1 gallon strawberry wine experiment

[_bryan]

Hi all,

I have a gallon of strawberry wine that I made from fruit as an experiment, it's been aging for a few months. It's perfectly clear now and it ended up at 15%.

This seems high to me for strawberry wine. It smells good and I tasted a sample and it seems ok, not too "hot".

I'm curious, since this is my first try with strawberries, is this worth bottling and keeping? I'm concerned this might not be very drinkable but I was hoping for some feedback from others with experience with strawberries.

Thanks!

 

[bkisel]

Welcome to WMT!

I've not made any strawberry wine but would say that if it, like you say, seems ok then go ahead and bottle; the taste just might grow on you.

 

[Elmer]

If you tasted it, and it tasted "ok"
Why wouldnt it be "drinkable"?

You can always drink it on ice, to water it down.
Add some seltzer.
mix it with something.

Dont dump it, work with it and experiment!

 

[_bryan]

You're right. It started as an experiment, might as well keep it and see what happens....and experiment a little more

 

[seth8530]

Welcome to the forum and good work on the wine. Take the opportunity to read the forums and read about good wine making technique and learn about what all is out there.

 

[_bryan]

One quick follow up too. I've been brewing a long time but mostly beer, so, I hope you don't mind a basic question. But, the wine fermented out completely dry (0.990). How do you all recommend back sweetening? Sugar? Strawberry juice, something else completely?

 

[wineforfun]

Mine all gets backsweetened with table sugar but you are going to get a bunch of answers to that, as we all do it differently, with somewhat of the same ending., ie: table sugar, table sugar made into a simple syrup using water, f-pac, etc.
No matter which way you go, make sure you add potassium sorbate before backsweetening.

 

[BernardSmith]

HI Bryan - and welcome. I am curious about your recipe. How many pounds of strawberries did you use? Did you add water or simply use the juice you extracted from the berries? Strawberries tend to have a very thin flavor profile and without having any idea of the fruit to water ratio I am not sure that anyone can say very much about what this might taste like in another few months. If you added a great deal of water I suspect that the flavor from the strawberries is going to overshadowed by the water and by the sugars you would have added to get the ABV to 15 percent.
For backsweetening , I would suggest that you think about using some kind of strawberry syrup (home made, perhaps but you may need to add pectic enzyme if you are heating the syrup to remove the water (reduction))

 

[seth8530]

Make sure the wine is clear before adding the sorbate. Once that is done you can add sweetner to it. I plan on adding sugars back to my strawberry wine with honey.

 

[mmadmikes1]

Most all berry wine needs some sweetness to bring out the berry flavors. I just bottled a 18% strawberry and it is wonderful chilled. I had to do a flavor pac to get the taste and smell(more important in my book) I was after. I do strawberry every year and the batch I just bottle bulk aged 2 years.

 

[vernsgal]

Welcome to WMT. The rule of thumb is always " if it tastes good to you then go go for it". You never mentioned the yeast you used but if under % make sure to use sorbate.