where do I begin? I started making wine with a friend 2 years ago. this was after making a couple batches of beer. It was suggested to move up to wine. I brought over 10 pounds of strawberries, but that wasn't enough fruit we went to the store but they had no fruit that day we settled on apple juice concentrate 2 1/2 gals reconstituted to finish batch That wine was a little to sweet and had a confusing flavor. but we drank it. Next we made pineapple from concentrate we had hard time clearing it and racked it 3 or 4 times each time adding sterilized water to make up for the seds. we took off. This wine tasted to thin so we drank it. The plumb wine we went by the recipe in the “winemakers recipe hand book #81 using stanley plumbs we grew. it turned out great and I am anxious to bottle it.
the apple, the apple is too sweet and does not have a very high alcohol content
the recipe:
5 gal fresh pressed apple cider
1.25 tsp tannin
sugar to 1.090 sg I cannot remember how much it took
1tsp pectic enzyme
16 grams acid blend but did not check ph or acid
a champagne yeast that was several yrs old all I had .
I pitched the yeast and had some action in the starter sugar water. added it to the wart
and waited 24 hrs nothing 36 hours an acidic smell strong. 48 hours same strong acidic smell not much action after about 3 days I put the campden in 1 tab per gallon then because I had no yeast to start I took some of the plumb wart that was foaming brightly and pitched it in 1/2 gal of new wart from the same apple recipe. it took off after 3 days and when it was boiling brightly with yeasts I pitched it in the 5 gallons of failed wart an it took but it never got very active or lively it had a good fermenting yeasty smell and I thought i had won the battle but is stalled and after about 3 weeks of fermenting I racked it it was sweet not to much alcohol Secondary fermentation did not change anything after it cleared and showed signs of quitting it never did actually quit it just perked along ever so slowly we called it the wart that would not DIE! Finally we killed it with campden tablets filtered it and bulk aged it for 3 weeks it did not blow the cork out of the carboy so we bottled it. it;s good very appley tasting but it tasts like hard cider not wine.