First Strawberry Wine

[mfick]

Hello all,

I just finished my first batch of wine (blueberry), and want to start on my second (strawberry). I know I made mistakes with the first go of it, so I figured I would post a detailed recipe here and try to get some feedback. Here goes:

25 lbs strawberries(20 lbs frozen + 5 lbs fresh)
5 campden tablets (to begin)
Pectic enzyme as directed on package
6 Tsps. Yeast nutrients-on package
1/2-1 tsp tannin
3 Tsps acid (aiming for .65 TA)
Champagne yeast
8 lbs. Sugar (aiming for 1.086 specific gravity)
Water up to 6 gallon (will be closer to 5 gallons after fruit is removed)


Add strawberries to bucket with just enough water to cover, smash, add tannin and campden. Add campden, wait 12 hours, add pectin, wait 12 hours, add sugar water, nutrient, and yeast (yeast and nutrient will be in orange juice starter mix). Acid will go in with sugar water. I would split the nutrient into 1/2 dose on day 1 or 2 and the other 1/2 on about day 3-4.

What do you guys think? Sound like it would turn out? All feedback is appreciated!

Thanks
__________________

 

[jamesngalveston]

your strawberries all ready have tannin..i would omit that.
I would add campden when you transfer to a second container.
I would boost the sg up to 1.095.
I would cover the strawberries with water, and let them sit on the pectin over night, to break down the fruit.
I would then add water to 6 gallons, add the other chemicals, stir well,
and the next day i would pitch the yeast.
not advising, just saying.

 

[mfick]

Ill take your word for it!

 

[RegionRat]

I Just checked my notes and I added 2.75# raisins, 2.5# chopped dates to 60# of strawberries I steam juiced in mid May. I wanted an 'all juice wine' so I didnt add water. Ended up with 5 gal of juice. My T/A was 6.8 so I didnt add acid. How did you determine that amount of acid? Did you check ph and T/A or are you just following a recipe.

Do you plan on putting the fruit in some sort of Mesh/Strainer Bag?

RR

 

[Winorick]

The recipe sounds like it will work. I agree and disagree with the others. Definitely, use a strainer bag. I think that the tannin is a good addition to Strawberry, and I don't think that raisins nor dates are needed. I would add boiling water to the chopped strawberries, and I agree to start with a higher SG. It really depends on what you want it to taste like!

 

[Turock]

You will have a better wine if you eliminate the water. Water is a killer to a good strawberry wine. Just freeze all the fruit, and when you thaw it you'll see that you have alot of juice extracted from the fruit.

You should do a PH test pre-ferment to see if you need to add acid or calcium carbonate to bring the PH up. Many people make a mistake of adding acid. Very often, stawberry can be too acidic to start with. So the best protocol is to do a PH test.

Adding tannin can be a good idea because it stabilizes the color. Just don't add too much. Color is always a problem with strawberry, so you want to do all that you can to stabilize it.

It's good to bag this fruit--don't want any seeds getting over into the secondary, as this can cause bitterness.

Be sure to add the second dose of the nutrient before the 50% dry stage. Yeast cannot utilize all the nitrogen after the 50% dry mark and it can make a good environment for spoilage.

 

[mfick]

Great information. Im definitely going to up the amount of fruit in order to reduce water. Would it be wise to add fruit to the secondary for taste? How is this done?

 

[Turock]

The best way to do it is too mash up some berries and add sugar to them. Put the mash into a straining bag--1 gallon paint strainer bags work well, and just allow the juice to strain thru the bag, then add it to the carboy. Need to allow time in bulk aging then, so it all clarifies. If you don't want to use the berries you HAVE for this--and thus reducing the amount available for the ferment--you can go buy a couple of 1 pound bags of frozen strawberries for this purpose.

I wouldn't do this until after the wine has been thru some bulk aging, you've racked it and it's clear. You'll have to use sorbate when doing this because of the sugar, AND you want to be able to taste the wine first to see if you NEED to bulk up the flavor. So do it closer to bottling time, if needed.

If you use ANY water at all in the primary, reduce it down to a couple pints--let's not use gallons of water. Better to have less wine that is of good quality than a lot of wine that is weak on flavor.

 

[mfick]

It's underway, 25 lbs of strawberries waiting patiently to be yeasted tomorrow. The fragrance is fantastic.

 

[mfick]

Here is an update with my recipe

25 lbs strawberries(25 lbs. Frozen)
5 campden tablets (to begin)
Pectic enzyme as directed on package*
6 Tsps. Yeast nutrients-on package
1/2 tsp tannin
3 Tsps acid (kept my TA low, around .55)
Champagne yeast
10 lbs. Sugar (1.093 specific gravity)
Water up to 6 gallon

The strawberries kind of disintegrated inside of my straining bag, but the fermentation is going well. After 4 days I did notice it bein to slow considerably. Smells nice, prob still add an f pac.

 

[Turock]

You want them to disintegrate--that's what pectic enzyme does so the fruit gets incorporated into the wine.

Now--I'm not criticizing you but that's a LOT of water for so few berries. For us, 25 pounds of berries would only have made 2.5 gallons.

 

[mfick]

Oh, no doubt. I was afraid I'd end up using more than I did. Once I covered the fruit in water for the initial pectin introduction, and then added the sugar solution later, it filled right up. Im guessing it will fall closer to 5 gallons after I pull the fruit out, but still. Already planning on about 8lbs of berries for an F pac.

 

[Turock]

That's a good idea. Just be sure to allow the wine to bulk age and clear before adding the f-pack.

 

[mfick]

I guess ill keep updating this in case you guys can catch my errors... But, I racked the must into secondary last night, with an SG just under 1.000. I racked off the lees, and came out at around 5 gallons. There's still quite a bit of solids to clear out, so the waiting game starts.

 

[Auburn-Bob]

I made my first batch of strawberry about 2 years ago. I took the easy way out and used Smuckers preserves. I came out very well.

 

[redwing471]

I Just checked my notes and I added 2.75# raisins, 2.5# chopped dates to 60# of strawberries I steam juiced in mid May. I wanted an 'all juice wine' so I didnt add water. Ended up with 5 gal of juice. My T/A was 6.8 so I didnt add acid. How did you determine that amount of acid? Did you check ph and T/A or are you just following a recipe.

Do you plan on putting the fruit in some sort of Mesh/Strainer Bag?

RR

RR,

I personal messaged you before. Can you share your full recipe that you used with the 60 lbs of Strawberries by chance? I want to steam juice strawberries also...

 

[PHISHBONE]

Here is what I use for 5 gallon batch. Turrock is absolutely correct in that "no water" is the best, but I have found that using white grape concentrate to help supplement really helps. For some reason, using the concentrate helps hold the color as well.

30lbs frozen strawberries
144 oz of white grape juice
1 gallon of water
typical chems

 

[mfick]

For an update on my wine, I added 9 lbs of strawberries and 3 cups of sugar in the form of an fpac (aiming for 1.010) and now it is clearing again. I will prob add a clearing agent soon, and then put it away until im ready to bottle. The simmered down strawberries and sugar was the greatest tasting thing ive ever put into my mouth, so im pretty excited.