4 litres of crushed fruit or berries (discard most of the larger pits)
1 ½ litres of boiling water
Allow to steep for 3 days in a sanitized, water-sealed primary fermenter (stir daily)
Strain into another sanitized fementer. Add 1 campden tablet or 1 tbsp. of fruit wine stabilizer per gallon. Water-seal the fermenter.
Stir 3 or 4 times for a day.
Add 1 package of wine yeast for a full 23 litre batch. If making less, use your own judgement. Stir in yeast.
Add 2 lb. of sugar per 4 litres of juice. Stir in and water-seal.
Allow to ferment until all noticeable bubbling has stopped. Rack into a sanitized carboy and water-seal. Allow to clarify for at least a month.
Rack into another sanitized carboy. Stir in a bottle of clarifying agent. Let stand for a week to clarify.
Rack into a sanitized carboy, checking clarity in a wine glass. If it looks good, let stand for a couple of days, then filter and bottle. If not (yup, you guessed it) let stand and rack again in a week.
The complete process usually takes a couple of months, depending on the type of fruit and the amount of pulp involved.
This wine is ready to drink when bottled, but will only get better with age. Enjoy!
Here’s a little bit of personal advice. The top two habits of a good wine maker are sanitation and patience.
Proper sanitization of all your equipment is essential. I’ve seen whole batches of wine go down the drain due to bacteria growth caused by un-sanitized hoses, improper water seals, traces of stuff left in the bottoms of carboys and primary fermenters, etc. Careful attention to these seemingly small details will go a long way in insuring your success in wine making…….just like any other area of food preparation.
Patience, now this can be the hard one. It’s sometimes easy to do the obvious, but in this venture, patience is it’s own reward. Everybody pretty much wants everything done yesterday. Patience will turn a good batch of wine into a great one.
Don’t try to hurry the fermenting process
Don’t shortcut any required steps
Be sure to filter your wine even if it looks clear
Take the time to label and date your bottles of wine
Allow it to age properly