Fruit wine

I have a three gallon batch of apple brewing made with musslemans cider. I was planning on splitting it into three separate gallons and back sweetening it with a concentrate like apple raspberry on one and apple cherry on another, and one just plain and dry. I like the idea of adding the Ribena at the end , I could try that on a gallon if I can find it. The local selection here is pretty limited, I had a hard time finding frozen concentrate at all.

If you Cannot get concentrate, you can add like a 4-12 ounce jar of jelly or jam also, just remember to mix it well with warm apple juice and add like a double dose of pectic enzyme or it will be super hazy

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Thanks mark ,I had not considered adding jam, we have a harry and David store in Branson that has delicious cherry / boysenberry/ peach , jellies. For sure something to consider next time we are there, I have a hard time not eating them though, lol

Here is a sample of my newest three gallon batch of apple. Passed my taste test.

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Very nice color. I like white wine, less tart. My peach wine was very good, If I have more peach this year(in the mercy of squirrels), I plan to make more

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The photo doesn’t really do it justice , it is really golden, hard to believe it was brown clouded apple cider a few weeks ago.

Jerusalem artichokes are tasty Jerusalem Artichoke but they are known for other things also.

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I hope to make wine this year from freash peaches, I hope the ten degree weather has not killed the blossoms on my old tree.

Yes.I eat them raw, pickle them and saute them with meat. But they multiple too fast, dig them up and clean them are a lot of work.

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I stabilized my cranberry wine tonight and will let it sit for 24 hours. Tomorrow I will bottle , I will probably do a couple of bottles dry then back sweeten what’s left so I have a couple of bottles that are a little different to try.

Do you used how many pounds of cranberry to make a gallon cranberry wine?

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At a guess: 3-6 lbs/gallon.

I belonged to a winemaking club that met at a winery in S WI once a month, in a winery that had a cranberry that was possibly the ONLY fruit wine i recall w too much fruit: it was puckeringly tart and persimmon-astringent. I could drink it, my wife hated it.

Annie or anyone else reading: some fruits extract well in commercial juices, some do not. And cranberries do not pop/split/open well on their own. Honestly i can say cranberry makes awesome wine, but if i was in your shoes i would do either 2-3 cans of a good cranberry juice per gallon, plus sugar, etc. to hit intended gravity and tannin levels, or do 2 cans juice plus 1-2 lbs fruit per gallon, with the berries at least manually halved.

Again, cranberry is an excellent fruit for wine, but it does not split/macerate well on its own, and a lot of its ”awesomeness” extracts well—cranberry is right up with concord in its ability to make a solid wine from extracted juice, and you WILL get a better product with at least some whole fruit in it, but the work vs final product euation is less steep…

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Mark,thanks for the estimates and the tips. Since sugar and water will be added to the juice , I assume a big bottle of Oceanspray cranberry juice should do the trick, do I understand/interpret the idea correctly?

Yes, you would need another pound or 2 of sugar to hit sg

I bottled my peach wine about one week ago. I couldn’t find white grape juice concentrate at my local market, so just used red grape juice concentrate. I added the Campden tablets and potassium sorbate to stabilize, then bottled 4 bottles as a dry wine. Then I added about 1.5 cups of concentrate (to taste) and bottled 10 bottles as my semisweet variety. Then to what was left over added another cup of concentrate and got five more bottles of a sweet wine. I’m going to let it sit for at least six months.

Looking back, it seems like a lot of work, but if it tastes good and I get 19 bottles of wine, I would consider it a success.

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I added just a cup of cranberries that were chopped in half to a gallon of juice. A lot of the cranberry flavor is absent now after it fermented but a pleasant berry type flavor remains, it is dry and tart. Passed my taste test but most wines do.

Cranberry is in the bottle, now I just have to let it sit for a while, if I can wait, lol, yum

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thats one of the reasons I’ve switched to making freezer jam. crush the berries , add a little splenda and pectin. let sit for 1/2hr. jar and freeze. its very easy. i use cheap tupperware . instead of jars . stacks better in the freezer.

plant to make cassis with my currants. i should have plenty to play with this summer.

Annie, how did your aronia-grape wine turn out? I just planted several aronias so thinking ahead. I’ve not had much luck with grape wine - came out tasting a lot like cheap M-D. Usually I make wild black cherry. Sue

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