Bushcraft Booze

[Paganwolf]

Has anyone here just out of interest ever made an alchohlic beverage from wild plants/sap/berrys ect :?: recipes and what it came out like please guys n girls :wink: (oh and i am available for any taste testing you may require )

[Keith_Beef]

Has anyone here just out of interest ever made an alchohlic beverage from wild plants/sap/berrys ect :?: recipes and what it came out like please guys n girls :wink: (oh and i am available for any taste testing you may require )

I used to make plenty of berry wines, but always with added sugar and yeast.

The problem is, that even a decent strain of yeast converts sugar to around 50% CO2 and 50% alcohol (by weight). Meaning that if your fruit is about 10% sugar, you'll get 5% alcohol (by weight). This is not enough to prevent other wild strains of yeast from getting in and converting your precious alcohol into more CO2 andwater, or to vinegar.

If you want to stay with just natural ingredients, without adding commercial sugar, you might have to try growing some of your own grapes, and concentrating the sugar by drying them, or by reducing the must by boiling.


Keith.

[Andy]

we used to make elderflower wine. very nice inddeed but the book is back in sheffield.

wine making yeast is slower to repoduce then bread yeast so the alcohol will start off developing a bit slower but bread yeast will die from the toxins. I'll did out my biology research for the amount of sugar and alcohol that works best

[jakunen]

I've also made a load of 'wild' wines - apple, pear (was too dry and revolting), raspberry, elder flower (refermented and was a bit of a wedding night killer for friend!) and berry, mead, dandelion wine, birch sap wine.

I used to make hedgerow port too - elderberry, hawthorn, rosehip and damson. I added a little tincture of capsicum just to add a little warmth.

Must start doing it again. I've just harvested my grapes and got 1 gallon of great tasting juice that should (fingers crossed) make some great wine...

[Realgar]

I've made beer from wild hops and wines and liquers from assorted berries.
With the help of a friend and some creative plumbing I found out what um, 'essence' of blackberries, wild plums and rowan are like.

I've got a blackberry fermenting at the moment that's made from the juice alone, it's come out very sharp indeed ( but not vinegar ), I think it needs feeding with a little honey to encourage the yeast to metabolise some of the acid.

If you want a real bushcraft one, try a variant on a technique used in quite a few areas where wild melons and squashes are found.
Idealy leave the fruit attatched to the plant, push a stick in close to when the stem joins the fruit and mash it around to pulp the insides. Bury the fruit for a couple of weeks, dig it up and drink the result.
I've never been tempted.
Realgar

[EdS]

I've make proper srumpy - nowt but apple juice (20lb apples per gallon!) and wild yeast. More or less drinkable.

think I'm going to do a batch with beer yeast and 1 with wine yeast this year

[jakunen]

Ah real scrumpy! Far superior to that :***: you get in pubs...

Takes me back to my youth.

[tomtom]

where do you get wild yeast?

made a load of elder berrie wine year befor last.. finnished it this summer!!
the last bottle was a little sedimentie but appart from that is was a sucess!! and the first goo too! will certainly try it again soon!

[Tvividr]

A mate of mine at college in South Africa grew up on a farm in the middle of the busveld. He used to collect fruit etc when we had supper at the boarding school. Bananas, pineapples, apples, grapes and oranges hacked with a bushknife (panga) and added to a mixture of water and sugar + a small amount of yeast. No recipe, everything was just by "eye measurement" and "I think that we need just a little bit of that too, and perhaps a bit of that as well...". Everything was mixed in a 10 liter bucket with lid.
In the end after several days it became quite potent stuff, and more than once the lid blew off the bucket leaving a strange funny smell all over the dormitries at the boarding house - and everybody had a very hard time trying to convince the housemaster that the smell actually came from the outside.... :roll:
We all got quite good at bushcraft skills like stalking when trying to sneak past housemasters house and his :***: barking dogs at night to go to the koppie (rocky hill) for a rave ):

[Tvividr]

where do you get wild yeast?.....

You can make it from the white "film" covering the berries on juniper "trees" / bush. I've also read somewhere that the white powdery coating found on the trunks of Aspen trees can be processed into some kind of yeast.
I think that there is a chapter on this in the "Woodsmoke" book by Richard Jamison.... :?:

[Gary]

A friend of mine makes nettle beers - and it has the same effect as those three legged stools!

[Great Pebble]

My Dad has a massive amount of wine/beer making kit. Was really the top of the line when he got it, cost a fortune.

Hasn't been touched in about 15 years and I keep meaning to drop hints about it.

[Realgar]

Wild yeasts are also found in plenty on apples - a couple of crab apples will get things fizzing. The most reliable ( as in doesn't result in green fur ) has got to be elderflowers. If you want a definetly safe source buy yourself a decent bottle of geuze or lambic and use it to start the brew - it's a spontaneously fermented beer.

There's a pear tree near me that has huge quanities of fruit - all sour/bitter, I reckon it would make a good perry. Has anyone tried?

Realgar

[Kim]

I've just harvested my grapes and got 1 gallon of great tasting juice that should (fingers crossed) make some great wine...

Hmm, just make sure you store some away for next June when we all (hopefully) get to go on a big adventure with Gary!

[Hellz]

Hey all :wave:

Sloe gin/vodka is the closest I get. But boy did we have fun going out and getting all the sloes, so much so that we ended up with too many sloes for the amount of gin/vodka we could afford to buy... :roll:

Hellz

[Viking]

Wine on dandelion are supposed to be really good, never tried it myself but have heard of many people that have tried it.

My gilrfriends parents have some wine they have made out of black currant and it has been stored for 12 years, and lucky me has tasted it and it´s really good.

[ScottC]

I've got a elder tree growing over my fence with plenty of elderberries on it, off to the shed scotty

[jakunen]

Hmm, just make sure you store some away for next June when we all (hopefully) get to go on a big adventure with Gary!

Don't worry, I'll be laying a few bottle down and even making some more mead...

[tomtom]

I've got a elder tree growing over my fence with plenty of elderberries on it, off to the shed scotty

Well i can tell you elderberries are good for beginers! very easy to do!

[Paganwolf]

Nice to see im not the only druncard it all sounds good im gonna do some sloe gin this weekend and ive got plans for nettle beer next year :biggthump

[match]

My favourite wild drink of the moment is Noyau - which is a liqueur made from Beech leaves! You basically pick a bagful of beech leaves from the tree in spring when they're small and green, and pack them down in a large jar/bowl. Then you cover the leaves with gin and leave to sit for about 2 weeks. Once the liquid has gone a nice greeny-brown colour, you strain it off, and add sugar - 1/2 lb of sugar dissolved in 1/4 pint water for every 750ml bottle of gin used (sorry, I can't be bothereed to work that out more exactly!)

Tastes fantastic - kind of nutty, almost like a sweet sake - very very lethal though ):

I can also recommend elderflower wine, spiced elderbery port, gorseflower wine, meads, metheglins, ciders and other similar drinks - if anyone is interested I'll post some recipes... :?:

[tomtom]

Im interested... always wondered what exactly is in mead.. honey isnt it?

[jakunen]

Yeah, mead is 'honey wine'.

Most of the stuff you get in the shops these days is dessert mead, not drinking wine. The best I've found is Stones Elizabethan or Lurgershalls. Great stuff.

Mead is very easy to make. Think I made 5 gallons two years ago and about a gallon last year. I use a slightly modified Elizabethan recipe and then split it for ordinary mead, metheglin and melomel.

Hmm, really fancy a drink now...

[tomtom]

its 10.30am :rolmao:

[jakunen]

its 10.30am :rolmao:

Hey! Teh sun's over the yard-arm somewhere! :trink26:

[Andy]

its 10.30am :rolmao:

thats the time when you need the hair of the dog that bit you

[Realgar]

Hey! Teh sun's over the yard-arm somewhere! :trink26:

that's the first time I've seen anyone outside my own family use that one - Navy in your bloodline? I didn't go for the family trait of joining the navy ( I have more sense than to get shot at or work on supertankers ) but I am partial to a glass of Pussers on a winter night.

[jakunen]

One of my ancestors was a Naval Surgeon yes.

That's why one of my favourite drinks is a Southampton.

[Kim]

What's a Southampton, apart from the place I went to College? :shock:

[jakunen]

A large port! TADAAAAAA!


(I was beginning to wonder if anyone would ask!)