Apple Wine (though I don’t know how it’ll come out, so it’s possible this is equally productive as a rocket-fuel recipe)
2 carrier bags of apples (eaters, that is), which probably weighed about ten pounds
1½ lbs sugar
Tsp brewer’s yeast, mixed in ¼ pint of warm water with a spoonful of sugar dissolved in it

Then…
The only tricky bit about this, really, is that I used a steamer to get the juice out of the apples, rather than pounding the bastards with a hammer or some such nonsense. I have done the bashing option before, and I have to say it is not nearly as much fun as it may sound, and let’s face it, it doesn’t sound that much fun. So, having a steamer whatsit really helps. We got ours here and I’m happy to say it cost about £40, including shipping, which is shitloads less than many of the more Norse versions one sees about the place. I felt quite smug when we saw one in a local shop for about £100 t’other day. Heh. Anyhoo. Moving swiftly on. So, what I dun did was to chop the apples into quarters and pop ‘em in the steamer. Some time later, perfect apple juice emerged, courtesy of the natty tube attached to the side, forming about a gallon in total. At this juncture, I put the yeast in with the warm water and a spoonful of sugar, and left it in the airing cupboard to kick off for about a quarter of an hour. I warmed half of it up and dissolved the sugar in it, and then added the non-sugared half, cooled down. The whole lot went nicely in a sterilised demijohn (Camden tablets are used for sterilising, but I sometimes just use Bloody Hot Water [although beware of the Demijohn-Breaking Pixie]), together with a squeeze from a teabag (for tanin, which supposedly improves the flavour and texture (!) of the wine), a spot of lemon juice (ditto) and the yeast. The last thing was to fit a sterilised trap, which was filled with boiled water to keep all the nasties out. Fermentation has started already – the trap was overflowing this morning as the wine had come up and through it, so time for a new trap to keep flies away and discourage them from buggering up the end result.

So, that’s how I’m starting most wine at the moment. One of the pluses in using the steamer is that you don’t have to rack (transfer into a new demijohn using a syphon, leaving a layer of settled crud behind in the old jar) so frequently, as lots of the fruit-related crud doesn’t make it in there in the first place. That said, most of the wine I’ve made thus far has involved just crushing the fruit in lots of water, and leaving it to stand somewhere for a week or two with the yeast and some sugar, before straining it into demijohns, and it’s (nearly) always worked really well. So, don’t be put off by the steamer bit – it’s just the icing on the cake, really.

And still to come, the mead recipe, dagnammit. Just as soon as I work out where the fuck I’ve put it.