Cranberry wine

I've been thinking about making a cranberry wine but I wasn't thinking about doing it straight from 100% cranberries and sugar. I was thinking about using a Pinot Grigio wine kit and racking it off to the secondary with some cranberries in it. I don't know if this is a good way to make cranberry wine and I also don't know how many pounds of cranberries to use. I am assuming that I relish the cranberries before racking off on to them. Any suggestions? Thanks

Reply to
benshomebrew
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Cranberry wine can be very good and is also a good mixer. Tomasello winery

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in NJ makes a dynamite Cranberry wine that makes a terrific Cosmopolitan, but making your own is better.

I did 6 gallons using Jack Keller's recipe (from his website at least).

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Using Welch's white grape concentrate instead of raisins seemed to work well for me. See his recipe.

In my humble opinion, if you do use a pinot G wine kit, you should put the cranberries in the primary, not after the first racking. The yeast needs to work on the berries. As far as how much berries - don't know. But keeping the must to 1.099 will not stop the yeast. Going higher and it could stall.

OK, this is > I've been thinking about making a cranberry wine but I wasn't thinking

Reply to
DAve Allison

benshomebrew,

I've made cranberry mead using 2 12oz bags of fresh berries for a 5 gallon total volume. This gives a good level of tartness and a warm red-orange color. I blend the cranberries in the blender and use a nylon mesh bag to hold the blended fruit during fermentation. This allows for easy disposal of the fruit after fermentation has completed. Since I was inspired by my mother-in-law's cranberry relish recipe, I also add the zest and fruit of 2 navel oranges. Some have said that cranberries inhibit fermentation, but I always pitch a liter starter and have never had any issues getting a ferment going.

Cheers, Ken Taborek

Reply to
mail box

I too have made Jack's recipe. It is not my favorite but women seem to love it. It is a bit strongly cranberry flavored for me. I will make it again but will use more grape juice and less cranberries next time. Not saying anything negative about Jack's recipe, just crafting to my own taste.

As stated Cranberries are very strong and will overpower most anything used with them. I would not use an expensive kit for this. Kind of over kill. In fact I would suggest using Welch's frozen Niagara concentrate. It makes a good wine on it's own and Jack recommends it to add vinuosity to fruit wines. This agrees with Dave's comments.

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

Of course, Ray, I've learned much over this year from YOU, so I am just a reflection of my teacher. :*)

DAve

Ray Calvert wrote:

Reply to
DAve Allison

Ray and Dave,

Earlier this year, i was interested in the cranberry wine experiment.

There was much debate as to how much cranberry to use, and what to expect in final product. This being said, I tried 3 separate batches.

I found welch's 100% juice white grape cranberry blend, made 1 gallon of that, then used the highbush cranberry recipe from Jack's website for two batches, (used only between half and two thirds the cranberries due to Ray's comments on tartness). In the first of the fruit batches, I used Welch's Niagara instead of raisins, then in the second batch I did use the golden raisins.

I performed two rackings since not including from primary, and all are close to bottling now, just waiting on the one with the raisins in it to clear a bit more.

My experience is this... during fermentations and racking-tastings, the best flavor for that young, though still sharp and raw was the one with the raisins. This last racking, I enjoyed the blend between fruit/niagara blend.

In my experience using Welch's concentrates, they all (when used as main ingredient, no fruit) have a very similar smell and taste. Some turn out fantastic in the end, and some are just so-so...Not sure why this is even when I follow notes from prior batches that are great.

My Cranberry whim started just after Thanksgiving when I noticed that the local wal-mart had reduced the cranberry bags to only $1.00 from

2.00. I ended up buying a bunch at this price and made the wines above and dried some for use in salads and snacks, but be careful to not over dry them.

A couple weeks before Christmas, I tried a bottle of wine I made from old orchard cranberry/blackberry 100% juice. It was out of this world for bottled juice. I immediately went to the wal-mart and bought more dollar bags of cranberries and blackberries and mixed with a gallon of Niagara Welch's juice and water to 5 gallons. I don't have notes for specifics handy, but I believe it was 4 lbs cranberries and 8 lbs blackberries plus the gallon of Niagara. I racked this twice since primary as well, and it is just starting to clear now, at last taste it was still very rough, but it obviously has potential. I am hopefully going to get a balanced wine. I noticed later that there was apple juice concentrate in the original old orchard as well, so maybe next batch will contain a can of apple concentrate as well.

All I can say is good luck with the experimenting, and thanks to all I read such excellent ideas from.

HINT: If you wait even longer, like day after Christmas or January 2, the cranberries will go even cheaper for about $0.50 a bag. You will have more bad ones to remove, but at 1/4 the price of original, it may be a good time to stock up. I purchased several bags like this, cleaned and sorted the berries, then used the food processor to grind them up roughly, then froze in gallon freezer bags for further experimenting, plus I dried a few more batches!.

Greg, Erie, PA

Reply to
Hoss

A couple of months before Thanksgiving last year I made a 1 gallon batch of cranberry using a gallon of unpasturized apple cider and after

2 months it was not too bad. Unfortunately I used two bags of cranberries and that was way too much, for my taste anyway. I have one bottle left and I am waiting for it to be a year old to see how it faired. If it does well I may make more this fall when I can get 6 gallons of apple cider.

Alex

Hoss wrote:

Reply to
MasterAdkins

Keep us informed as these batches mature.

I have had similar experiences with Welch's Niagara. It can be fantastic or it can be so-so. When it has come out so-so I have found that it blends well with strong fruit wines that are missing vinuosity.

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

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