This Ginger wine recipe was one of the very first country wine recipes I ever made. The great thing about ginger of course is it’s available year-round in the supermarket and a little goes a long way in comparison to using fruit in wines.
This is the perfect wine recipe to make over winter when other fruits aren’t in season or available, If you do make this wine in the winter it will be ready to start enjoying when the weather warms up but can be made at any time of the year as root ginger is available year-round in most shops.
When making any country winerecipe you are reliant on all the flavour coming from whatever fruit or vegetable you are using.
This ginger wine recipe relies on root ginger to bring the flavour which probably has the most punch of any ingredient you are going to add to a wine. With ginger wine you rely on sugar to contribute the fermentable which are turned by the yeast into alcohol, the problem with sugar is that it’s pretty much flavourless once fermented.
Adding other ingredients, like in this recipe with ginger is where you are getting almost all of the flavour from so it’s important that any ingredient you do use in a country wine is full of flavour and you use enough.
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Boosting Body
I have added banana and raisins to this wine because ginger alone won’t provide much body to the wine. Raisins are typically used to add body and so do bananas to an extent but they also provide plenty of sugars.
This ginger wine recipe makes a slightly sweeter wine that has a fiery and warming kick. It tends to work better as a sweeter wine because the fiery, heat that is brought by the ginger can seem a bit too harsh in a completely dry wine.
The colour is golden and is great served at any time of the year, in the summer this ginger wine can be served ice cold on a warm day just like you would with a ginger beer for example. In the winter serve chilled and the heat from the ginger will give you a warm glow. It probably should be mentioned that this wine recipe isn’t really a bottle you should open to enjoy with dinner, however, it is great as an after-dinner drink.
How To Make Ginger Wine
To make this ginger wine you’ll need the following piece of equipment:
- Fermenting Bucket
- Nylon Straining Bag
- 1 Gallon Demijohn
- Bung & Airlock
- Funnel
- Hydrometer
- Syphon
- Bottles, Corks and Corker
Ginger Wine Recipe Ingredients – Makes 4.5 Litres / 1 Gallon
- 75g Fresh Ginger Root
- 500g Bananas
- 300g Chopped Sultanas
- 1.3kg Sugar
- 1 tsp Acid Blend (if you are using tart apples use less acid)
- 1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
- 1/2 tsp Pectic Enzyme
- 1 sachet of Yeast (we recommend Lalvin EC-1118)
Ginger Wine Recipe Process
Clean the ginger of any dirt but do not worry about peeling, break into pieces and break up a little with a rolling pin, put into the bottom of a fermenting bin along with the chopped sultanas.
In a pan heat up 3 litres of water and and stir in the sugar to completely dissolve bring to the boil. Once boiling pour this over the ginger and sultanas in the fermenting bin.
Peel and chop the bananas into inch sized pieces and boil these in half a litre of water for 20 minutes, strain the liquid into the fermenter.
Allow the must in the fermenting bin to cool to 20°C. Once cooled add the acid, nutrient and pectic enzyme.
Pitch the yeast after rehydrating if you choose to do so. Allow to ferment for 4 days stirring with a sanitised spoon a couple of times a day.
After 4 days strain the wine into a demijohn using a straining bag in a funnel. Fit a bung and airlock on the demijohn and allow to ferment completely, this can take up to 4 weeks.
After 4 weeks ensuring fermentation has completely finished rack to a new demijohn to allow clearing, after racking add a crushed campden tablet.
Allow the wine to clear in the demijohn and after around 2 – 3 months rack to bottles and cork.
This recipe is intended to produce a slightly sweet wine and depending on the yeast you use and the fermentation it may finish drier than you really want. In this case, we will want to back-sweeten the wine. It is a simple process that happens just before you bottle the wine.
Once the wine has been racked and cleared and fermentation has completely finished adding Potassium Sorbate at a rate of 1/2 a teaspoon per gallon will stop theyeast from fermenting any extra sugar added. It is then a case of adding a simple sugar solution by boiling sugar and water in equal amounts, this solution can be added in very small amounts to sweeten the wine. Remember you can add sugar but you cannot take it out so try adding a few drops to a sample and then multiplying this out to the whole batch.
