fruit wines and acid

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wmoehring

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Hi there, brand new to your forum and wine making. I am on my second small batch of wine from concentrate. While trying to not get carried away with details (and spending too much), I do have a friend that sometimes provides me with persimmons. While I would love to try persimmon wine, it seems to me that I would need to be better at managing acid content. Is wine from fresh fruit too challenging at this stage? Its tempting. -Bill
 

Scooter68

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Shouldn't be. My first wines were all from fresh fruit and the acidity was no problem. Persimmons however... may be a different matter. Several have threads on here about persimmon wine and from what I gather it's a bit more challenging than some. Of course there are several different types of persimmons too. Our here in NW Arkansas are wild ones, when ripe they are mushy and full of seeds. We just visited our daughter on the left coast and she had 2 different store bought persimmon varieties that were large, ripe and firm. So that alone makes a big difference. Search for threads on Persimmons. Other fruits like peaches, blackberries, blueberries strawberries etc are much more straight forward.
 

Stressbaby

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Important to distinguish between Asian and American persimmons. I have made a lot of wine from the latter and it is indeed challenging. American persimmons aren't that acidic and wine from them requires acid additions. Asian persimmons could be different but I doubt it.

Search the forum, the threads aren't hard to find.
 

Jericurl

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Fruit wine is the easiest wine, in my opinion.

It's what I started out on.

Now, I'll be trying my first batch of persimmon wine this year. I'm both very excited and very intimidated by it. It seems like it is going to be an absolute bear.
 

wineforfun

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Hi there, brand new to your forum and wine making. I am on my second small batch of wine from concentrate. While trying to not get carried away with details (and spending too much), I do have a friend that sometimes provides me with persimmons. While I would love to try persimmon wine, it seems to me that I would need to be better at managing acid content. Is wine from fresh fruit too challenging at this stage? Its tempting. -Bill

Not a lot of information but you may want to read through it.

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24751
 

Scooter68

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Obviously there is tons of information about making wine from grapes, plenty from berries and fruit like apples, peaches, plums and common fruit. But when you diverge off of those into things like persimmon, rhubarb and a number of others where the chemical balance of the things can vary quite a bit and they are not as commonly used for wines, then you are going to find less information on boards like this. As newbie I would stick to the basic, more common wine sources until you have done a number of batches and gained a good footing in the processes and course of a batch from start to finish.

It's a bit like the folks who want to make wine with just naturally occurring yeast and "no chemicals of any type" - certainly you can do that and do it successfully, as wine makers did for centuries, but then again you could also end up with a wine that has some 'odd' flavors and characteristics. We also don't have much information about the 'olden days' as far as how many bottles blew up, turned to vinegar etc.

So what I am suggesting is get some experience with wine varieties that are a bit more stable and consistent in fermentation before you jump into deep water and possibly become discouraged by less than solid results. Spending 6-12 months and ending up with a persimmon vinegar might not be the outcome you are looking for.
 
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Stressbaby

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