Lilac wine

I guess this goes here, since it's a fermented food/beverage. Someone here asked me about my lilac wine, so I'll show how I make it. First step, is, of course, to procure some lilacs. We want just the flowers. The little green but at the base is okay. I'm trying to get just the open ones, not the ones that are still closed, and not the ones that are starting to turn brown. And from a clean source, or course. These came from a local public park. I don't know if I'm allowed to take flowers from there, but oh well. Flowers are made to be picked and enjoyed.

What do you do after that?

T Bate wrote:What do you do after that?

More to come🙂 I'll update as I go. I need 6ish cups per gallon, I'm going for 3 gallons, so I'm collecting about a gallon and a halfish, not compacted at all.. Obviously this depends on how much you squish them down. This isn't too exact, here.

it's sweet and heady!
[i can't be the only one with this in my head....]

thanks for sharing, i have never actually seen lilac wine in real life, i hope to try it someday!

Picked petals for about an hour last night and ended up with about 3/4 gallon. They went into the freezer, next to the dandelion petals. I'll pick some more (lilacs and dendelions) and finish petal plucking this weekend, and then get on to actually making the wine.

So interesting!  My father has a big overgrown lilac bush, maybe we can try this.

Time to assemble. First, let's talk sugar. Yeast uses sugar to make alcohol and CO2. (Most carbonated alcoholic beverages are carbonated artificially after brewing, though. It gets added after the fact, and the CO2 produced during brewing just escapes to atmosphere.). You can use pretty much any sugar, as long as it's a simple sugar. You can use plain white sugar, invert sugar, brown sugar, honey, etc. If you use honey, of course, then you're making a mead.
Now.... specific gravity. Specific gravity is a measure of some liquids density as compared to water. Water has a specific density of 1.000, pure alcohol has a specific g cavity of . 7something . Adding sugar to water increases it's specific density, and therefore measuring specific gravity is a good way to measure the amount of sugar in your liquid. We can also use specific gravity to determine how much alcohol our must (and he juice that will turn into wine) will produce. A specific gravity of 1.100, if fermented completely, will produce a wine with right around 13% alcohol. Specific gravity is measured with a little floaty tool (can't remember the name offhand).
But......we don't really need to measure it. We can guess pretty well. A pound of sugar in a gallon of water will make a specific gravity of 0.046. That's for pretty much any of the dry sugars. Honey varies, but .035 per pound of honey is a good number to use. So, knowing this, we can get a good guess. People made wine without measuring specific gravity for a loooonnnnnggggg time. I'll be measuring specific gravity, but we can know that a little over 2 pounds of sugar per lb, or 3 lbs of honey, will make about a 13% wine.
You don't have to shoot for 13%, of course that's just what I go for because it's convenient. Wine needs a little over 12% to be preserved. If you go too high of a specific gravity, your yeast won't be able to do it's thing, and even if the yeast can ferment, it'll make off flavors and won't eat all the sugar.
Yeast needs more than sugar, of course, to be healthy. When making a fruit wine, your fruit will provide your nutrition. When making a mead, you can add nutrients, in the form of fruit or modern nutrition, or not. It'll do it's thing either way, and of course mead was made for a long time without nutrients. Flower wines like some nutrition. This can be modern yeast nutrients, but for a long time raisins were used as a form of nutrients, and as an added bonus, they add some flavor and body and tannins to the wine.  I use modern nutrients, and add black tea for tannins, just because that's how I roll.
Yeast also likes some acid. You can use pure acids such as citric acid, but I use lemons, again because that's just how I roll. One lemon per gallon is good.
As far as yeast is concerned......for a long time, people didn't even know what yeast was. They figured it was some sort of magic. They would use a stir stick that had yeast on it, or just rely on wild yeast floating through the air. So obviously you don't have to get too crazy. Plenty of people make wine with bread yeast and do just fine. If you want to get creative, you can capture wild yeast. I use commercial wine making yeast, just because its easy and provides a good end product.

Okay, so now we know what we need.....water, sugar, yeast, nutrients, acid, and our flowers. Let's make wine. For a three gallon batch, I'm planning on 1 1/4 unsquished gallons of flowers, which came out to 1.5 lbs. 7 pounds of white sugar, the juice of 3 lemons, one packet of Lalvin D47 yeast, and 3 grams of Fermaid K yeast nutrient. You could just as easily substitute your yeast of choice and raisins, though.
First I'm going to heat my sugar up in some water to dissolve it, as I'll never get that much sugar to dissolve in cold water. If using honey for a mead, just shake the crap out of it, which has the additional benefit of adding oxygen, which the yeast will need in the beginning. The water needs to cool back to room temp, first, though, lest it kills my yeast.

Wow that was a lot to type.

Wine time! All  the ingredients go into a bucket ....sugar, water, lilacs, lemon juice, nutrient, and yeast. I measured specific gravity, right on the money at 1.100, but, as discussed, not necessary. I mix mine in a food safe 5 gallon bucket with a sealed lid and an airlock.
Now, as far as covering your must somehow.....you're going to want to keep it covered, so bugs and nastiness don't get into it. Open fermentation, as in not covering it at all, can be done, and used to be done all the time. I wouldn't recommend it though, if your stuff gets ruined you'll be disappointed. Lilac wine is cheap, but some can get kinda pricey, and there's a significant amount of time involved to age this, and you don't want to go through all that to be disappointed. The modern way is to use an airlock of some sort. They're cheap and work well. You can also rubberband a towel over the top, or if you're using a large jar, you could use some cheesecloth under the lid. In any case, you need a way to allow the CO2 that will be produced to escape, leat your container explode.
After you get everything mixed up, it's gonna turn brown from exposure to the acid and oxygen. This is okay. I promise it'll turn out fine. It'll get cloudy and brown/tan and gross looking, and taste like rocket fuel for a while when it's done. Just give it some time.
Anyways, after mixing and covering, preferably with an airlock, just let it sit. With about 24 hours it should be happily fermenting away. If you're using an airlock, it'll be bubbling through there. It needs to be stirred twice a day, every day, the flowers will all be floated to the top by the CO2 bubbles and we don't want them to dry out and get nasty. This is called punching down the cap.

More to follow in a few days......

Been fermenting 7 days now, and the SG has dropped to about 1.014. It's got a little bit to go still, but close enough to rack over and let sit for a while. I dug all th flower out with a colander, pressing the juice, and racked it all into 1 gallon jugs with air locks. It's definitely boozy right now, both in smell and taste, with a heavy flower-type perfume taste as well.

Thanks for the detailed write-up. Looking forward to hearing more updates!

Getting closer. It's incredibly dry at 0.984SG. That makes this just over 15% ABV. It tastes likes HOT alcohol, and tastes and smells like lilac. It still has a teeny amount of bubbles and cloudiness, so once it settles down I'll sweeten it and make sure it doesn't kick back up, and then it'll be ready to bottle.