Here we go, first post of the shop's blog!!

And how appropriate it should be on Thursday 23rd April - St George's Day. Today's the day for traditional picking your dandelions.

So here's a recipe for brewing them after you've picked them!

Dandelion Wine - Medium

Ingredients

• Dandelions 3 Quarts
• Sugar 3 Lb
• Lemons 2
• Orange 1
• White Grape Concentrate 1/2 Pint
• Grape Tannin 1 teaspoon
• Water 1 Gallon
• Yeast & Yeast Nutrient

The flowers should be freshly gathered and picked off their stems. A quart of heads weighs approx 1/2 lb or the petals alone 3/4 lb. It's not necessary to pick the petals off as you can use the whole head.

Place flowers into a polythene bucket (at least 1 gallon in size and the plastic should be off food grade), boil the water and pout over the flowers. Leave for two days with the bucket tightly sealed, stir each day.

On the third day pout into a large pan, add the sugar and rinds from the lemons and orange. Boil for ten minutes. Return to bucket along with the juice and pulp from the lemons and orange.

Allow to cool before adding yeast, yeast nutrient and the tannin. Leave for a further three days, covered, in a warm place. Now strain into a demi john and add the grape concentrate.

Leave until fermentation stops, then syphon off the sediment, before bottling and corking.

This wine could be drunk at Christmas but will improve vastly if kept a further 6 months or so.