Dandelion wine

Since the dandelions have passed their prime, food-wise, I'm going to try making dandelion wine.

Up to now, coffee is the only thing I've ever brewed, so this is a completely new experience, which features lots of work and a high chance of producing an undrinkable drink that will make Cristy make "the face." So let's begin.

Ok, I've picked the "Midday Dandelion Wine" recipe on this page , mostly because it seems the simplest.

Step one: gather the dandelions.

I have lots of dandelions in my back yard. As it turns out, as of today they have produced just enough flowers for this recipe. Picking dandelions can make your lower back sore. It did mine, at any rate If you have brats, send them to do it, but be prepared for them to get stung by bees.

Here's what I ended up with:

Step two: prepare the petals.

This recipe says to "remove as much of the green material from the flower heads as possible." I'm in kind of a newbie quandry here. What does "as much as possible" mean? I've got a bowlful of flowerheads... do I remove every piece of green? Is just pinching off the bottom part and making sure there aren't any stems and leaves good enough? I spent about 45 minutes pinch the heads off of each friggin flowerhead before I lost patience and dumped the remaining unpinched flowers into the finished bowl, which looked like this:

Step three: pour boiling water over the petals and let steep for two days.

I was thinking about using one of the old crocks we have for this step, but instead I'm going to use the bucket that came with the winemaker's starter kit I bought from Victor's Grape Arbor in Albuquerque.