Adding flowers to wine

[tradowsk]

I'm curious as to people's thoughts about whether to add dried flowers directly to the wine in primary/secondary or make a "tea" and add that.

I have a 12% abv lingonberry mead just finishing primary now, and I want to add some hibiscus flowers (0.75oz based on a recipe called Aztec Blood I found on this site). The recipe says to make a tea with them. But my 1 gallon carboy is very full, so to add more liquid I would need to take away some of the mead. Is there anything wrong with just putting the dried flowers in there and letting the alcohol extract the flavor?

I'm also planning a lavender riesling this summer. There I would make the tea because I don't know how much lavender to add. But for the hibiscus, since I know the amount, I can't see a downside of just adding the flowers directly.

Thoughts?

 

[NorCal]

I listened to a podcast awhile ago where the winemaker did flavor infused wines. I thought it was super interesting and shattered the variety focused paradigm that the stiff wine world lives in. I could see someone saying, here, try this lavender Cabernet. I think it would be fun.

While I’m sure there are safe and unsafe ways to add flavors to wine. I would assume if what I am putting in the wine to extract the flavor out of is edible, so would the resulting wine. Not sure if that is a correct assumption though.

 

[Rice_Guy]

You have the option of creating a grain alcohol extract as is done to produce vanilla extract, and then add this.
Yes adding dried flowers to the secondary fermentor will work. The liquid in the wine will leech flavors out.
A third option if you plan to back sweeten would be to extract in a sugar syrup.

The recipe says to make a tea with them. . . Is there anything wrong with just putting the dried flowers in there and letting the alcohol extract the flavor? Thoughts?