Cucmber Wine

What can you do with a glut of cucumbers? Cucumber soup, cucumber pickles, I know someone who eats them sliced and fried with garlic. After giving all the neighbours at my house and caravan cucumbers, and eating as much as possible there were still a few kilos of cucumbers and more imminent on the plants.



I wouldn’t buy cucumbers to make wine for two reasons. Firstly home grown cucumbers have a lot more flavour than the ones you get in the shop. Secondly it would take buying a lot of cumbers to make the wine, and as I have yet to taste cucumber wine I can’t currently vouch for the flavour of the end product.


Initially I couldn’t find a recipe for cucumber wine so I started with a conversion from a recipe for marrow wine. Both these vegetables (technically fruits in the botanical sense) are in the cucurbit family and have similar light flavours. I later discovered a few recipes for cucumber wine – all American in origin. Perhaps here in Britain there has been more of a tradition for putting them in sandwiches.


Cucumbers do contain pectin and it is advisable to use a pectin enzyme from the start so that you don’t get a pectin haze. Since I am up at the caravan with a load of cucumbers and no pectin enzyme I have had to skip that step. I am hoping the haze will be limited because I didn’t use hot water. If it is too bad I will have to try and clear it later on or enjoy a cloudy beverage.


Most recipes use a Campden tablet to kill natural yeasts when the infusion starts with cold water. In this instance I felt that leaving the batch to brew in a bucket it would pick up natural yeast anyway. Since I used bakers yeast, and not a more specific wine yeast I decided to let whatever yeasts are there remain. Cucumbers have a high water content so it is worth adding nutrient to support the yeast. Nutrient can be bought from homebrew shops, or add one B vitamin tablet.


Grating the cucumbers to start the infusion I was enveloped in a cloud of cucumber aroma; very heady. I have been tasting the liquid at the various stages of brewing and I am up to the demi-john fermentation at the moment. The flavour is very pleasant and recognisably cucumberish. I can hear the demi-johns with the constant light fizzing noise of the tiny bubbles rising up and the odd gurgle as a bout of carbon dioxide makes it out of the airlock.


Cucumber Wine Recipe

Ingredients

• 2.25kg grated cucumber (skins, seeds and all)
• 1.5kg sugar
• 4.5litres water
• 3.5 tsp citric acid
• 1tsp yeast  + nutrient
• If desired include pectin enzyme and Campden tablet at start, use boiling water instead of cold and leave 24 hours before adding yeast


Method

• Grate the cumber, including the skin and seeds, into a large fermentation bucket
• Add the sugar, citric acid and water
• Stir thoroughly and add the yeast
• Cover with a layer of muslin and loosely fitted lid (or any other means to allow air circulation and no access by flies)
• Stir occasionally and leave to stand for 5 days
• Strain out the cucumber (using muslin or a jelly bag)
• Put the liquid into sterilised demi-johns fitted with air locks
• Leave to ferment until fermentation stops; probably about a month
• Taste the liquid. If it is still too sweet add a little yeast and yeast nutrient to get the fermentation going again
• Unless you are sure the wine is dry enough use a hygrometer to check that the sugar content is not to high for bottling
• Put the wine into sterilised bottles and consume as wished