Carrots are naturally sweet but have no acid. To compensate this carrot wine recipe adds oranges and lemons. This recipe makes a wine that is rich in taste and golden in colour. It’s great for using up damaged or misshapen carrots at the end of the season.
Carrots are quite easy to grow, you may find the page How to Grow Carrots on the Allotment Garden web site helpful.
Carrot Wine Recipe
Ingredients for Carrot Wine Recipe:
- 4 lbs of carrots
- 2 to 2½ lbs demerara sugar
- 2 lemons
- 2 oranges
- ½ lb pale raisins
- yeast and yeast nutrient
- Water
Method for Carrot Wine Recipe:
- Scrub the carrots and slice fairly thinly then roughly chop.
- Boil 1 gallon of water and then add the carrots. Bring back to the boil and then simmer until tender, roughly 15 minutes. The water will have taken a fair colour.
- Using a large pan or a brewing bin, strain onto the sugar, raisins and thinly peeled rind of the oranges and lemons. Mix well.
- Allow to cool until lukewarm and add the lemon and orange juice, yeast and yeast nutrient.
- Stir well and leave to ferment in a warm place for at least a week – covered to keep flies and wild yeasts off.
- Strain into a demijohn and add a fermentation lock.
- Strain and rack when the wines clears, topping up with water to the neck of the demijohn. Leave until fermentation has stopped and then rack again.
- Put aside for a couple of months and then rack again and bottle.
Makes around 1 gallon of wine. Generally this is not a quick a quick wine. Usually the flavours have developed after a year but it’s often better after 2 years.
There’s no reason to waste the cooked carrots. They can be mashed with a little salt, pepper and butter as a side dish with meals or split into portions and frozen to use in other recipes.
Those living outside the UK (where it is not allowed under regulations) can also use the cooked carrots in chicken mash or pig feed.
Hi,I would like to try your recipe for carrot wine but unsure how much wine yeast or yeast nutrient to use as you don`t give amounts e.i tsp or ounces per gallon of water..
many thanks
Wine yeast usually comes in small sealed packets – 1 packet is enough for 1 or 10 gallons because yeast is living cells that double their number every 8 to 12 hours. It’s not like adding sugar or so on to a recipe.
Yeast nutrient usually says how much to use on the pack – roughly a 5ml teaspoon per gallon is normal
I’ve never used a yeast nutrient before, I would generally add a few sultanas if the ‘brew’ looked to be struggling.
So, is it really necessary? This is my first go at carrot wine!
hi I’ve just followed your carrot wine recipe. I’ve never made wine where you add yeast into a mash i.e. with stuff in it, I usually strain off and then add yeast. I don’t have a lid and can’t be sure it will be contaminant free so I’m going to strain it off after a couple of days then add yeast. So I will just have to suck it and see.
As I read this it seems you only use the water after boiling the carrots, surely I’m wrong on this. Can you confirm please.
That’s what it said – Grandad used to feed them to his hens as part of the mash he made them.
Having got my first batch of parsnip wine on the go I’m going to try this carrot recipe. My only problem is leaving it long enough to mature properly.?
I made a similar recipe to this in September (4 bottles). It was absolutely delicious by the beginning of this month. All gone now, so I’m now making a quadruple batch. Carrots are 15p/KG leading up to Christmas, so it’s the perfect time to go crazy.
Making three gallons to day. Let you know in two years how it come out. May slip a sip in 6 months.
Love to know how anyone else came out.
Mgervais9@gmail.com
In making carrot wine do I really need to add the orange and lemon and raisins ?
You’re free to change any recipe to your own tastes
I would blanch the sultanas in boiling water or soak in a sodium metabisulfite solution as they pose a bacterial threat when not treated thus. I have made wine with sultanas added straight out of the packet and it has ended up “ropey” and I was forced to chuck the lot. However same wine made having soaked the raisins in a metabisulfite solution (1 level teaspoon to a litre of water and drained then rinsed afterwards) the wine was perfect. Just saying.
Good point. Good hygiene (as in keeping stray yeasts and bacteria out of the fermenting mix and making sure that containers and utensils are scrupulously clean) is essential to making consistently good wine.
The other suggestion I have is to remember to rack the wine off the yeast as soon as you can see that fermentation has finished and the wine has settled. If you don’t, the yeast cells can die off and impart unnecessary ‘off’ flavours to your wine.
i wonder if it possible to use a juicer to juice the carrot , only using the juice add water then continue with the rest , would it work this way ?
Damn! Why didn’t I think of that. 🙈
I make carrot and coriander soup with the left over carrot!!!