Beetroot Wine

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 148, 24 April 1942, Page 23

Beetroot Wine

Dear Aunt Daisy, Have you a tried and tested recipe for beetroot wine, or would you ask your readers for one?

-‘New Plymouth."

Yes, I have two, one using beetroot only, and the other using oranges and lemons as well. Beetroot Wine No. 1.-Scrub 6 Ibs. beetroot; boil in 4 quarts cold water until tender. Mash well, add 3 Ibs. white sugar, and boil again for 15 minutes. Then strain through fine muslin into wooden keg, or tub. Add about a dozen raisins and leave to stand fill it stops

working, skimming carefully every morning. Then bottle. The longer it is kept the better. This recipe is recommended as a blood tonic by an English doctor, says the sender, and adds that it makes about four gallons of wine, so I presume she adds more boiling water when putting into the keg. Beetroot Wine No. 2.-This one comes from "Wine Experimenter" in the Waikato. She vouches for its excellence, and says that it is an English recipe. Five pounds of beetroot, 2 oranges, 2 lemons, 4 Ibs. sugar, 12 cloves, 1 oz. yeast, 1 gallon water. Wash beetroot well, cut up small; put into pan with the water and cloves, and boil

till tender. Remove from fire, strain and measure the liquid. Make up to one galdon with boiling water. When it is lukewarm add sugar, oranges, lemons sliced. Spread the yeast on a piece of toast and place on the liquid. Leave in a cool place for two or three weeks until fermentation is practically finished. Then strain and bottle. Do not cork at first, in case a little more fermentation may take place, but tie a piece of butter cloth over each bottle mouth to keep out flies and dust. Then cork tightly and leave for three or four months before using. To clear, add 1% oz. isinglass melted in a little of the wine, four or five days before bottling.