I have both an orange and a tanerene tree and am about to start a batch of wine from the fruit. Are there any special precautions I should take. Will probably use about 1 gallon of juice to a 1 gallon of water and add sugar till I get a good SG. Will also add some rind. Any suggestions will be appreciated.
It would be a good idea to test the acidity. Just use a simple acid test kit you can get for $10. 1 part juice to 1 part water sounds like it may be a bit acid to me. I mad fresh orange wine at 1 juice to 2 water and it was very acid.
Another suggestion would be to add some frozen white grape concentrate to improve the vinuosity. Go ahead and determine the dilution you want for the juice and then add an extra gallon of water and 2 cans of Welch's Niagara frozen concentrate. The orange will still dominate. Another way would be to make the orange and make a batch of Niagara separately and then try blending them to taste. The Niagara is good by itself or makes an excellent mixing wine for white fruit wines.
Just some suggestions but you are the one making it.
I haven't made any citrus wine for a few years but I used to make it quite often in the past. I have had some of it turn out to be fantastic and other batches get poured down the drain. My best efforts are when I make it simple and use 5 pounds of fruit per gallon that I expect to make - 25 lb. for 5 gallons - and filling up the remainder with water and sugar syrup to reach the specific gravity I want.
I never have added rind, mainly because I have never seen that in any of the recipes that I have used. I don't really know why some of my batches have been so bad, but I have experimented with attempting a high alcohol content and I think this ruined my last batch. When I aim for about 10-11 percent, the wine seems to turn out very good - dry with a slight citrus taste.
Don
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My old Folk Wine Book tends to keep it simple with just juice sugar and water. Found a couple of more complecated ways on the net. One uses some raisins and bananas. I understand the raisins, but why would one use bananas? I like Rays idea below and think I use some grape concentrate. When I said I'd add some rind, I really ment some zest. Have decided I'm gonna use both tangerine and orange juice. Did the tangerine yesterday and wil do oranges today.
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