# Pea Pod Wine



## pelican (Jul 30, 2009)

Yesterday a lady at work dropped off a "large bag" of garden peas at my desk. When I got home and shelled and blanched them for the freezer, I sat looking at that pile of pods, thinking.... 

I remember there is a recipe for pea pod wine!

So I dug out my CJJ Berry "First Steps in Winemaking" book and there it was on pages 181-182.

The recipe I used went like this:

Took the pea pods and covered them in a large pot with 4 qts (1 gallon) water, and boiled until tender, then drained off the liquid and added 4 cups sugar, stirring well to dissolved. I have no good idea of what the weight of pods was, but it was enough pods that I needed the extra large stock pot and the gallon of water did not fully 'cover' them. I'd guess it was in the neighborhood of 3 pounds or so but maybe not quite the 4 pounds called for in the book recipe.

These are the pods after they were 'juiced' -







Added 1 Tablespoon of Acid Blend (the book calls for Citric acid, I just had the blend so used that) to the 'juice' I had drained off those pods.

Then added the 1/2 tsp tannin called for - powdered - and it did give a bit of a sickly look to the resulting 'juice' but, that has cleared up a bit now.

Poured it all into a 4 liter jug to cool down and wait before pitching yeast.
Here's what I had then:







After a couple hours, there was a bit of sediment in the bottom of that jug and could be the tannin powder settled out even, but there was also bits of peas and greeny gunk, so I racked the 'juice' off that deposit into another 4 liter jug which then gave some headroom for the ferment, and let it finish cooling down a bit more. Shook it up a few times to make sure the sugar was mixing in well also just to be on the safe side.

When it was cooled to what might be referred to as "blood warm" I added 1/2 tsp Yeast Energizer and 1 tsp of Yeast Nutrient, shook that up, and then took out my yeast to see what I had to choose from.

I had EC-1118, RC-212 and the 71B-1122. That was an easy choice - the EC-1118.

So opened that packet and sprinkled about 1/3rd of it into the jug, taped up the packet and popped it back in the fridge, put a washcloth over the top of the jug and secured it with a hair tie (it's good to have a use for having all those hair ties my teenage daughters leave littered all over the house) and sat down to watch the yeast 'do something' - alternating with the lavalamp show of the chokecherry batch that had been racked to the Better Bottle earlier.


Today there is sign of good activity with the yeast and Ta Da ! Pea Pod Wine in the making....






The color is still - the color of a white-wine must under fermentation - but it's at least not a puky sickly browny green anymore.

If it doesn't turn out, it's the cost of the sugar and the yeast and if it does turn out it's a conversation piece for sure!


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## grapeman (Jul 31, 2009)

You certainly have come upon a novel idea there pelican! It will be interesting to see how it turns out.


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## Cracked Cork (Jul 31, 2009)

There could be some starch in there, a little amylase mght help prevent a haze later on when you go to bottle it. Good luck, Crackedcork


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## pelican (Jul 31, 2009)

Thanks CrackedCork! I do have some amylase so now I can put it to good use. Should I add some now or wait and see if it needs the help clearing??


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## Cracked Cork (Jul 31, 2009)

Pelican, I would add it now instead of waiting to see if there will be a problem? Crackedcork


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## Waldo (Aug 1, 2009)

Might make a great cooking wine too


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## pelican (Aug 1, 2009)

Hi Waldo, it might well end up on the cooking wine side of the rack... maybe a pea pod wine and vinegar salad dressing??

Cracked - I added 1/4 tsp Amylaze stirred into a small bit of water, hopefully ward off a starch haze. Thanks for mentioning that!


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## pelican (Aug 2, 2009)

The vigorous ferment of the Pea Pod wine has settled down, and I put it under airlock yesterday - now its chugging along steadily, bubbling 1x every second.

I was beginning to 'stew' over what I was going to top up with seeing as there is some headspace there in the jug, then I remembered my plan was to transfer to a 1 gallon from this 4 liter and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Top up with similar commercial wine" - hmmm, I can't think of what that would be since I have no idea what this is supposed to taste like when it's done!


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## pelican (Aug 6, 2009)

Tomorrow will be this batch's one week milestone. It's still doing it's thing! All the batches I've started "in the glass" go so much slower than the ones that do the primary in the bucket!!

Bubbling along - not at the steady pace of 1x second anymore but 1 every 5 seconds. Still a bit of foam, haven't taken the SG again yet - it's still active enough that I can just leave it doing what it does. Will attend to the winery chores more this weekend.


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## pelican (Aug 8, 2009)

So much for "slower" - it was bubbling but not from fermenting apparently, just outgassing.



I took hydrometer reading this morning and it was 





dry dry dry- below 0.990!

Then I racked it down to the 1 gallon jug (you can see the amount of head room there was in the 4 liter just there to the left of the hydrometer in the picture above)

I also spent a good amount of time stirring it with my wine-whip gadget driving out some of the CO2 that I now realized was responsible for giving me the impression it was still fermenting.

And this afternoon it has begun the clearing action - you can see the shading in the next picture of the clearer wine atop and the still murky majority below. There's still room for topping up (with ???



) but I'll leave that question aside for now since I'm sure to be having recurring degassing sessions on this one.







I wasn't brave enough to taste it, and it was only 8:30 in the morning - but it does smell good!


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## gaudet (Aug 8, 2009)

Looks citrusy.......... You're gonna have to taste it sooner or later


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## joeswine (Aug 8, 2009)

WILL FERMENTATION WONDERS NEVER END1!


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## Cracked Cork (Aug 8, 2009)

I would think that you can top it off with some white grape juice and it wont affect the flavor? Crackedcork


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## pelican (Aug 17, 2009)

It was still cloudy as all get out when I racked the chokecherry - broke down and put a Superkleer packet into the chokecherry and saved just a few drops of the chitosan portion of that to put in the peapod wine.... 2 days later WOW. Will post pics when I get a chance.


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## pelican (Aug 23, 2009)

Topping up was solved with the open bottle of Crabapple Rhubarb wine I
had in the fridge. That was from my second batch of wine ever - last
bottle - pretty good stuff after a year and three months of bottle
aging! Should add just a touch of interest to the flavor profile if
anything.



The clarity now after putting in the wee bit of chitosan is amazing!



Before any clearing --







And after....






Its clear enough to read the cover or Winemaker magazine through the jug!! There is a small layer of fine sediment at the bottom, so it's not quite the end of the road yet, but it's a "visible difference" (ha ha ha).


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## pelican (Sep 14, 2009)

Update on the pea pod wine... I did finally taste it. There was only the faintest powdery dusting on the bottom of the jug and having cleaned bottles this weekend I had a few clear bottles just asking to be filled.

So, yesterday evening I added a campden tablet (crushed and mixed with water, just in case someone misinterprets that step!), racked &amp; bottled. Since I don't use the autosiphon I did get a good swig starting the siphon, and was pleasantly surprised. 

Snuck out a bit to a glass and shared it with Mr. Pelican (the ever objective resident wine critic who's range facial expressions when tasting my wines-in-progress often rival those of Jim Carey). Mr. Pelican smiled, oohed and ahhed with surprise at the Pea Pod Wine result, and proclaimed it to be akin to a chardonnay. I might liken it to a sauvignon blanc myself, but I rarely drink chardonnay so maybe it's like a chard.


It fermented very dry, and I did not sweeten it (not particularly
liking sweet wines, generally preferring dry in both white or red). 

Since I spilled a bit on the bottle filling I ended up with 4 bottles and one 1/2 bottle and enjoyed a very nice glass of Pea Pod Wine last night, and probably will repeat the experience this evening. 

We both agreed it was worth planting more peas in the garden for a repeat batch next summer.

At any rate, this one's a keeper!


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## Scott (Sep 15, 2009)

pelican said:


> At any rate, this one's a keeper!










That's good news


Very interesting color by the way


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## boozinsusan (Sep 15, 2009)

Awesome! And it is so pretty!
Amazing what you can make wine from! My garden is calling me.......


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## vcasey (Sep 15, 2009)

I am really happy this turned out so well. Never would I have thought of wine from pea pods. Although I should not be surprised as I have had a carrot wine that was actually and shockingly really good and is on my still growing list of wines I want to try. 
VC


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## pelican (Sep 16, 2009)

I liked this wine so much better than dandelion (which was good just not anything I would call "special" or distinctive). Sure is a lot easier shelling peas and boiling up the pods than picking dandelion petals off the flowerhead!


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