Weird question but what would you do with 10 demijohns of homemade wine and mead?

[WordInYourShellLike]

I know this sounds ridiculous and the answer seems blindingly obvious but hear me out. These were all made by my OH 15 or more years ago and have been mostly sitting undrunk ever since. They take up a stupid amount of space considering our house is very small. They've all moved house with us 2 or 3 times. Some have been filtered, most not. A lot of them haven't even been opened to see what they're like.

A major aspect of this is that he has ADHD and executive dysfunction and he seems completely unable to deal with the issue, just frozen with indecision. I do sympathise, I have traits of both of these too and our teenager has all of that and more so it's rare that things run smoothly in our household!

I don't drink so I can't help in that way. In all these years, he has barely drunk any of it either. A couple of demijohns of mead that turned out really nice were bottled and drunk or given away many many years ago but nothing has happened since. So he cannot decide what to do and therefore does nothing. He says it either has to be kept or thrown away. I asked could it not be given away but to be honest I don't really know how to go about this. You can't just offer alcohol up for free on community Facebook or WhatsApp groups or sell it on ebay or put it on Freegle! There's so bloody much of it but I hate waste so the idea of chucking the lot is painful 😟

It shouldn't be my problem to deal with but nothing I have said or done so far has made OH pull his finger out and make a decision and it's driving me mad! I would be very grateful for any helpful thoughts or advice!

You could say to friends and family, bring your empty bottles and we'll fill them! I also like the plan of a party

There's more than a touch of sunk cost fallacy in there. The money spent making them is long gone. If nobody has been tempted to drink them in 15 years is likely nobody ever will. Down the drain gets my vote.

Nobody has been able to drink them because they haven’t been bottled.
I take pps’ point about the sunk cost fallacy and if the equipment was going to cost a lot of money I would agree but it’s not, particularly since it sounds like they already have most of it somewhere in the house.

Paint stripper 😉

I would see if there is a local micro pub that wants to take them and deal with the gamble of whether its any good

Failing that chuck it, all the talk of filter bags, bottles, blah blah blah, that leads to more organising to do, more decisions, more actions to take and you'll both get paralysed again and it will stall

Get rid of them and just write it off to experience.

For the love of god pour it down the drain. Fifteen year old homemade booze will be absolutely foul and probably toxic.

Hmm this is getting a bit polarised! I think we can take it one step at a time, see what one demijohn is like, bottle if good, give it away to friends. Some will definitely need chucking and I'm happy with that. I don't want to take an all or nothing approach if something can be salvaged. I highly doubt it'll be toxic!

Honey is immortal, isn't it? And antibacterial.. Stories about some in the pyramids still being good come back to me.

Make soup.

My auntie makes mushroom soup every week and adds the wine she made in the 1980s to it. Says it’s better than sherry and she won’t know what to use instead if it ever runs out.

Throw the party, everyone brings some bottles, they take the booze away which they can't drink in one go. Fill the empty bottles with some soil and a few plants, sell as a terrarium.

15 years of anything homemade goes down the drain. OMG 🤢

@Unexpecteddrivinginstructor I like your thinking about the terrariums - that's a whole new angle!

Just get rid of it.

Your auntie sounds fabulous! Goodness knows how much soup we'd have to make to use up 10 demijohns though, perhaps she'd like some of ours? 😅

I make mead, it's needs a year to mature, no need to filter you syphon the clear mead out of the Demi John, make if sure not to disturb the sediment, if a bit of sediment does get in, no big deal. I don't buy special bottles I use old gin bottles and old milk containers (well washed and for short term use). I don't keep it for long once decanted.

From (vague and painful) memory, what you need to do is wait for your teen to reach the age of 17.

That's the point at which they have a few mates around and they have the fantastic idea of going into the deepest recesses of the garage to where Dad made his hooch about 15 years previously.

Terrible advice on this thread. You have a busy life and DC and DH with ADHD. Simply: bin them.
then you never have to think about it again. With the best will in the world throwing parties or sourcing local wine bottles WILL NOT HAPPEN. Bin them all and relax.

Cook with it. That's what we did when DH made a batch of mead and it sat there not getting drunk. He only made 1 demijohns worth though so I just use it like a sweet sherry in rissotos, trifle, ice cream, boozy hot chocolate, honey and mustard sauces, pepper sauce etc.

Put it on Olio. I posted some cider past the bbe and it went within the hour with a dozen requests. Just copy your op in the listing.

Is the wine made with fruit @WordInYourShellLike

I'm not sure, some of it I think! There's definitely some elderflower, there may be elderberry or blackberry, some of them don't even have labels and I haven't had a look at the ones lurking under our bed!

The bottling, tasting and all that crap won’t happen. Just pour it away. Put the Demi johns on Freecycle and stop thinking about it.

You can have a home made wine free house in 2 days or still be looking at it in 2 years. But you will also be looking at a pile of donated old wine bottles, corks and filter paper as a sort of shit grazing board next to it all. Like Crap Tapas

If you've any fruit trees it makes amazing fertilizer as we accidentally discovered. Elderberry port is amazing.

If it is drinkable can you not just run round and steal all the bottles you need on recycling night. Agree mostly that likely you’ll throw it away but I think I would be very curious to taste and see