I had wanted to make some strawberry wine earlier this summer when I saw them on sale at the local Valley Harvest, but by the time I went to go buy some they were all gone. Today I received some strawberries for free from a family friend, and I will now get to make this wine.
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Process:
Removed the stems from the strawberries and then cut them in half and sliced them thinly. Once I had 6 pounds of sliced strawberries I put them in a cooking pot with about a gallon of water. I heated this up to 150 F to let it steep for 30 minutes. During this time I crushed up the strawberries with a potato masher which helped break them down and extract more of their juices.
When the 30 minutes was up, I added the strawberries to my primary bucket. I then added on gallon of cold water, bringing the total volume to just under 3 gallons (allowing roughly a gallon being lost to pulp and sediment when racking to secondary). I measured my sugar and added that next, stirring the must to dissolve the sugar. I took a reading and got an OG of 1.078, giving a potential strength of 11.3 %ABV. I added my pectic enzyme, acid blend, and yeast to the primary and then sealed it with a blow-off tube. I measured the acidity and it was 0.4%, so I added 3 tablespoons of acid blend to reach a TA of 0.7 %.
9-17-11: Put into primary. OG measured at 1.078.
9-27-11: Racked off of the fruit pulp into two one-gallon carboys and one half-gallon carboy. SG measured at 1.002 giving a strength of 10.4 %ABV.
4-29-12: Bottled into 22 12-ounce bottles. FG measured at 0.994 giving a strength of 11.1 %ABV.
Tags: fruit, strawberries, strawberry, wine
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