Mushroom Wine: The Fermented Fungi
Making mushroom wine
The South Asian cultures make mushroom wine and seemingly have no ill effects, yet this tipple is unusual to the Western world of wine. Intrepid travellers have reported upon their return an amazement that a wine made from mushrooms can taste so similar to a conventional grape wine, particularly akin to a chardonnay.
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A search on the trusty place of all knowledge - the internet, led to no solid (or even slightly squidgy) recipes for mushroom wine, and being the “weird homebrew guy” as the wife so fondly refers to me, I decided that the challenge of this wine was one I would accept. After all, an extra 6 bottles of wine in the wine rack wouldn’t take up mushroom at all! |
Homemade mushroom wine
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Ingredients:
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Mushroom wine recipe
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Method:
Fry ‘shrooms until they become a juicy gloopy foreboding mush of dark matter. Don’t worry about the colour, the wine will clear to a clear straw hue with a brilliant sheen.
Dollop your mushrooms into your primary fermentation vessel (sounds posh for a bucket!), along with the 1.4kg of sugar, customary cup of strong tea and a good tablespoon of marmite. The marmite adds a depth of flavour that sits just behind the mushrooms on the palate. The marmite in the wine also gives the yeast a boost of nutrition to help it start fermenting. Not a fan of Marmite? It does loose its unique flavour in the wine, and you could add a traditional yeast nutrient (But you are making a very unusual mushroom wine, be brave and experiment!)
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Pour one gallon of boiling water into your fermenting bucket and stir your sweet, mushroom and marmite concoction until all the sugar has dissolved. Allow to cool, and if you wish, take a hydrometer reading which should be in the region of 1.09, which will give a finished abv of 12.5%.
Pitch in your yeast, I am using a generic wine yeast - I can faff around with different yeast styles in future batches of mushroom wine.
Set your covered primary fermenting bucket to one side for three days, stirring daily. After 3 days, strain the liquid through a sieve or cheesecloth into a demijohn, and ferment till dry.
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