By Ben Hardy

Orange Wine Recipe

Ben Hardy, wine blogger, occasional contributor in Home Farmer, prolific wine maker and author of Ben’s Adventures in Wine Making shares his Orange Wine Recipe.
See also:
Tutti-Fruity Christmas Wine
Spiced Beetroot Wine
Dandelion Wine
Strawberry Wine
Crab Apple Wine

Orange wine is one of my favourites. It is a reliable white that is both sharp and crisp. It is often one of my ‘midweek’ wines: something to open when I fancy a glass by itself without wanting to finish the whole bottle. It also works well with food – in particular Chinese or Thai, when the refreshing, slightly bitter taste cuts through the spice. However, be warned, orange wine is not universally popular.

 A double batch will give me twelve bottles, and this means I can space them out, one a month – that is the intention, anyway. The recipe and method below, though, is for a single batch. If you do make it but find that you dislike it, better that you only have six bottles rather than twelve to pour down the sink or give away as presents.

You will need a dozen oranges, and the cheapest place I have found to buy these is Leeds Market, where in the past I have bought ten for a pound. These were small, so, repressing all my Yorkshire miserliness, I splashed out the following year and bought larger oranges at eight for a pound. The total cost for six bottles comes to a staggering £4, give or take a penny or two. Extravagance indeed.

Try and avoid the pith but don’t worry too much about a little bit getting in.

All recipes I have seen for orange wine come with dire warnings about what might happen should you get any pith whatsoever into your mixture. These soothsayers of doom generally predict death and destruction on a global scale. In fact, I find it impossible to wholly avoid pith and a little does not seem to matter. The pith, it is true, is the orange’s most bitter part and this wine does have bitter undertones, but no one throws out their pots of marmalade for the sake of an orange peel taste.
INGREDIENTS
12 oranges
3lb of sugar
61/2 pints of water
A sachet of yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 tsp pectolase
METHOD
1          Take six of the oranges and peel the zest thinly.
2          Put the zest (with or without a bit of pith) into a bowl and pour over 2 pints of boiling water. Cover the bowl and leave to stand for about a day (exact timing is not important).
3          Squeeze all twelve oranges and put the juice into a sealable bucket.
4          Add the sugar, the remaining water (which can be just cold tap water) and the water that contained the peel (but not the peel itself).
5          Add the yeast and chemicals and stir until the sugar has dissolved. If you added boiling water, you will need to wait until the liquid is no more that 35°C.
6          Store the bucket in a warm place with its lid on and leave for 5–6 days to allow fermentation to calm sufficiently.
7          Sieve the liquid into a demijohn to filter out any pips and other unwanted bits of orange.
8          Leave the demijohn to stand for 2–3 months. The wine should clear to a pleasing yellow colour with a small sediment.
9          Rack the wine into a fresh demijohn and make up any gap with a syrup made from a ratio of 6oz sugar to 1 pint of water – you will probably only need a 1/2 pint of water and 3oz of sugar.
If making in March the wine will be ready for bottling in September, but you can leave it as long as you want before doing this after you have racked it.  You should be able to drink it 12 months after step 1-6
Click here to keep up with Ben’s wine making adventures.
Click here to buy Ben’s Adventures in Wine Making

 https://homefarmer.co.uk/