Newbie brewing Strawberry Wine

[BernardSmith]

Great question. I would hold back the total amount of water until you remove the fruit as long as the SG is not too high.

 

[Cherry Puffling]

How high is too high for SG?

 

[winemaker81]

2 lbs / 0.9 kg sugar in 1 US gallon / 3.8 liters produces a SG of 1.090. Your recipe calls for 6.6 lbs / 3 kg in 8 liters of water, which is 3.3 lbs / 1.5 kg in 4 liters. This produces a SG above 1.135, not including whatever the fruit contributes. This is a rich enough environment the yeast may not start. Shorting the water will make the SG higher. I recommend for beginners to not start with the SG above 1.100 so that your likelihood of getting a good fermentation is higher.

A recipe suggestion -- do not blindly add a set amount of sugar. Add 0.9 kg for each 4 liters, add the fruit, stir well, and check the SG. If it's between 1.085 and 1.100, you're fine. Don't add more sugar than will bring the SG above 1.100.

Shorting the water could push the SG up too much. I lean against it for that reason. If you were making 10% ABV wines it would work ok, but the sugar level of your recipe is way higher.

I have a couple of ideas:

1) freeze half the berries and make the second batch after the first is in secondary storage. If you have the freezer space, this is a no-cost solution. Actually, freezing the berries breaks down the fruit for better extraction, so it may be a good idea to freeze them first.

2) get another, preferably larger, primary fermenter. Are Rubbermaid Brutes available in the UK? They're food grade and a lot of us in the USA use them. One in the 37 to 45 liter range (10-12 gallons) is good for everything you're likely to make. I have a pair of 32 gallon / 121 liter Brutes for fermenting larger batches of grapes, and am considering buying one or two 10-12 gallon Brutes for smaller batches.

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Hmm. Well my starting SG with the strawberry (same ratios) was 1.100, but that's neither here nor there. I do not have any freezer space sadly. I think though, for the sake of ensuring nothing goes wrong, I'm going to do a regular batch instead of a double batch. I still have time to amend my order to 4kg instead of 8kg of frozen blackberries. I can always start a second batch, as you say, once the blackberry is out of the bucket and into the carboy. Maybe I'll make it a mixed berry batch or blueberry

Naught wrong with a bit of variety, heh.

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Oh I could just do 1 and a half batches! 6kg of berries instead of 8kg. Duh

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Yeah that's what I am going to do. I'll start with 6kg of frozen blackberries, 4kg of sugar (withholding 1/2 kg of the sugar the recipe calls for), and 12 L of water. (plus 250ml red grape concentrate).

Is that enough sugar held back, do you think? I'd like it to finish between 13.5% and 14%. (I realize that's fairly high)

The above should give me 15L ish of volume, leaving plenty of space for the fruit pulp and bag.

 

[winemaker81]

SG 1.100 will produce roughly 13.5 ABV, so that sounds like a good target.

Each 0.45 kg (1 lb) sugar produces rough 0.045 "points" in 4 liters of water, so 0.9 kg sugar produces SG 1.090 in plain water. [The actual figure is 2 lbs sugar in 128 oz water, so I'm rounding a bit, but it's close enough.]

The difficulty is that we don't know how much sugar the fruit will contribute, so I'd start with less sugar.

Since you're doing 12 liters water, I'd start with 2.5 kg sugar. [0.9 * 3 is 2.7 but I'm starting low.] Add the fruit, stir well, and test the SG. If it's below 1.100, add more sugar, stir well, and test again. Repeat until you've hit the target SG.

If you do this method, I'm curious how much sugar you actually use.

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Well, everything just got turned on it's ear. The shop just delivered my berries. They were short on bags of frozen blackberries (350g each) so decided to substitute the missing bags with bags of mixed frozen berries (blackberry, black currant, strawberry and raspberry)....that are 1kg each!! And they price matched. So long story short, I just got a boatload of free fruit, and now have 4kg of blackberries and 6kg of mixed berries. Slight panic, but I couldn't refuse so much free fruit, so I struggled and found *just* enough freezer space for the blackberries, (though theres not enough room to squeeze a fart in there now) and will instead be making one and a half batches of mixed berry wine today.

I'm not going to add the grape concentrate to this one, with that mix of berries I don't think it needs it. I'll save it for the blackberries.

I'm gonna need another carboy! And a bigger house.

 

[Scooter68]

Yeah, You are in it now. Go to Lowe's or your local big box home improvement and pickup a couple of food safe 5 Gallon buckets (Don't bother with the lids unless they are included.) As for carboys, start shopping. I've got 7 x 3 gallon carboys. I like that size for batches as it matches my fruit supplies nicely and I can lift it without killing myself. And just a hint, take a few minutes to mark the buckets with the volume on the side. I do mine at 1 gal, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5.... That way I know where I'm at on volume. My batches are always either 3 gallon or 1 gallon so a 5 gallon bucket lets me start with a volume of 4 gallons +/-and with a low foaming yeast I've never had an overflow problem.

Personally I don't think those blackberries will need ANY help from a grape concentrate or tannin. I've got a batch of blackberry that's only 4 months old and it could be bottled now if I had the time (It's my 50th batch of wine in 6 years). It's at 16.5% ABV and dry and flat out great. I make most of my fruit wines with single variety fruit unless I'm doing a berry blend (Like yours) or a second pressing of something like blueberries. What I have done with blueberries is add a little white grape juice concentrate so it doesn't get the overpowering concord grape flavor over the blueberries. That white grape will give a nice aroma to the wine.

By the way check out the Country Fruit Winemaking section of this site. Lots of help there and look over the Recipes section too.

https://www.winemakingtalk.com/forums/country-fruit-winemaking.45/

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Thank you, I will!

I have 3 fermentation buckets and can have both wines on the go at the same time, it's the carboy I need. I already have 1 coming this week (11L) plus I have two 5L glass demijohns free. That's enough to rack the mixed berry wine into (carboy +1 demijohn)...and I need at least 1 demijohn free to rack my strawberry wine so the blackberry wine will have to wait until I either bottle my strawberry wine and free up two demijohns or just buy another carboy...which is more likely what I will do but I need to consider some things. They cost about £17 here for the 11L PET carboys which is sod all but I've kinda completely blown past what I told my husband I was going to spend/make by a mile... haha...ooops. Space is rapidly becoming an issue too. UK homes tend to serious lack closets and storage space and mine is no exception.

 

[winemaker81]

Do you recall that old saying, "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade"? We are winemakers, we don't do that.

We make Skeeter Pee!

It's obvious the Universe is prompting you to make wine. Don't fight it, your destiny is your destiny!

I agree with @Scooter68 that the grape concentrate is not needed. However, if you're into experimentation, make 2 identical batches of Blackberry, adding the concentrate to one. The differences in outcome may be striking. Or it may be unnoticeable. Either way, it's an interesting experiment.

 

[Cherry Puffling]

I am terrified to ask what skeeter pee is

 

[winemaker81]

Skeeter Pee is wine made from lemon juice. There is a forum dedicated to it.

https://www.winemakingtalk.com/forums/skeeter-pee.68/
When you have time, look at the General winemaking forum. Also, there are forums dedicated to Equipment & Sanitation plus Bottles, Labels, & Corks. Lots of good stuff!

 

[Cherry Puffling]

I will never not devote my lemons to my homemade Limoncello

Lemon wine sounds......completely bizarre

 

[winemaker81]

I've never had Skeeter Pee. It is essentially a hard lemonade.

I make limoncello as well, plus limecello, and I've made both orange and cherry brandies (using cheap cognac).

Growing up, my dad always kept apricot brandy in the house. I've made it with extracts, but have an idea for steeping dried apricots in brandy or cognac. There's always something more to try making!

 

[Scooter68]

Here's another interesting wine idea, for down the road some day. Pineapple-Mango - A great refreshing summertime wine. The mango is a background flavor booster but Pineapple will always dominate. It's also a early drinker - I've had batches totally ready to bottle in 6 months or less. Only thing I'll recommend - do NOT use any kind of canned pineapple. Use frozen or cut up fresh. Mangos are really messy so this is wine that requires a bit of work but the reward is really great. It's easy for someone to mistake it for a wine cooler by the name, until they taste it.

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Ooooh I bet that is AMAZING in a Sangria

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Berrylicious update: in the end it took 4kg of sugar to get my 1.100 sg. I just adjusted my ph which was too low and am going to pitch my yeast now. I think this wine is going to be fabulous.

I hope

 

[Ijsbiertje]

Hi. I’ve been reading this tread because I’m also trying to make some strawberry wine for the first time Just a small batch to get a hang of it. I only used strawberry. No water.
I mashed fresh strawberries. Then I froze them. A couple days later I thawed them. Once the temperature of the must was about 12 degrees Celsius I added some pectic enzyme and let that do it’s work for 12h. Then I added some sulphite and waited for 12h.
It was difficult to read the hydrometer because of the fruit partikels ik the must. I guess I measured about 1022 SG.
I set the goal at 1092 SG. Took the refractometer and added sugar till about 22,5 brix. I hope I was about right on this conversion
Then I added some yeast nutrients and put in the yeast starter. I also used Lalvin 71b
This was yesterday around 11pm. This morning a little cap had formed in the middle of the bucket and it smelled yeasty. I gave it a stir. At about 5pm there was a cap covering the whole bucket. Again I pushed the cap down into the must. I just measured the temperature of the must and it is about 25 degrees Celsius. I’m trying to cool it down a little in the fridge till about 19 degrees. Then I will remove it from the fridge and put the bucket on a colder spot on the ground. I guess 25 degrees is too hot and the yeast will blow trough all the sugars in a few days…
I hope I didn’t make big mistakes already.
I’m wondering when I should remove the cap (foamy fruit-parts) from the must? Should I wait to remove this until I measure about an SG of 1020 and I transfer the must to a carboy? Or do I remove this sooner?

Thank you

 

[Cherry Puffling]

Wow I didn't know you could make wine without water

Hopefully one of the experts here can assist you, this is way above my pay grade