Recipe help

[Winefarm]

Watermelon-Grape Wine

* 6 lb watermelon
* 1-1/2 lb fresh table red or green grapes
* water to 1 gallon
* juice and zest of 2 lemons
* 4-1/2 cups granulated sugar
* 1 tsp pectic enzyme
* 1 crushed Campden tablet
* 1 tsp yeast nutrient
* wine yeast

Cut the rind off of melon, cut melon into one-inch cubes, remove loose seeds, and put melon and any free juice in primary (crock, plastic pail, etc.). Thinly grate the yellow off two lemons, juice the lemons, and add the juice and zest (gratings) to primary. Separately, wash, destem, and crush the grapes well in a bowl. Add grapes and grape juice and crushed Campden tablet to primary. Add water to make up 1 gallon. Add sugar and stir well to dissolve. Cover primary with cloth, wait 12 hours and pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient. After additional 12 hours add wine yeast. Cover and ferment 5 days, stirring daily. Strain juice into secondary (demijohn) and fit airlock. Ferment 30 days and rack, top up, refit airlock, and repeat 30 days later. After additional 60 days, rack, top up, and stabilize (add 1/4 tsp potassium sorbate and another crushed Campden tablet). Wait 10 days, sweeten to taste and bottle. Allow to age in bottles one year. [Author's recipe]


My question is with the amount of solids in this recipe, if I add water to the one gallon mark on my primary, when I transfer to one gallon glass jug do I top up to a gallon of liquid?

 

[Julie]

Don't add any water at all. Watermelon is a weak flavor and if you add any water you will lose that flavor. When I make mine, my husband and i cut them up and then he stirrs them with a sanitized drilled mounted paint stirrer. 100% Juicy Juice makes a watermelon juice use that to top up with. Wine is going to have a bad smell to it, don't worry it takes about a year for that to go away. Don't even think about drinking this before a year is up.

 

[Winefarm]

Great advice. Thanks Julie! 12 hours after I put said ingredients into primary, it says to add nutrient and pectic enzyme. Do I stir it in? Also, 12 hours after that, it says to add the yeast. Do I stir it in?

 

[Julie]

I made my first watermelon two years ago. A friend lives beside a farmer that puts in a watermelon patch for his family, needless to say he plants way more than they eat. So she gets a handful and I make this watermelon wine but I add strawberries to it. This stuff turned out really good. So I give a bottle to the farmer and a week before my son gets married last October,I get a truck load of watermelons. I got a 5 gallon watermelon/strawberry, a 6 gallon watermelon and a 3 gallon watermelon going. If you like watermelon you will like the wine. A lot of people claim that it spoils fast and you have to throw it away but what they are smelling is the green taste of watermelon, it does take a year to go away and you are left with a nice watermelon taste.