Clip rose heads as they are just starting to fade. If you don’t have enough petals in one go, freeze the flowers until you have enough. Don’t worry if they go a little brown. Collect strongly scented roses of any colour.
Ingredients
4 ½ pints / 11 cups rose petals
2 ½ lbs /1130g Sugar
Juice from one lemon
1 litre carton white grape juice (or similar)
6 ½ pints/3700ml boiling water
1 yeast sachet
1 teaspoon Yeast Nutrient
1 teaspoon Pectolase (optional)
Method (First Stage)
• Put petals, sugar, lemon juice and grape juice in bucket
• Pour over boiling water
• Stir until sugar dissolves
• Leave overnight keeping bucket lid on
• Add yeast, nutrient and pectolase
• Leave 5 (or so) days, stirring twice a day
• sieve liquid into your demijohn (a funnel will help), discarding petals
• fit rubber bung and air trap
• leave for 2 months (or so)
Method (second stage)
• siphon liquid from demijohn into second demijohn, trying to avoid the sediment
• fill gap in second demijohn with syrup made from a ratio of 1 pint water:6 oz sugar
• leave for 4 months (or so)
• bottle
• leave until a year from collecting ingredients (if you can!)
• drink