Cranberry Wine

Just started a 5 gallon batch of cranberry wine. Here is what I did;

16 lb cranberries. Boiled with 20 cups of sugar to soften berries. added a teaspoon of tannin, a couple teaspoons of nutrient and energizer. About 5 gallons of water totaL. Going to use ec-1118 yeast.

Thinking of back sweetening half of it and aging half for a dry wine.

Any thoughts or opinions on recipe?

I havn't done a fresh cranberry, but think 16 lbs might be somewhat weak in flavor for a gal. batch. Hope someone that has fermented them will hop in and say I am wrong. Arne.

I only use 5 lbs of fresh cranberries for a 2 gal batch of cranberry wine. Been making it this way for 8 years. Everyone loves it. May not be as strong cranberry taste as others wine, but we like that way. So in our opinion U will be fine. I do top off with 100% cranberry juice, and sometimes F PAC it with frozen cranberry juice, not diluted. Just bottled my 2014 Cranberry wine for 2016 Thanksgiving. Roy

I have made cranberry wine a couple of times and find it very tart... I don't like a sweet wine but I find that the only way to make it pleasantly drinkable is to backsweeten it. Is your experience very different?

I consider cranberry my specialty since it is the only wine I am fermenting every year. Believe it or not, like any fruit, cranberries can be different based on the time of harvest and climate, but from my experience with cranberries I would not be able to ferment 5 gallons off 16 lbs of berries because no ordinary yeast would handle such acidity at that concentration, unless you deacidify by water dilution or calcium/potassium carbonate. I typically use about 8-10 lbs of fresh cranberries per 5 gallons, and it ends up being a pretty intense wine. Again, I may be wrong, because it depends on your fruit source, but that's what works for me.

From quite a few posts I have read here and elsewhere most people are using about 2.5 pounds per gallon.

I will let everyone know in a couple days how the yeast is doing. EC-1118 is a pretty hardy yeast, so I'm pretty confident that it will do the trick, especially with some nutrient and energizer added.

I am planning on back sweeting with some concentrate or simple syrup if need be before bottling. I tend to like my fruit wines on the sweeter side. I will make that call after fermentation has ended and the wine has cleared.

Jc5066 said:

I am planning on back sweeting with some concentrate or simple syrup if need be before bottling. I tend to like my fruit wines on the sweeter side. I will make that call after fermentation has ended and the wine has cleared.

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Trust me, you will definitely be backsweetening, especially if you like sweeter wines. EC-1118 will run that baby bone dry.

I also always use EC 1118 yeast for cranberry. I back sweeten anywhere from 1.005 to 1.012, cranberry needs a little sweetness. Roy

After thought! One year our cranberry was too strong/tart, so for Thanksgiving I put out 2 bottles of our wine & a 2 liter bottle of Sprite. Huge success! Big hit. Roy

FTC Wines said:

After thought! One year our cranberry was too strong/tart, so for Thanksgiving I put out 2 bottles of our wine & a 2 liter bottle of Sprite. Huge success! Big hit. Roy

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Cranberry Spritzer! Sounds awesome.

FTC Wines said:

After thought! One year our cranberry was too strong/tart, so for Thanksgiving I put out 2 bottles of our wine & a 2 liter bottle of Sprite. Huge success! Big hit. Roy

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Cranberry Spritzer! Mmm sounds good.

Well, I learned something about cranberries. One thing is a lot of times with the smaller berries you don't need as many berries per pound as they tend to have a lot of flavor. Arne.

Just checked on the cranberry wine. Fermentation is well under way.

I just had a bottle of cranberry wine I made a couple years back. Yes, I did backsweeten a bit but time alone did a lot to change the wine. It started out very tart, sugar helped some, but I also added some tannin and besides time itself I think the tannin did more to improve the wine than even sugar. I only have one bottle left and it aged so well that I will be starting a new batch very soon to give it time to age. this batch I'll add the tannin up front.

My wine was made from Ocean Spray cranberry juice fortified by Old Orchard concentrate. I've tried growing cranberries but they just don't do well for me.

Pam in cinti

FTC Wines said:

After thought! One year our cranberry was too strong/tart, so for Thanksgiving I put out 2 bottles of our wine & a 2 liter bottle of Sprite. Huge success! Big hit. Roy

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Over come, adapt and improvise