Dandelion Petals 

Dandelion wine has a flavour a bit like Mead, it has notes of honey and flowers; it is a clean and inviting wine. This makes dandelion petals very suitable as a mead ingredient, as are many of the daisies.

Being primarily a foraged ingredient, there are of course all of those warnings about where they are gathered from, dog parks are not a good place.

Once gathered they do need to be cleaned up by removing the petals from the flower heads. The petals ferment into a glorious flavour, the flower heads do not. Rinsing is something each person needs to decide on, I rinse my petals, I then pour hot water over them (80 deg C) and allow them to cool to below 30, I then mix in the honey. I add MetaK and leave this must for twenty four hours before pitching into it.

I often use a bag for the petals, though not always, they are in for the duration of the primary fermentation and can be racked off quite easily.

Dandelion wine takes a bit of ageing and comes good after 6-9 months. This is the same with dandelion meads.

Dandelions are one of the ancient ingredients, an ingredient that has been used for centuries in mead and wine making. They need not stand on their own and bring a brilliant hue and background flavour to many a mead. Many traditional dandelion wine recipes used lemons, the two pair well together.

I find dandelion petals to be very much interchangeable with Calendula petals. Dandelions are more popular as a foraged ingredient, however, if you wish to grow the petals rather than forage, you will get  a lot more petals per square metre from the calendula which will grow taller and have many flower heads. This gives a better yield and I find a much more vibrant colour. The flavour is almost indistinguishable.

Steeping the petals in already completed mead gives a different end result to fermenting them, it is light and floral and requires less ageing to be magnificent, but the floral notes blow away in the glass fairly quickly. When used with elderflower in this manner one can create a very refreshing session mead.