I needed to clean out my freezer, and had quite a few raspberries. I had a total of 17 pounds of frozen raspberries, collected over the past couple years, which I will use to make this new batch of wine.
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Process:
Put semi-thawed fruit into primary bucket, rinsing out the freezer bags with a bit of water to get all of the juice. Added sugar and started adding hot water to thaw the fruit completely. Used a stick blender to break up the fruit for better fermentation. Waited for the must to reach a temperature of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and then added the pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, and yeast. Stirred the must, then sealed with an airlock.
6-27-20: Put into primary bucket. OG measured at 1.090 giving a potential strength of 11.9 %ABV.
6-28-20: I wasn’t seeing any activity in the airlock after 24 hours, so I decided to pitch a package of Premier Cuvee yeast into the primary bucket to get the fermentation started.
6-29-20: The problem was actually the seal on the bucket lid, not the fermentation. I twisted up some cling wrap and put it all around the bucket lid’s seal to make it airtight.
7-9-20: Racked wine into 6-gallon carboy. Strained the pulp to remove as much juice as possible, leaving behind a little less than a gallon of pulp.
5-15-21: Bottled into 49 12-ounce bottles. FG measured at 0.993 giving a strength of 13.5 %ABV