Drinking Rhubarb...

The rhubarb is still growing because I water it if there's been more than 4 days without rain and I only pick a third of it when I do pick it.

We went away to the southwest the last week of July and first of August. I picked the rhubarb before we left and stuck it in the freezer. When we got back, it was ready to pick again and I got enough for a gallon of wine, 4 pint jars of drink concentrate, and a 9"x13" crisp.

I had a gallon of rhubarb wine fermenting: it was the batch that I made with some elderflowers steeped in it. It was actually ready to bottle and tasted quite fine; it should be really nice by Christmas. I've been making concentrate with some spearmint steeped in it, so I did the same for this batch of wine. The spearmint had grown like crazy too. Half of what I picked went into the new batch of concentrate.

I bottled up the first batch of rhubarb wine in glass bottles. This middle batch I put into 2 liter plastic bottles that I'll decant later into bottles I empty from wine I have on hand.

I have about 24 pints of drink concentrate on basement shelf. In this hot summer I've managed to already drink up what I made last year. I'll probably use a half dozen pints before fall really sets in. It's a very low calorie refresher (1 pint has 1/4 c organic sugar; 1 pint makes 8 12 oz glasses of beverage -- less than 2 tsp of sugar per glass). Its sweetness is much less than that of any commercial iced tea or lemonade. I get a slight lift from what sugar is in it, but not enough to raise my metabolism (make me hotter!).

The rhubarb wine is a like a dry, light white wine. The batches with elderflower steeping or spearmint steeping will probably make good spritzers.

I love drinking rhubarb!