Put your excess rhubarb to good use and whip up a batch of pink fizzy rhubarb champagne.
Rhubarb champagne is a fun, creative (and alcoholic!) way of using up that surplus rhubarb. Can’t get much better than that, right?
Have you ever tried rhubarb champagne? It’s a delectable, sweet, refreshing, ever so slightly alcoholic, fizzy beverage, which you can easily make at home. The darker your rhubarb the pinker your brew will turn out. This batch resulted in a very pale pink as I grow a light-coloured variety of rhubarb.
Now is the perfect time of year for brewing some rhubarb champagne – rhubarb is abundant, and it’s a delicious drink for the warming weather.
Pink Fizzy Rhubarb Champagne Recipe
Ingredients:
- 3 & ½ cups rhubarb
- 3 & ½ cups of sugar
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 12 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
- 4 litres of water
Method:
Chop up your home-grown rhubarb into little pieces, until you’ve got three and a half cups.
Put this, along with three and a half cups of sugar into a large-ish vessel, which has been well cleaned and rinsed with boiling water. I used a ceramic fermenting crock, but you could also use a very clean plastic bucket or a large jar.
Add the lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, four litres of water, and leave to ferment for around three days.
Then bottle (I used some glass swing-top bottles I got at a garage sale) and leave for around three weeks.
Then pop it like a champagne bottle! It’ll fizz, just like the real deal. But to my mind, it’s much more delicious. And more satisfying, because I made it myself.
We’re currently enjoying ours cut half-and-half with mineral water, on account of the syrupy sweetness of the champagne.
You could also add some chopped up strawberries for extra sweetness and a decorative element.
Once 3 days past Do I put bottles in fridge for 3 weeks ?
No, just in a cool, dry place.
Do we strain the rhubarb out when we bottle after three days ??
Yes, that’s right.
So excited to make. am on day 2. I am making in my demijoln which I use for my mead. I saw another recipe which said you had to leave it open ….Don’t put a lid on the bucket, the mixture needs to gather the natural yeasts in the air to start the fermentation process.
Is this what you recommend as I have my airlock on mine.?
Does it go fizzy once you bottle it up?
Great question- I’d love to know this too
Could you use raw sugar for this or do you need white sugar?
Raw sugar is fine!
How alcoholic is this? Does anyone know the alcohol percentage?
It depends on a lot of factors. The longer you ferment the more alcoholic it becomes. When I make it feels midly alcoholic but I can’t give you any percentages.