid (ask at your chemist)

1.5 kg (3.5 lbs) of sugar

1.2 ltr (2.5 pints) boiling water

Method

Boil a kettle for the water.

Fill a bowl or small bucket with all the other ingredients.

Pour the water over the other ingredients and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Skin the surface of the water to get rid of the scum that can arise. Cover with a cloth (mine has a pillow case over it).

Stir twice a day for five days.

Strain though a fine sieve though a fine sieve or through muslin cloth and decant into sterile screw topped bottles. Refrigerate.

As with other cordials dilute with 5 parts water to serve .  Experiment with it and add it to some of your favourite spirits. It is really nice as a gin mixer.

Elderflower wine

Ingredients

Grated rind of one lemon

500mls (1 pint) of elderflowers – to obtain this pick or shake of the elderflowers

and place into a measuring jug. Don’t push them down but do shake them down. Be careful not to add any of the bitter green stems.

3.5 litres (8 pints) of boiling water

1.3kg (3 lbs) sugar Juice of one lemon

25g (Half an ounce) yeast

Method

Put lemon rind with the elderflowers and pour over boiling water

Allow to stand for 4 days, stirring occasionally.

Strain through a fine sieve or muslin cloth

Stir in sugar, lemon juice and yeast

Keep at room temperature to ferment, try not to let it go down to 18c (65f)

When you are sure all the bubbling has ceased, stir the wine and allow to settle for 3 days

Strain again carefully

Put in a demijohn (not bottles)

After 3 months maturing, put into bottles.

rosehip not medium

I transfered the rosehip must from the bucket to a demijohn tonight via a nylon seive as per the recipe. According to Mr Berry, it should be a medium wine – which I like – an SG reading results in the specific gravity being 0.990 or very dry – which I don’t like. I added 30g of sugar (no idea why; seemed like a good idea at the time) and repeated the SG reading with the same results.

Still continuing to try to revive the nettle wine, I have added more nettle wine must to the starter bottle. I had to relieve the pressure in the starter bottle over the weekend as it looked almost ready to burst. When the bottle is almost full and still fermenting, I will add it to the must and see what happens. It is still fermenting but very slowly.

The mead, marrow and youngs kit are all going at a steady pace now. The peach is still going bananas!

Winemaking day

I had every intention of making my mead today then getting out in the garden. When I got up it was drizzling, this became heavier and now it is tipping it down. So today has been a wine day. I washed and sterilised all the demijohns and a bucket for continually dropping equipment in. I started by making the mead which is now in a demijohn outside cooling down.

I’ve transferred the marrow into two demijohns. I read in Mr Berry’s book that if you need to top it up, you use a syrup of the same strength as that added to the original must so I’ve added a pint with 6oz (170g) of sugar added to each demijohn.

The peach was transferred to a demijohn which just leaves the prune and the rosehip (yuk!). I have taken reading from all the wine I’ve got going and put the results in a table:

Wine	Temp	S.G.	Notes
marrow wine 1	17	1.69	Decanted from bucket to demijohn. topped up with 1 pt syrup ( 6oz sugar dissolved in 1 pt warm water).
marrow wine 2	18	1.62	topped up with 1 pt syrup ( 6oz sugar dissolved in 1 pt warm water)
peach wine	19	1.89	Decanted from bucket to demijohn. Fermenting quickly
youngs wine	20	1.28	fermenting quickly still
mead
nettle	18	1.78	appears to have stopped
Elderflower
Rice & Raisin 1
Rice & Raisin 2
Rice & Raisin 3
Royal Elderberry		1.66	started in 2006, stopped over 12 months ago, left in shed. will  put in warm spot or add restart yeast.

It’s quite fun doing this but remember to sterilise everything in between taking readings or you might transfer bacteria around and spoil all of your wines.

Nothing much to report but a report on everything

Changed the time!
Its not Thursday it’s still Wednesday for me, although it is 10 to 2 in the morning) so I’ve altered the time this was published.

Home
Not much happening today. I spent a lot of it looking at finances and realising that we have none! It’s not helped by DFS not going to work – off again today because he “can’t be arsed with working for them lot”. In the meantime, Christmas is only a few weeks away and we haven’t even got a card – the kids want laptops which is impossible. Once I’d stopped panicking and getting upset, I tried to look for a solution instead of concentrating on the problem and I’ve decided there isn’t a reasonable solution. Become single again so I can make a claim, win the lottery, get DFS to go to work, get the miracle job that fits around school and pays decent money, tell all the finance companies that DFS made arrangements with (he has HP on 4 vehicles… don’t ask) that we’ve changed our mind. I think I’ll go back to crying.

Kids
DDJ had yet another school trip. This time she went to the Beatles museum and had a great day. I also sorted out which high school they will be going to. I can’t pick one but to be fair, I haven’t put any effort into choosing as I did for DSL. What’s the point? I spent ages looking at schools for him, we decided this was the best, he was bullied throughout and hated it. He wouldn’t move schools just in case the next one was worse except he’d lose his best friend too. He never did very well at school, he just went and got his head down but put no effort in and came aways with minimal grades. Both the kids want to go to this one and I think if they are happy, they should learn better. DSL continues to spent all of his days in bed. One day this week he didn’t get out of bed until after 6pm! Most days average between 3 and 4 pm. It’s really getting beyond a joke. When he is awake, he is playing a game either on his pc, his xbox or his ps3. What a life eh? He will be upset in a minute when I disconnect the internet – by the way, if anyone can advise me about a program that I can install to restrict users on a BT Home hub version 1.0, I’d be very grateful. I’ve rang BT and they tell me there is nothing I can do.

Garden
Back to the garden and nothing much has been done. At least it wasn’t raining today; it was bright with sunny parts but still a little cold. The chicken coop base went down, it’s almost planned now! I painted the sides, we burnt even more of the old shed and that’s about it. I put the last lot of wood for tonight in the firebin after midnight with a brilliant full moon making the fence almost glow in the dark. It was almost magical out there tonight. Everywhere had the silvery-blue sheen, the air was slightly crisp and it was so quiet. It was similar to how it is when it’s snowed. Then a big gust of smoke completely engulfed me and I choked my way back into the house.

The window sill garden is still operational despite somebody flooding the lettuce seedlings. I think there are 5 germinated. The beans have only just started to sprout in the bathroom and the peas are beginning to get leaves.

Wine
On the winemaking front, not much is happening. I’ve got 4 demijohns sterilising on the cooker ready to make mead and transfer some of the buckets of wine into. I’m sure the rosehip is turning to vinegar, it tastes awful. I’ll leave it and see. The youngs kit is bubbling away like crazy. I’ve videoed it and will add it to my list of things I want to add here. As to the rest,  I’m stirring whatever needs stirring and leaving whatever doesn’t.

Dog
Tonight is night 3 for Lexie sleeping in the porch. So far she hasn’t messed in there so that’s one step the right way. I thought I’d emptied it but she managed to destroy a new boxed catflap that I overlooked on the first night and the last night she managed to get a feather duster that was hanging up 7′ up the wall. I’ve no idea how. Now it is completely empty so I’ll see how that goes. I’m ashamed to admit, I still haven’t taken her for a walk.

Other
I’m 40 on Friday. Whenever I think about it I feel sick. Why won’t time stand still?

Youngs wine kit stage 2

Tonight was day 3 of the kit so I have topped it up with water direct from the tap. It is fermenting quite quickly. I have video (on my phone so terrible quality) that I might upload.

I am still stirring the prune and the rosehip. The started bottle for the mead is looking alright so I will probably make a start on the mead tomorrow.

prune wine & mead

Made a start on the prune wine tonight. I thought I’d bought dried but there were “ready to eat”. They were also over 3 months out of date. Oh well, I should imagine that it wasn’t always perfect fruit used in winemaking. So far all I’ve done is bunged it in a bucket with 4l water and a spoonful of pectic acid. I need to stir it now daily for ten days.

I’ve also made a starter bottle up for making mead. This is preparation of yeast to get it going before adding it to whatever you are making. In a saucepan I  put:

• 1 tbsp of malt extract
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp citric acid
• 300 ml of water

I bought it all to the boil, boiled it for a minute or two and then placed it all in the fridge. While it was cooling I sterilised a wine bottle. Once cool I used a funnel to add 1 tsp wine yeast to the sterilised bottle then poured the cooled malt mixture through the funnel (to clean any yeast through). I placed a cotton wool ball in the neck of the bottle and placed the bottle behind the TV (running out of places to put all this wine!). It will be there for three days and hopefully, the yeast will be thoroughly enjoying itself and multiplying rapidly.

The kit I started yesterday seems to be doing well and has a nice yeasty froth on it.

Note to self: Have borrowed 4 demijohns from mom who has loads! I can see this being a regular occurence but had to promise payment of alcoholic “samples”.

Youngs white wine kit

yesterday I bought a wine kit from WIlkinsons for £4.99. I am hoping to make it for Yule gifts. Reading the outside it said it contained grape juice concentrate and glucose syrup. Don’t believe them! I pulled the ring tab on the tin expecting nicely cartoned ingredients and almost spilt a vary full tin of gloop all over the place. I assume its the juice and syrup blended but not sure how much glucose is in it because I also had to add a sugar syrup. Inside  where the instructions are  – yep thanks for that it gives you a list of other items and ingredients you need, most of which I have but some of it I don’t such as potassoim sorbate and wine finings. I’m now wondering why this kit is faster than bunging a can/carton of grape concentrate in a demijohn with some water, sugar and yeast and leaving it to ferment. That’s all that I’ve done with this. I now need to leave it for 3 days then top the demijohn up with water. Anyone have any “fast” wine recipes that I can use to save buying these kits?

wine readings

Added yeast and citric acid to peach wine. SG peach: 1.200+ (off scale)

Rosehip day 4: SG  1.060 (actually frothing it’s bubbling so much!) Continue to stir daily. It smells fantastic. I wish you could capture a scent! It doesn’t taste half bad either.

Nothing to do with the marrow wine now. Lid is convex so need to adapt it to fit air lock.

Nettle has slowed down way too much but is still very sweet. Will check SG and consider adding more yeast (?)

RIce & raisin and elderflower are in the shed and fermenting way too slowly. The rice & raisin was very dry the last time I checked, I haven’t checked the elderflower.

marrow wine step 2 – plus the rest

It’s been 6 days today so I’m one day over the recipe recommendation – not bad for me. It’s taken all morning to strain the must using reducing sizes of filters. I’ve added the sugar and I estimate that about 1.5 gallon of must finally went in the bucket. I’m going to see if I have a grommet to fit an airlock and ferment it in the bucket. If not I’ll ask the lady on the market when I go later today to get the demijohns (used at £1 each). The SG is 1.110.

I’ve stirred the rosehip which smells gorgeous. I’ve just worked out how long they need to stay in the bucket for and I’ll need to transfer them the day after my birthday – my 40th (I’m dreading it. We have no cash so won’t be celebrating – commiserating – either).

I’ve finally boiled the dried peaches. They were supposed to be left for 12 hours and it’s been about 30. I gave a good mash too. The recipe didn’t say to do this but I thought I might get more flavour.  I left it to cool  bit while i went shopping. The lady on the market didn’t have any grommets or any used demijohns so I settled for a new lidded bucket, exchanged steves new boots (too small, wrong style) and came home. I then strained the peaches through a sterile old tea towel and left them to drip throught the towel while I cooked tea. Then the band holding the towel on the bucket snapped so I had to fish the lot out of the bucket and start again! It’s strained now so now it’s cooling overnight in readiness for the yeast tomorrow. I’ve found a bung I can use to adapt a bucket in the shed. It is the bung out of a plastic demijohn (which I can’t bring myself to use). I’ll drill a hole in the bucket lid and push it through.

more gardening

Today I spent more time in the garden. I am trying to get it all ready for next year so I cleared the beds and made a start emptying the compost bins.  I collected some more tomatoes for the seeds too. I also planted the Winter Gem lettuce which is sitting on the kitchen window. This afternoon I made a start on the peach wine. It said to soak 2kg of dried peaches in 1 gallon of water but as I didn’t have the bucket (2 full of marrow and rosehips!) I put 1kg and 2 litres of water in 2 bowls.  The recipe says to soak for 12 hours but they will be there longer than that. I need to strain the marrow must out of the bucket to use it! I also found dried plums for wine that are out of date. I need to get on and do that soon. I dug out the yoghurt maker tonight and started a batch off. I’m not that keen on it but the kids love yoghurt and it’s much cheaper to make it than buy it. I need to look at different ways of flavouring it now that all the fruit is out of season.

A little off topic but I’ve spent the last few days looking at smallholdings or houses with land again; preferablt south of us but Wales is an option especially as that is where my family originate. It’s just a dream I know but I’d love a little land and to live close but not right next to, the coast. I’ve spent years looking doing this and spend hours researching rearing our own animals and growing our own food. I know we’re never going to be able to do it but still, the dream is nice and I can occupy my evenings looking at how to provode food for our family and how to kill and dress various animals! Our only chance of it ever happening is a lottery win though – like that will ever happen.