Fruit Wines

Be very careful; strawberries grow in contact with the ground, and pick up all sorts of nasty microbes. My only attempt was a miserable failure.

If you use *pure strawberry juice* you'd be looking at something like

6 US gallons of juice for the 100 lbs of fresh strawberries. A lot of people dilute their strawberry juice, I generally wouldn't (depending on the acidity).

As far as other details: Yeast: usually strains for fruity whites Pectin: a bit would be good, especially for juice extraction Nutrient: again, some would be beneficial Alcohol: strawberry is typically made at 11-12%

For more, see under the strawberry entry at:

HTH,

Ben

Kitch, Please check out Jack Keller's wine-making site

He's got lots of recipes, especially for fruit wines; and tells you how to make them. I've made strawberry wine and it is one of my favorites. I usually shoot for 11-12% alcohol by volume. I only make fruit, vegetable, and herb wines, but my impression is that making wine from grapes is a bit more complicated. Good-luck. Darlene

Country wines (which is a bit of a misnomer, because nearly all wine is made in the country) generally use less fruit per gallon for various reasons. the best source out ther which should answer most of your questions is Jack Keller's page at

Good luck

It is my understanding that a substantial portion of the flavor of strawberries is =inside= the seeds. That is why I pureed mine, to smash the seeds...

If by flavour you mean bitter and astringent phenols then yes. But a lot of people try to avoid that in their strawberry wines.

Ben

If you have 100 lbs of fresh strawberries, BY ALL MEANS make 100% strawberry wine without dilution. "Country" winemakers traditionally have had a motive of thrift and frugality, which is not in itself a bad thing, but it created the culture of dilution in non-grape wines. I don't care to argue that point, although there are some in our midst who will, as well as well-intentioned folks who simply haven't tried any other method.

Anyhow, Ben Rotter's estimate seems spot on - 6 gals for 100 lbs. I had 55 lbs and it made about 3.5 US gallons of pure strawberry juice. I froze the berries for a few days, then thawed them, which greatly aids in juice extraction. My particular juice measured at 1.032 SG and .85% TA. I added 5 lbs of sugar which raised the SG to 1.091. I did not adjust acid; I chose instead to balance the finished wine against the final acidity.

The finished wine is now about 18 months old. It was sweetened to SG

1.010, about 3.8% sugar. This gives it just a little sweetness but it is far from "sweet." It's a beautiful wine served cold in the summer, or chilled just a bit it goes great with Italian food.

Bon chance, Roger Quinta do Placer

I agree with Ben here. Although I've made strawberry wines for umpteen years using dilution and other ingredients for body, I've also made it using 90-92% pure juice ameliorated with pectic enzyme (strawberries have enough pectin in them to give you trouble clearing if you don't use the enzyme), nutrients and brown sugar (Demerara or Muscavado [Barbados] are better if you can find them). The 8-10% water was needed to correct the acidity. Exceeding 12% abv is a common mistake with strawberry.

If you crush the strawberries gently (just break them, don't mash them) you will get good flavor (depending on the yeast you select) in about 5 days. After 7-9 days (depending on the variety of strawberry), you'll start tasting a bitterness from the seeds. If you go heavy and mash them, you'll have excellent flavor in about 3 days but will have a lot of gross lees you'll regret.

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

That might work for strawberries, but what do you do with highly acidic and intense fruit, like currants or elderberries, for example?

Just to be clear - I'm not trying to argue against what you're saying, just curious how you address what I see as the major difficulty with the "pure juice" approach.

Pp

Even strawberry has an acidity problem. I've made "pure" strawberry twice and had to add 8% water the first time and 10% water the second. This is very close to what Poteet Country Winery adds to their "pure" strawberry wine. As for the other high acid fruit juices, you ameliorate with water or buffer with chemicals. The water is better for the wine.

Well, at least you asked the right question.

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

You COULD always titrate out some of the acidity using Calcium Carbonate (or pickling line, calcium hysroxide)....if it is to high in acid. Some fruits just make wines that would be way to tannic, or way to strong flavored, like rhubarb...of course with rhubarb you also have oxolate content (which you can and often do titrate out) Other fruits make wine that the flavor is extremely fleeting, even if you do use straight fruit. Mulberry is one that I like to make with mulberry juice spiked with some grape concentrate...no water added, but you still need to add a little sugar. I think my mulberry juice generally runs about 1.060 and it is very pectic...it throws a ton of sediment.

My point before was that you can make perfectly good wines by ameoleration of fruit juice.

I don't want to get into another juice concentration debate, but my main issue with the fruit winemaking culture (many recipes) is that it's common to *over-dilute*, claimed for the purposes of deacidification but in-turn diluting flavour and extract. (This was actually one the main issues I was essentially raising way back in

2001, but it seemed to fall by the way side pretty fast in place of some kind of misrepresentative generalised dilution debate.)

For example, the first two recipes on Jack's Requested Recipes page for Strawberry actually *re-acidify* the must (and by about 2.8 g/l as tartaric - which is actually quite a lot)! So that much dilution can't be for the purposes of high acid content alone. You might like your strawberry wine weak, but I don't, and I personally think that good strawberry juice *deserves* to be pure (you don't get much extract otherwise).

pp asked:

Better fruit quality/selecti> Some fruits just make wines that would be way to tannic, or way

Balance is the issue. It is my belief that balance and intense flavour can be obtained simultaneously using the right fruit and techniques. (On rhubarb, there are those who believe that deacidification of oxalate reduces true rhubarb character. I disagree that it creates a wine that is "too strong flavoured".)

I disagree with that statement. A large proportion of non-grape winemakers on this ng reside in cities. IMO, this terminology ("country wines") is unfortunate and I avoid it as much as possible.

Ben

Ben, For me, the choice between a fruit wine made using all juice versus some juice is a matter of personnel taste. I was given a Christmas present some years ago, of some fruit wine which claimed to be all juice with very little dilution - I didn't like any of it. I prefer a strawberry wine recipe which only uses 4-5 quarts of frozen fruit as it's base. I think for people who start out it's good to start with a recipe from Jack or Lum's sites, and then when they progress in their winemaking skills, they can move on to making the wine they way they want to (and that could be with all juice or not). After all that is why I started to make wines with fruit and such; to make a wine I like and which is different. Darlene

I've evolved my winemaking to follow a certain philosophy as I've gained experience over the past few years. First of all, I - unlike some others - don't generally make wine from sources that require a tremendous amount of manipulation to become wine, such as flowers for example. I also don't bother with extremely acidic fruits (lemon) or extremely flat fruits (banana). What I've decided to do is to make wine from fruits that contain "reasonable" amounts of the raw materials needed in their natural form. By "raw materials" I refer to juice volume, sugar, and acid.

So far, that's been: Strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, peach, plum, apple, and pear. I've made all of these in a high concentration (75-100%) with success. I'm also focusing on fresh, in-season fruits here in my home state of New Jersey. Cranberry is next! And as you know, that's an acidic fruit with little juice...

But to answer your acidity question... the other part of the philosophy is to balance the wine according to the characteristics of the source fruit. Grapes are naturally suited to fermenting to dryness at 11-13% alcohol and .5-.8 TA with no amelioration under good conditions. All of the other fruits require sugar to reach the alcohol content needed for wine. What I've begun to do is to ferment to dryness, determine how acidic the wine is by taste, and balance the final product to taste with sugar or honey. I do enjoy off-dry and sweet wines, so this works for me.

The other approach is to plan for water dilution to reduce the acid. But rather than doing it at the start, do it AFTER fermentation. You have to chaptalize for a higher alcohol content; say 15% - to accomodate a 10-20% water dilution (which will reduce the alcohol to a more acceptable 12-13.5%). Thus the dilution serves to balance the acid, and is done only to the extent necessary - as judged by your taste. Of course, a combination of the water and sugar balancing techniques can be successful too. Dilution up front is *almost* the same, but I find that it's more hit-or-miss. Doing it later lets you hit the balance target more accurately, and lets you learn how wine from these fruits tastes w/o being watered down from the start.

This is just my mindset, and I offer it as food for thought. I'm not on any kind of crusade here! :-)

Roger Quinta do Placer

Well as long as we are going to argue semantics, by volume most wine is made in the country...since commercial output accounts for the vast majority of all wine.

Just to express my opinion, I like the term "country wine" and do not think it relates to the density of population. At one time people in the country made their own wine.

That aside, if you want stronger flavored wine, make it. Craft your own. my suggestion is to juice your fruit. Test it's acidity, then dilute to the acidity you want and don't add acid. If that is not strong enough, then don't dilute and use something like calcium carbonate to bring the acid down.

Ray