Strawberry Wine 2017

BamaProud

BamaProud

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(roughly) Using Jack Kellers Strawberry Wine (4) recipe scaled up to 5 gallons

3 1/2 lbs. fresh wild strawberries
2-1/2 lbs. granulated sugar
1 gal. water
1 tsp. acid blend
1 tsp. pectic enzyme
1/4 tsp. grape tannin
1 crushed Campden tablet

Champagne yeast and nutrient Place fruit in nylon jelly bag and tie. In crock, crush fruit with hands. Add all other ingredients except Campden tablet, pectic enzyme and yeast in crock and cover with 3 quarts boiling water. Stir well to dissolve sugar. Cover and add crushed Campden tablet when tepid (about 2 hours). After additional 10 hours add pectic enzyme and 12 hours later add yeast. Cover and stir daily. On 7th day remove jelly bag and hang over bowl to collect juice. Allow to drain thoroughly without squeezing (about two hours). Pour all liquids into secondary fermentation vessel, top up to one gallon, fit fermentation trap, and set aside. Rack every 30 days until wine clears (3-6 months). When wine clears, bottle. Allow to age at least 1 year.
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Started off with 25 pounds of Fresh ripe locally grown Strawberries.
20170412_092318_zpsei4yupic.jpg


My wife bought a juicer a few months ago, so I decided to give it a try as opposed to manually crushing the berries or freezing. It seemed to work well, and didn't result in cramped hands.

20170412_092323_zpsvcse6gnu.jpg


Ended up with 2.5 gallons of Juice. 2.5 pounds of sugar per gallon sounded like a lot to me so I am glad I checked the gravity after adding 10 pounds. I guess my strawberries were extra sweet, (and I also used more than the recipe called for) because the Gravity was 1.093, so I didn't bother adding the other 5 pounds of sugar. If it ferments dry it should come out to around 13-14% ABV.

Should be ready to bottle in October. Its going to be tough to let this age for a year. I'm sure there will be a few bottles sampled between Fall and Next Spring.
 
Heck yeah, it's that time of the year again. Can't wait for the blackberries myself. There's nothing like sipping on some fine home brew.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I did not understand the importance of the campden tablet until the guy at the wine making store explained it to me. Now I know why my strawberry wine has a funky wang to it. I bottled some in beer bottles and put a splash of sugar water in to see if we could make some sparkling wine. Popped one bottle of it so far and half the bottle leaped into the air and onto the floor. Wine making is definitely a learning experience.
 
Looks very good. Great looking color.

Bamaproud-blackberries are about to be in, do you have a good recipe that will get me started? I have never made Blackberry wine, but I am going to try it this year. Any help is GREATLY appreciated.
 
I have his copied and just thought I would check you out first. Since I am just beginning, it is always great to have someone to ask directly. I thought about a practice run with blackberries today from SAMs here in the Shoals. At nearly six dollars for a pound of fresh blackberries, I decided to wait and use nature's bounty.

Thanks for the link.
B
 
I've got al, kinds of recipes for wine I've made. Also have some extra carboys if anyone is interested.
 
I just bottled some strawberry wine last week. Almost did not make it to work the next day. A guy from across the street from me helped out. He said he had to stop twice on the way home and sit down on the sidewalk. It has a bit of a wang to it because we did not kill the natural yeast but it has some serious kick to it.
 
If you didn't kill the yeast you likely have bombs stored in your house. I'm not talking about just popping corks and having to clean up a mess, I mean real explosions with glass shrapnel (still with the mess). Wine bottles aren't built to hold pressure like beer beer or champagne bottles. I learned that lesson the hard way. I have seen pictures of glass embedded in drywall.

The easiest fix since its already bottled is to stove-top pasteurize your bottled wine. Essentially you just soak your bottles of wine in a 170-190 degree bath for 10 min's killing the yeast. Here's a detailed step-by-step guide to the process http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=193295

Preferably, there are a variety of ways to stabilize your wine before bottling.
 
Bamaproud-I have some cherry wine that I started 5 days ago. It has a vigorous fermentation also, like your strawberries did. You can put your ear over the jug and you can actually hear it working. I just wanted to know what this means when you have it working that much. Any comments will be appreciated.

Thanks, B.
 
I don't think a vigorous fermentation means much other than it is more likely to finish dry, its a healthy fermentation.

Side note. We lost power for at least 48 hours last week in Bartlett while we were on a cruise. I have almost 30 gals of beer and wine and Cider fermenting/aging I hope its OK. My fermenting chamber is pretty sensitive to power surges. If it tripped a breaker I may have issues when we get home tomorrow.

Pretty sure our deep-freeze is ok, we can monitor its temp on-line, When the power(and internet) came back on it was still below 20 degrees.
 

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