Off season brewing

New brew

In my brewing cellar (aka behind a chair in the corner of the living room), I've got another couple of batches of new homebrew.  Still brewing away from last summer is 4L of elderflower wine.  This stuff is pretty potent;  we've been slowly drinking the first batch (both started around the same time), and while strong, it's also pretty sweet.  I prefer it with ice and lemon, and maybe a little water. 

There's still 4L of cider bubbling away too, from last autumn.  I anticipate both of these will be bottled up in late spring/early summer.  I won't be making more elderflower wine this year--we've got plenty!  But certainly more cider, as we've already finished the previous batch.

Newly brewing away are 4L each of rhubarb wine and elderberry/blackberry wine.  Both of these were harvested last summer/autumn and frozen at that time--all five demijohns were still occupied.  However, once they were free, I got these two new batches going.  Although I've done elderberry before, blackberry is a new one;  we picked a couple of small tubs of each, and I figured I might as well throw them all in together (turns out I missed a tub of elderberries though, as I discovered them at the back of the freezer the week after I began the batch). 

We have one bottle of three year old elderberry wine, and several bottles of one year old wine.  I think the younger wine is too harsh, but the older wine mellows nicely.  And we have so much elderflower and rhubarb wines I may try making a bit of vinegar from them too--always good for cooking.