Apple Wine

[Danielmorgan]

there are various ways of preparing a wine in tradition .. and i love to learn and try everyone which come to my way like the one you have posted here .. thanks for a new recipe..

 

[jamesngalveston]

cherries compliment apples in the food world.may work for wine, It sounds good.

 

[CWayman]

I've just done this with 16Kg of apples which according to the recipe should give me 4 gallon of wine, but.... I have a philips advance HR1869 Juicer and it produced 2 gallons of juice from the 16Kgs of apples, I haven't added the pulp as it was bone dry and no liquid left in it at all. The juice itself came out at a gravity which produced 7.5% solution with my hydrometer. I've added 3x the recipe to make the resulting total 5 gallons in my fermenter, this produced a gravity of 1.070 which is 11%. Just added the tanin and the yeast. I've videoed it so I'll probably add it to youtube in the near future and edit this post to include the link. Happy Wine Making everyone!

 

[xcaret]

I just followed my "Wine Making made easy" Book's recipe for apple wine. It says !6 kg,of apples, 3.5 kg sugar ,and add water to make 23 liters. O of coarse you add the usual other ingredients as usual, but I'm wondering abouy such a large amount of apples, not much juice from them. They take up a lot of space in the container. I filed it to about the 30 liter mark,and I'm hoping for the best.

Does these measurements seem about right for apple wine?
I picked the apples off my Canadian no name brand apple tree.

 

[Julie]

I won't be adding water, apples has a mild flavor and adding water really takes away a lot of flavor. And I would freeze the apples first, then press.

 

[xcaret]

Thanks, Next time I'll freeze them ,lots of work mashing them up.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

Thanks, Next time I'll freeze them ,lots of work mashing them up.

Yes I think freezing them is the only way to go !!

 

[ckvchestnut]

cherries compliment apples in the food world.may work for wine, It sounds good.

Hubby just finished up harvesting apples last night and he'll be doing 14 or 16 gallons of sparkling cider. I'm going to ask him to let me have 3 or 5 gallons to play with and would like to add cranberries to my batch making a cran-apple cider. Never tried it and still contemplating how much to use to give a balanced flavor. I'll be using frozen ones as the ones we planted will not be ready to harvest until next year at the earliest.

 

[fabrictodyefor]

So, I had every intention of following St Allie's recipe for apple wine. I washed, cut the cores out and put the apples through my food processor, not on grate, but chopped so fine as to have almost made juice. Ended up with 33 lbs. 6 oz of processed apples, which I froze, thinking I would be making 4 gallons of wine. So I took them out of freezer yesterday (7 am) and put in ferment bucket with pectin enzyme, campden tablets, citric acid and 1 1/2 gallons of unsweetened apple juice, thought I would add the juice rather than the water.... So couldn't take a reading, and even then it was difficult to get enough "juice" as it looks like "mush". I have not added any additional water. Finally got enough "juice" out and have a reading of 1.040. In St Allie's recipe it says to wait and add the sugar after you have "fermented on the pulp for 5 days".... I have not pitched the yeast yet. It said to wait 24 hours. It has been a little longer....but it was still a lot frozen when I went to bed last night. Soooooo after reading through this thread again, my question is should I wait to add sugar or should I add sugar to 1.085 before I pitch the yeast? I like the idea of brown sugar, so would I add half regular sugar and half brown sugar? Thanks for the responses and all the info I have gleaned from this web site. I'm so new at this I'm not even sure you could call me "green"!

 

[fabrictodyefor]

HELP anyone??

I'm open to suggestions?? Thanks

 

[LoneStarLori]

I did pretty much the same thing about a month ago except I did not freeze the apples. Apples in the food processor, some apple juice and no water. I added a brownish sugar called demerara from Florida crystals and some clover honey. This is a new thing for me so I can't really give advice. All I can say is that I did add the sugars up front and it fermented just fine. My starting SG was about 1.08 and it went all the way down to .994.
It has been sitting a month and what I have now is a very dry cider with very little apple flavor. I have read on a few threads that the apple flavor comes back after sitting about 4 months so I am not going to worry about it and see what happens.

 

[fabrictodyefor]

Thanks, Lori, I just went ahead and gave it my best shot! Did the math, which I hate math, so as to bring the sg to 1.075 - 1.080. Checked it right after and it only read 1.072.....stirred again and again, let it set for 15 minutes, stirred again, and re-checked, it read 1.080, so pitched the yeast, covered it up and gonna go to work now! Mine is like mush, and first couple of times was having a hard time getting enough of just the liquid to take a reading....so a light bulb finally went off and I raided my kitchen for my mesh strainer, sterilized it and ...much easier! Guess my kitchen can do without a strainer for now!

 

[LoneStarLori]

Thats kind of what I did too. Put the apples in a mesh bag and squeezed everyday. I was surprised at how much just I got out of them once the yeast did it's thing.
keep me posted on the progress. Might me interesting if we end up with almost the same thing.

 

[ckvchestnut]

We did similar to what you guys did but we put the frozen, processed apples in pantyhose in primary with pectic enzyme and k meta and left for 2 days before adding yeast. We ended up with 17 gallons of juice! We still have more crabapples to work with! I picked up some cranberry concentrate today and am planning to backsweeten 3 gallons of my cider with it to see how it turns out!

 

[fabrictodyefor]

My frozen apples sat for about 36 hours before I pitched the yeast. It working quite well right now and when stirred is more like juice underneath with a cap on top. MMM the cranberry sounds good, let us know how that turns out. A friend is bringing me more apples, will probably just freeze them for now so might be interested in trying that with the cranberry juice for a second batch.

 

[RotGut76]

I just want to clear something up for some reason I'm confused. I acquired a decent amount of apples from a local farm stand. I cut them up and put them in freezer bags. I have about 10 bags that weigh approx 5lbs each. I have one more bushel coming tomorrow.

My question is do I put the apples in the primary first THEN press them later or can I press them first then use the juice in the primary?

 

[dralarms]

Well, I just cut up and cored apples today. Got 31.5 gallon bags of 1/2 golden delious and 1/2 arkansas black. They are in the freezer and in a werk or 2 I will bring out 1 of the types and run them through my steam juicer. Then I will take my sg reading and brix, salso a taste test to see how the juice itself tastes. Also I may drop the scraps in the primary, may not. Depends on taste. Did one last year and every one raved on how good it was (none left).

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I will typically freeze them all and let them thaw and then run them thru the crusher or just smash by hand for that matter as they will be very soft.

 

[fabrictodyefor]

I just want to clear something up for some reason I'm confused. I acquired a decent amount of apples from a local farm stand. I cut them up and put them in freezer bags. I have about 10 bags that weigh approx 5lbs each. I have one more bushel coming tomorrow.

My question is do I put the apples in the primary first THEN press them later or can I press them first then use the juice in the primary?

I'm pretty new at this, but do you have an apple press? Or are you talking about just pressing by hand? My apple wine may take longer to clear, but I just dumped my frozen apples (I ran them through my food processor) in my ferment bucket, then added some apple juice, enzyme, citric acid and campden tablets. It might be easier if you put the frozen apples in nylons or a mesh bag?? Or if you have a juicer, then you've pretty much gotten all the good stuff out anyway. But mine forms a nice cap, so figure when sg gets low enough, I'll scoop out the "cap" and squeeze that, hopefully that will get most of the apple mush out without too much difficulty.

 

[ckvchestnut]

We did similar to what you guys did but we put the frozen, processed apples in pantyhose in primary with pectic enzyme and k meta and left for 2 days before adding yeast. We ended up with 17 gallons of juice! We still have more crabapples to work with! I picked up some cranberry concentrate today and am planning to backsweeten 3 gallons of my cider with it to see how it turns out!

My cider hasn't finished fermenting out yet and now I'm wondering if I should add my cranberry concentrate during the ferment or backsweeten as originally planned. My goal is to have a cider that distinctly tastes of both apple and cranberry. My feeling is to backsweeten after fermentation is done.