Hibiscus Ginger Wine

This wine has aged really well.  I bottled it 10/20/2013, and the last time we tried a bottle, it was off-color and a little too viscous.  Now it is bright and red, fruity and balanced, with good body and enough ginger to keep it interesting.

Here is the recipe for 3 gallons:

480 dried hibiscus flowers (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis)
3 cans Welch's concentrate
2T ginger paste (not in the bag)
5# 2oz sugar
3t yeast nutrient
3/4t tannin
5.5t acid blend
4t citric acid
28 pints of water
Lalvin K1-V1116

OG was 1.088. pH was 3.39.  Combine sugar and water and bring to boil.  Put flowers in mesh bag, put in primary.  Pour sugar-water over flowers.  Add other ingredients except yeast.  When cool, remove bag, squeeze lightly and discard.  Add yeast, stirring daily.  When down to around 1.010, move to secondary.  Rack per usual.  This wine was stabilized and backsweetened with 50g sugar/gallon along with about 5ml glycerin/gal.  The glycerin is probably not needed.

No cooking tonight, as we are headed to Alabama in the morning.

Oh yeah.  Go Blue.

Batting .750

Guava, my first batch of wine 2 years ago, came out quite good.  It was a trick, designed to lure me into yet another hobby.  I learned that with my second batch, carambola (starfruit).  This batch required numerous tweaks, and eventually was uncorked twice to achieve something just drinkable.

In that next year I made some really bad wine.  Some of it is still in the basement.  Pumpkin, now almost 2 years along, refuses to release its overpowering vegetal character.  Wild plum not only refuses to clear but remains bitter beyond belief.  Others have already found their way to the drain or the still.

So it was with some pride last week that we bottled 4 separate small batches of novelty wines, 3 of which I would be willing to submit to friends.  The lime-ginger wine is afflicted by that funny chemical aroma that all of my citrus wines seem to have.  But the passionfruit, hibiscitrus (hibiscus-citrus), and most recent carambola wines were excellent.  Passionfruit wine takes surprisingly little pulp (I helped it along by a secondary addition) which makes the developing crop even that more exciting.  I learned a lot about what makes carambola wine tasty through the acid adjustments required with my first batch.  The hibiscitrus required a little special something in the secondary, but with that, it when from completely unremarkable to perhaps the best of the three.

Last night, Lisa gave me a nice picture from bottling day, when we finished the leftovers on the back porch.  I think if I can maintain this average, I will be quite happy.