Moonshiner's muscadine

Hard to believe it has been a year since I got this recipe from a grandma whose hubby used to be a moonshiner, but I finally got around to making it this weekend. This is 8 gallons, all juice at this point. The only thing I changed was to add k meta to sanitize and I bagged the grapes to make them easier to press out later. It's a different kind of recipe. We'll see what happens.



For beginners, this is what the yeast should look like a few hours afterward if you sprinkle it on top of must. You can clearly see it is beginning to bloom here.

where's the recipe???

lol, yea Jim, what's the recipe?

Its a secret recipe don't ya know. LOL, Arne.

Um, I thought I would try it and see if it is swill first?

Every recipe I have posted on the recipes topic has gone away (not shown on the recipes listed), so I do not know really what good it does to post them there if they don't appear? I can search for the specific name of my recipe, and it will come up - but who knows that when they are looking? :<

Anyway, the backstory on this wine is that this 78-year-old woman's husband was a moonshiner, and he plied his trade in the woods. He would gather wild muscadines and make this recipe for her as a "lady's drink" as he was making shine. I have subsequently found out the recipe is even online, so apparently this is an old, old country way of making muscadine wine. She still makes it today for herself.

I changed the grapes to bags from loose to make things easier, I did use k meta, pectic enzyme and a touch of Fermaid to start, and I halved the sugar she called for - oh my Lord that would have been a lot of sugar! I figure I can add it in at the end if need be. Running 212 on it with starting SG of 1.110, and it was bubbling away happily when stirred this morning.

I am also changing the back end of the recipe to provide for bulk aging and settling in a carboy.

If it turns out, I will post both the original and my changed recipe.

Great extraction on the 212. I have not touched the grapes other than to punch down, and it is darker now than when I started. Profuse CO2 on stirring, so the yeasties are partying hardy!

I hope to press Friday night or (more likely) Saturday morning. We'll see how the yield is. My hope is to get to 7 gallons by keeping it all juice with no added water but if I have to I will referment.

The skins will next go into a small batch of Bell Bottom Blues (5 gallons).

A lot of old recipes added a ton of sugar as they did not stabilize, just put so much in the yeast died from excess alcohol and left the extra sugar for sweetness.

Whoo, I'm a tired boy!

Turns out 8 gallons with fruit bags makes 5 gallons of all-juice wine...



Second pressing in and fermenting. This will make the Bell Bottom Blues when done...



All cleaned up and everything. Two carboys to carry out to the shop for storage and I'm done. Whew!

A bench taste test out of primary shows I will indeed have to add more sugar, even though I started at 1.110. It ended at an estimated 13% ABV at .995.

Oh yeah, here's the original recipe. This bad boy is old-timey! I will post my version for modern winemakers later on.

Muscadine

*Note: Will not make in a brown churn.
Use White or Glass 5 gal churn/bucket.
Also, use colored bottles for the yield.*

This recipe will yield 2.5 gallons after 30 days.

10 lbs. fruit, seeded and 1/2 mashed (scuppernong or muscadine)
10 lbs. sugar
1 gal. water
1 pack yeast
1 cup self rising corn meal (tied up in cheese cloth)
1 medium peeled Irish potato

VERY IMPORTANT to mash only 1/2 of grapes. leave the rest whole.

Stir very well and place in the sun (under a window works best).

Place either a piece of the cheese cloth or an old t-shirt over the opening to keep contaminants (bugs, etc.) out.

After 1 week, stir vigorously and let it set for the remainder of the 30 days.

Strain and bottle.

Enjoy!If I want any of

OK, how did you seed them?

garymc said:

OK, how did you seed them?

Click to expand...

I had the same question!

I asked her for clarification, and she said she meant with the seeds still in them. Thank goodness.


Here's my modified recipe:

Makes 5 gallons finished.

60 lbs. fruit, seeded and 1/2 mashed (scuppernong or muscadine)
4 lbs. sugar
1 pack yeast (RC-212)
1 cup self rising corn meal (tied up in cheese cloth)
1 medium peeled Irish potato
1/4 tsp. k meta
5 grams Fermaid
8 tsp. pectic enzyme

Mash only 1/2 of grapes. Leave the rest whole. Place grapes in strainer bags. Put grapes and juice into 10- or 20-gallon fermenter.

Total volume of grapes and juice should at this point exceed 8 gallons (I got near 9). Remove juice into vial and test SSG. Mine was 1.060.

Add sugar to raise SSG to 1.100. (I needed 4 pounds.) Add pectic enzyme, k meta and Fermaid. Allow to rest 24 hours.

Peel one red potato and add to must. Wrap 1 cup self-rising corn meal in cloth or cheesecloth and add to must. Why does she specify self-rising? I don't know, but the baking soda should have a buffering effect. (I have also heard that 1 cup of steel-cut oats will work, too.)

Ferment about 5 days until SG drops to 1.00. (Mine finished at .995.) ABV was 13% estimated.

Press grapes, pouring juice into 6-gallon carboy (I didn't get much). Reserve skins if you plan a second pressing wine. Siphon wine off heavy lees in fermenter to carboy. Amount siphoned will not fill the 6-gallon; don't worry about it.

Allow to rest and settle out heavy lees under airlock about 1 hour while you do cleanup chores.

Siphon wine again off lees into 5 gallon carboy. (The second racking right away will speed clearing later, as it removes a lot of gross lees.) This wine looks likely to require one and perhaps two more rackings to clear properly.

Taste a sample of the wine and play with back sweetening.

This is where I am now. I think I will have to add about 4 or maybe even 5 pounds of sugar back into the wine at the end to get what I want. The sweeter it got in my test glass, the more OMG GOOD it became. I also played with just a touch of acid blend. Jury's still out on that one, but I may add a tiny bit, like 1 tsp. for the whole batch.

Second pressing skins:

Tie pressed grapes in bag.

Place back in primary with lees.

In separate bucket, add sugar to anywhere from 6 to 11 gallons of water (depending on what you plan for the second-pressing wine) to achieve an SSG of 1.100 (this takes a lot of sugar, maybe up to 10 pounds plus). Use 6 gallons (or even less) if you plan a stand-alone wine up to 11 if you plan to blend or use it as an adjunct wine in winemaking.

Optional: Add EC-1118. (It will re-ferment with the 212 anyway).

Ferment about 5 days, stirring must and squeezing the bag every day with your sanitized hands. Yields 5 to 10 gallons.

Here is a test glass of my second-pressing wine right out of the primary at 1.000. I am sipping it now. The wine will go into secondary tomorrow evening. This is a near dry wine but it has a nice round mouthfeel. All in all a success, as you can surmise if I am sipping it right out of primary for more than just a taste. It should settle to a nice rose. Most of the batch will go as the base for Bell Bottom Blues, but I am really tempted to oak any leftovers to see what might come of it after it all settles down. Moral of the story: Don't toss those muscadine pressings. Run 'em again!

What was the condition of the whole grapes when you pressed them after 5 days of fermentation? I would imagine if the whole grapes hadn't been completely fermented at the time of pressing, this would be a very different result from leaving them in the wine for 30 days. I'd also be very curious as to the condition of the whole grapes after 30 days in the wine.

garymc said:

What was the condition of the whole grapes when you pressed them after 5 days of fermentation? I would imagine if the whole grapes hadn't been completely fermented at the time of pressing, this would be a very different result from leaving them in the wine for 30 days. I'd also be very curious as to the condition of the whole grapes after 30 days in the wine.

Click to expand...

They were whole but had lost some of their fluid through diffusion. I am certain that is why only half the grapes are crushed, to preserve the juices inside the whole grapes. I wish I had tasted one, to see if the yeast found their way inside, but I didn't. All these grapes had of course been frozen first.

DELAYED EDIT: The recipe doesn't call for leaving grapes in the wine for 30 days. YES IT DOES, DUMMY! THE ORIGINAL RECIPE CALLS FOR 30 DAYS! You crush half, leave half whole, and use them all at the start. Putting grapes in secondary for 30 days would be interesting, though. YEAH - LIKE IT SAYS IN THE ORIGINAL RECIPE!!!

The first pressing wine has a lot more color and vibrancy than the second pressing. The first pressing is currently a candidate for the best wine I have ever made. We'll see how it goes.

OK, the stabilized second pressing was married to blueberry juice today. Now the long wait for it all to settle out and become 36 or 37 bottles of nice Bell Bottom Blues.

I was working on my WMT Unofficial Contest wine last night, so I took a very tiny bit of the 100% juice muscadine wine with a thief to taste-test.

Wow, now I am in a quandary. It has finished dry and I think if it was aged like that for a year or two, it could be awesome. But I really want to sweet this up to bring out max muscadine flavor. I might just bottle off a couple dry experimental ones and then do my back sweetening, just for fun. It has another month or two before it's ready to bottle anyway.

I am definitely making a bigger batch of the all-juice recipe this fall when the grapes come in.

One of my all juices of muscadine turned out pretty well. Just be sure to be ready for tartaric acid crystals and a strong flavour.

seth8530 said:

One of my all juices of muscadine turned out pretty well. Just be sure to be ready for tartaric acid crystals and a strong flavour.

Click to expand...

Seth, I'm bulk aging it in carboys a long time to shed the diamonds. They don't bother me much, even in the bottle. I don't think this recipe is going to taste "strong." The grapes came from a domesticated muscadine cultivar, not wild. It's real promising.

I did not realize we are near neighbors.

Yeah, I also bulk age for quite a long time. Just something to consider. My grapes acame from the family vinyard so I assume they were also domesticated.

seth8530 said:

Yeah, I also bulk age for quite a long time. Just something to consider. My grapes acame from the family vinyard so I assume they were also domesticated.

Click to expand...

Dunno man, the guy I got the grapes from gave me a bottle he has aged so long the glass turned purple - no lie - and there was nary a diamond in it. We'll see what happens.