Prickly Pear Wine Recipe Help

[phear]

Hello,

I've been reading through every thread in these forums concerning prickly pear wine, but haven't found an adequate answer to the question(s) I have. This is my first attempt at making a wine myself (i.e. not a prefab kit), but I have some semblance of what is going on. The recipe that has caught my attention the most is this: http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f45/prickly-pear-cactus-wine-33279/

It appears to me that the recipe makes a 1gal. batch, but I'm currently sitting on > 12gal of frozen juice, so I wanted to scale the recipe to make a 5gal. batch since I have the brewing materials available for that. Scaling that up though is 15-20lbs of honey, which is a lot of money to put out for local honey (Texas). Could I substitute sugar instead, or perhaps more prickly pear juice? If I scale this up do I also have to scale up the packets of yeast that I would add?

Otherwise, I'm not opposed to making Jack Keller's recipe, but I'm not exactly sure how much juice 5-6lbs of prickly pear makes, so scaling that recipe seems daunting to me. Especially since he just states to put in wine yeast and nutrient without quantifying. Also, is the water really neccessary? Wouldn't just adding more juice increase the flavor, or is there some other purpose for adding the water?

I appreciate any help I can get, because I'm getting a little discouraged searching for a solution with adequate explanation...

 

[Jericurl]

I just juiced another 2 gallons of prickly pear juice tonight.

Tomorrow I will probably collect another 40 lbs to bring my total amount of juice to 5 gallons or so.
I will be doing a modified recipe copied from another poster here that is almost all juice, with a few cans of white grape juice concentrate.

I haven't made this before but with everything I'm reading, if you already have the juice then most of the hard work is already done for you.
Since prickly pear is not one of the most common fruit wines, you may have to do some of the trial and error process yourself. That said, it seems like a lot of people have had success using pure prickly pear juice, adding grape concentrate or bananas to "beef" up the wine and plain white sugar. Did you read the recipe that Snowgirl812001 posted?
I'll be using a recipe very close to that one.

Also, it seems water is added to the fruit so that the flavor and essence has something to leach into. That's mostly what I take from all the reading I have been doing.

eta: As far as honey vs sugar, I believe that is going to be a question better answered by your own taste preference. I'm choosing to approach it from more of a chemistry side. I know I like white sugar and I know I like honey. So I'll mainly shoot for a starting specific gravity using whatever sweetener I happen to have on hand at the time.

eta 2: As far as yeast, from what I understand most wine yeast individual packets work for 1-5 gallon batches. Read up on the yeast strains you are thinking about using. Each one has different traits. Some work better with a lower or higher specific gravity (I'm simplifying but you can extrapolate out your ending alcohol content from that. Some yeast strains work better at an ending 18% alcohol whereas others would find that environment toxic and die off, etc). Look at where you will be leaving your primary to ferment. Is it warmer or cooler? Some of the yeasts work better in warmer environments, some in cooler, some don't care.

Someone else who has experience will be along in the morning to answer your questions.
Since I am also going to be making prickly pear wine I'll be following this thread to make sure I have a proper handle on things.

Also, welcome!

 

[saramc]

Five pounds of prickly pear should yield about five cups of juice. At least that has been my yield for the past two years.

In regard to sugar use...after determining the SG of the juice use whatever fermentable sugar you want. Many people add a frozen, thawed 100% grape juice concentrate from grocery store, red or white, just know the white will typically dilute the color of your juice. If you choose honey, you will really want to age more than a year to get the ideal outcome. Prickly pear made even with sugar does much better with age.
Consider making prickly pear syrup for backsweetening.

On yeast, one pkg will generally start up to five gallons. I would recommend having a second on hand, just in case. And if you plan a high gravity must, greater than 1.100 I would recommend starting at 1.080-1.090 and waiting for SG to drop by 0.030 and then add the rest of your sugar in no more than 0.030 increments. Makes for a happier yeast, one less stressed.

 

[phear]

Wow, thanks for the help! I think I will work with Snowgirl812001's suggested recipe, using the white grape concentrate with sugar added to reach my ideal SP (the 1.08-1.09 range).

I'll have to do some reading on the yeast. The rent house I'm in now definitely runs about ambient temperature because it's an older house. I would say it's usually 78ish in here, but the AC can't catch up on hotter days, so then it climbs to around 81. My solution to keep the wine cooler is to immerse it in a trash can full of water below an air vent, which has worked out pretty well.

I do have one last question about campden tablets. IIRC - these are used to "sanitize", so should I crush them in and leave them overnight before I pitch the yeast? I've also read that people add in a few more once they're about to bottle to try and kill off any remaining yeast.

 

[Jericurl]

I do have one last question about campden tablets. IIRC - these are used to "sanitize", so should I crush them in and leave them overnight before I pitch the yeast? I've also read that people add in a few more once they're about to bottle to try and kill off any remaining yeast.

Yes. From what I've read, people leave them in anywhere from 12 to 24 hours before adding the yeast.
As far as adding them to kill off remaining yeast, I've read that people do that, esp if they are back sweetening so that they don't start another fermentation. Some let their wine ferment completely dry so there is no yeast left that needs to be killed off. Depends on what you are making.

Also, this was the recipe from Snowgirl that I was talking about.

eta: there is a pretty good write up on the different kinds of yeast on the Jack Keller website.
When you find one you are interested in using, you can do a search here to see what people have used it in and how they liked it.

 

[MarLac]

My foreman has been using Jack Keller's recipe for years and has made some fantastic prickly pear cactus wine. I mentioned your question about yeast to him and he said that you have to watch the reaction closely. He said that he typically uses 1 yeast packet plus about a quarter of a second packet depending on the concentrate of the cactus juice. He said it is touch and go. He said that it takes a few batches to get the feel of it till you can tell just how much yeast and sugar to add. Unfortunately, I can't give you an exact amount to measure. He been doing it for so many years that he just eyeballs it.

 

[phear]

Yes, I suppose I should do an update now.

I used the basic version of snowgirl's recipe (linked above: here), but didn't quite have enough juice to do two double batches. One is a 5 gallon batch using red grape concentrate (SG start @ 1.095), the other using white grape juice concentrate (SG also @ 1.095) since the white is what she stated was preferred by her. They also used differing yeasts so I could try out which two I liked best after reading through Jack Keller's footnotes concerning the plethora of yeast varieties.

Batch one I decided to use the Montrachet since I believe this is also what snowgirl pitched in her batch. It took about 1.5 weeks to complete the primary since this is Texas and fall is a questionable summer. I've since only racked it once after moving it to the secondary (on 12/2) and gave it a try at the time. HOLY MOLY was it terrible! Not vinegar, so I know it hadn't gone bad, but sweet baby Jesus it's dry and stout. I'm going to have to back sweeten it a lot once summer rolls around and I can make some more juice. There was quite a bit of lees, so I decided to rack it once again on 1/2 and the taste has since improved a little, and overall taste is not as harsh, so that's a plus.

The second batch hasn't been going as long. I wanted to make sure the first batch turned out pleasantly after the first rack before I invested my last 6 gallons of juice. For this batch I pitched the Lalvin K1-1116 yeast to try and bring out more of the prickly pear flavor, but the downside is that Mr. Keller's estimate this yeast finishes at 18-20%. I'm going to have to have a glass sitting down... I'm quite eager to try this one once I rack it over in a few days (2/4). I'll try to remember and post and update once I rack these two again.

 

[Jericurl]

How much sugar did you put into the second batch?

If you don't want your wine coming out at 18% you just don't put in enough sugar to make that much alcohol.

 

[phear]

For the second batch I only added a couple pounds of sugar, which was less than I added for the first one. I was mostly surprised that wine could have an abv of 18%+.