Tea bag wine

[Col]

There's lots of speciality tea bags on the market now, and they can make some very interesting wines. A general rule of thumb is to mash up to 20 of the bags in a Litre of boiling water, strain and squeeze the bags, and add to a demi john with about 750g of sugar, and 2 Litres of the appropriate grape juice - for 'Fruits of the Forest' bags add red grape juice, for example, or white grape juice for 'Ginger' tea bags. Here's one I made earlier, in true Blue Peter fashion...

10 'Berry Fruits' tea bags from Aldi
1 Litre red grape juice
1 Litre orange juice (NFC)-yes, I know I said all grape juice, but variety's the spice of life...
750g white sugar
1 tsp pectolase
1 tsp nutrient
1 tsp general purpose yeast

Mash the bags in 1 L of boiling water for 1/2 an hour, then strain through a sieve into a DJ, then squeeze the bags with the back of a spoon. Dissolve the sugar in another Litre of boiling water, cool and add this to the DJ, along with the cartons of juice. Add all the other adjuncts, fill to the shoulder with some boiled, cooled water, and give all a good stir. Top up when it settles down a bit, and ferment out and finish in the normal way.
This turned out very fruity, and with a gorgeous rose colour - it was a little sweet, at 1.003, because of the sugar in the dried fruit in the tea bags, so next time I'd add 50g less sugar, and use a hydrometer!

[LordEoin]

I saw a recipe recently that used teabags ONLY as the flavor.
It was basically teabags+sugar+yeast.
Never tried it though.