Rhubarb Wine Recipe
Jan 23rd, 2008 by Erroll
I’ve been anticipating this since May, and now it’s finally time to make Rhubarb Wine. I grow the rhubarb in my garden, harvest several times (freezing each harvest), and make a gallon or two of wine every year. Here’s how I do it:
Ingredients For 1.5 gallons (about 5.7 liters) of must
3-4 lb (1.4-1.8 kg) rhubarb
Sugar to specific gravity 1.090 – up to 4 lb (1.8 kg) sugar
0.125 tsp (0.3 g) tannin
1 tsp (5 g) diammonium phosphate (DAP)
1 tsp (2.3 g) pectic enzyme
sulfite to 50 ppm (equivalent to 1.5 campden tablets)
yeast
How do you juice rhubarb?
I’ve tried things like cutting it up and putting it in a blender and soaking in water. The best ways to “juice” rhubarb are freeze/thaw and sugar extraction. I usually do both. As you harvest the rhubarb, wash it and cut it up into 0.5 inch (1.25 centimeter) pieces and freeze them. When you are ready to make wine, thaw the rhubarb and put it in a strainer. I usually get 2/3 – 3/4 cup/pound (350-400 ml/Kg) of rhubarb juice this way. Once you’ve strained the juice, sulfite it. Next, place the rhubarb in a container and cover with about 1 lb (about 450 grams) of sugar. Let it sit until the sugar has dissolved (about two or three days), then strain off the liquid. Place the rhubarb back in the container and cover with water for a few hours or overnight. This is a rinse to get every last bit of “rhubarbness.” Strain the liquid and discard the spent rhubarb. At this point, I dissolved the tannin, DAP, and pectic enzyme in 0.25 cups (about 60 ml) of water and added it to the liquid.
Measure then adjust the sugar
I repeated the sugar extraction step, so I used 2 lb (about 825 g) of sugar, and ended up with 2.36 quarts (2.23L) of SG 1.114 liquid. I’m going to switch to metric measures, because calculations are easier, and report numbers with much more precision than I can measure so that I don’t carry rounding errors from one step to the next. I’m aiming for 5.68L of must with an SG of 1.090. Adding 3.568L of SG 1.075 sugar water will yield 5.8L of 1.090 must. An SG of 1.075 implies 232 g of sugar in each liter of solution (not 232 g added to 1L of water!). So 3.568L at 232 g/L means 828 grams of sugar. I boiled 1L of water, took it off heat, dissolved the sugar, and brought it back to a boil. Once it was boiling, I took the pan off the heat and cooled it in a water bath for 15 minutes. I used a measuring cup to determine the volume of sugar water (1.45L) and added it to my fermenter. Then I added tap water until I reached 3.568L total.
I added the sugary rhubarb juice to the sugar-water in the fermenter and measured the specific gravity. I should have 5.8L of SG 1.090 must, and I measured the SG as 1.095 – my kitchen scale and measuring cups were never going to be very accurate, so I’m calling that good!
What about the pH and titratable acidity?
If you’ve read many of my posts, you’re probably wondering why I haven’t mentioned the acidity of the must. I’m always going on about how important pH is to stability and titratable acidity (TA) is to taste. What’s going on? I’ve made rhubarb wine for years, and I’ve found that using rhubarb at a rate of 1.5-3 lb/Gallon (180 – 360 g/L) of must consistently gets me close to 6 g/L acidity. So I’ve decided to wait until it ferments out, then measure the acid and make any corrections.
Isn’t the oxalic acid dangerous?
Some wine makers neutralize virtually all the acid in rhubarb, then add back acid (tartaric, citric, or a blend). They do this to remove the oxalic acid, which is toxic and present in rhubarb. Removing the oxalic acid will change the wine; I think it detracts from rhubarb’s unique character. Most of the oxalic acid is in the leaves, and I make rhubarb wine with the stalks only (so should you!). It’s true that the stalks contain some oxalic acid, and while I don’t know what the precise amount is or exactly how much of this acid can be dangerous, I can tell you that I’ve made – and consumed – rhubarb wine this way for years with no ill effects. Obviously, I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought it was harmful, but you’ll have to make your own judgment about that.
With nothing left to do, it’s time to pitch the yeast. They’re the real wine makers, and they should have this must turned into wine in the next week or so. Then I’ll rack as needed, and bottle in about a year. It’ll be drinkable soon after that, but it ages very well, so keep a few bottles if you can.
Hello from Lynfred Winery! You had posted a question about our Rhubarb wine on our blog so I thought I’d come find you. Here is the answer from our winemaker:
We use frozen Rhubarb and do not add water to the mix. We keep the fruit for a few days in the tank and just add sugar to bring it up to ~20Brix. Then, when we reached 56 or more degrees of temperature we inoculate the juice with a selected yeast culture.
In the past we used Calcium Sulfate against the Oxalic Acid but we haven’t done this practice since late 90’s. The result is a very tasty wine, food friendly that needs some sugar to be in balance.
Andres Basso
Director of Winemaking
General Manager
Lynfred Winery
Thank you so much for getting back to me. I’ve often wondered about making rhubarb wine from just the juice, and now I definitely want to try it – I also want to try your wine! I’m going to ask around and see if the local (I’m on the west coast, near Seattle) shops carry it.
Erroll
Hello from Lynfred! Errol, we would LOVE to send you a bottle of Rhubarb! Please email me at wineinfo@lynfredwinery.com with your address and I’ll get it right out! I’ll add a link to your blog from ours as well!
Have a grape day!
wow, it’s great to see so many different approaches to making rhubarb wine. I’ve used hot water with dissolved sugar and poured it over the rhubarb in a straining bag, added all the usual suspects and ended up with wonderful wine, just got “Best in Show” at our local county fair with a bottle of it in fact. I want to experiment with different methods so may try some that are written here. I grow a few grapes in the back yard and can’t wait to harvest. Thanks for sharing ideas, dwinemaker
Hello Agnes,
Congratulations on your Best in Show! Happy experimenting
Erroll
I use honey instead of adding sugar to the juice, but I have found the freezing process as important as the sugars or yeasts. I will try your recipe with the rhubarb harvest this fall, if the deer do not kick down my new fence.
Hi Bob,
I’ve never made rhubarb wine with honey, but now you’ve got me curious. Maybe I’ll try your recipe too, and we can compare notes!
Erroll
Honey always seemed an expensive experiment to me, but if you use it, doesn’t that qualify your product as a rhubarb mead? But I always found that after the yeast were done converting it, flavor became a function of the yeast and not the original fructose, glucose or whatever form of sugar used (I tried maple syrup once: no vestige of it’s character left afterward).
I go for the pseudo-pasteurization of flash boiling it, helps break it down celluraly (like freezing) and kills off bacteria without campden tabs. This year I’m mixing cranberries into the must and going from there in my Hail Mary recipe fashion.
If you make with honey you’ll have fining issues over time, due the pollen in the honey unless you counteract with a fining agent. It does leave a more alkaline, slicker sort-of sweetness I think (which could explain the difference between mead and wine).
Oddly enough, although I’m not the ‘brian b’ of the last comment, I agree with his findings: flavor is a function of the yeast after conversion: no sense spending alot more money on different kinds of sugars, the yeast convert them as they will and taste is much a function of their action. Unless you can tell the difference. Might be fun to experiment with brown, unrefined sugars versus refined whites, molasses, what have you. I think the big question is which sugars the yeasts like best/convert easiest.
Making rhubarb/cranberry this season (among the usual elderberry/currant, and the unusual: dandelion/chanterelle, and most likely a variant apple in the fall).
I found White Labs Yeasts work exceptionally well, if you can pony up.
Hello Brian and Brian!
Honey certainly is more expensive than an equivalent amount of sugar. If you think the difference in the wine is worth it, then it makes sense to use honey. I haven’t tried it, but I think there is a difference in the fruit wines that I’ve made with honey. That makes me think it might be an improvement to rhubarb wine – only one way to find out!
Mead (just honey and water) has never cleared to my satisfaction without fining or boiling, but fruit wine that I make with honey – or fruit mead or melomel if you prefer – has always cleared, given enough time. “Enough time” might be more than you’re willing to wait, a year or two maybe, but I think a rhubarb wine made with honey will also clear in time. Again, I’ll have to try it to know for sure.
Anyway, your cranberry-rhubarb sounds like a great combination. I hope you let me know how it turns out.
Erroll
I am thinking of trying rhubarb wine this year, so far I’ve only made elderberry and dandelion flower wine. I’m wondering if it is o.k. to use the larger stalks that are too tough to eat.
Hi Jamie,
Large stalks are fine. I’m just wondering what you meant by “too tough to eat.” If it’s just a matter of size, then you can cut them up into small pieces. If there’s something wrong with the stalks, they’ve gone off in some way, then they won’t make good wine.
I’ve never made dandelion wine because I thought removing all the petals would be too much work. How’d it turn out?
Erroll
A fatal dose of oxalic acid would require a human being to consume upwards of 5 kilograms (yeah kilos!) of rhubarb leaves. The oxalic acid, if anything is a bit of a natural laxative and isn’t terribly bad for you in any way.
This recipe seems really cool. I can’t wait to give it a shot.
Thanks Dave, I never knew the details behind the common wisdom that “oxalic acid is toxic.” Let me know how your rhubarb wine turns out!
Erroll
I have a very large patch of rhubarb I want to pull and process into wine. I’ve made chokecherry,apple, beet, grape and cranberry which have been very successful. For each of the berries I’ve used a steam juicer and used pure juice without the pulp. I plan to do the same with the rhubarb.
My question is, has anyone used a steam juicer for removal of the fruit juice for making wine? I would greatly appreciate any input anyone has regarding this method of juice removal and any successes or problems you may have encountered. Thank you very much. Wayne from way up north in Minn.
Hi Wayne,
I haven’t used a steam juicer, but it sounds promising. I freeze the rhubarb, which lets me store multiple harvests over the course of a season, then thaw and press into juice. The freeze/thaw process ruptures the cells and is very effective in liberating juice. The last time I did this I got a yield of 462 ml/kg (7 fl oz/lb). I’d be interested to know what your yield is.
Erroll
I’ve used Rhubarb for thirty years. Because rhubarb is a sharp flavor, with lots of acid, I like to counteract the acidity with soft fruits like apricots and peaches.
Last year, quite by accident, I dropped the sugar bag and made a 50 50 mix of rhubarb and lovely ripe apricots, both frozen. I extracted about 95% of the rhubarb from the mixture after it had been thawed for a day or so. Turned out to be 15%, and absolutely delicious. I called it CotRhu.
Other delights have been blueberry, peach rhubarb, and apricot, apple rhubarb. Both are amongst my most exceptional combinations.
We have harvested almost 100 pounds from our rhubarb crop this year, almost all in the freezer to date.
Mike
Hello Mike,
You grow a lot of rhubarb!
I’ve wondered about combinations with other fruit, and I’ve thought about apple. Thank you for sharing your knowledge – proven combinations are always better than trial and error.
Erroll
I would like to try rhubarb wine for the first time. I already made juice by kind of steaming all the stalks with a small amount of water to being with in the pot. I haven’t added sugar which is why I was doing this research. Most of you had frozen rhubarb and so I’m wondering if you think it’s OK to use this juice and just add the sugar then go from there?
Hi Deb,
I think the steamed juice will work just fine. Get the sugar and acid right, and everything should be ok.
Erroll
The beauty of using a steam juicer is you get only the juice and it is soooo simple, plus you get all the flavors.
Does anyone have a recipe for blueberry/peach? If so would you please send it to:scatat@hotmail.com thank you !!!