Dandelion Wine

1. Pick all the dandelion petals. Just the yellow petals. Doing this will stain your hands, so wear gloves if you care about that
2. Wash the dandelion petals thoroughly, and add boiling water
3. Cover and let sit for four days, stir a few times a day. It will smell quite musky – this is expected
4. Add the zest of all the citrus and bring to a boil
5. Boil for ten minutes, then strain off zest and petals
6. Add the sugar, and let cool to room temperature
7. Add the yeast
8. Add the citrus (sliced and peeled), add the raisins
9. Forget about it for about four weeks
10. Strain out the solids, and bottle your wine!

Notes

This is a bit of a weird one. Usually when I brew things, I know roughly what to expect - if I make a stout, I expect something dark and roasty, if I make a sour beer I expect something fresh and fruity. With this, I had no idea what to expect.

Regardless, it turned out great. The flavour is citrusy, and frankly quite.. “golden”. It tastes about as you’d expect a wine with that color to taste. It’s hard to put it into more specific terms, because I don’t really have anything else to compare it to.

Regardless, quite happy with it. Just don’t do what I did, and dunk the whole unsanitized tub of raisins into the wine after boiling. It turned out fine, but that is a very unnecessary infection risk.