Homemade Strawberry Wine
Recipe Makes 1 Gallon
Ingredients:
2 lb Strawberries
8 oz Raisins
Confectioners Sugar
1/2 cup Grape Tannin
1 tsp Pectic Enzyme
Sauterne Wine Yeast
Method:
First of all, select or purchase your fermentation container, a large funnel, a large amount of cheesecloth, a box of plain gelatin, saccharometer (hydrometer), a bottle of yeast nutrient, fermentation locks and a gallon glass container with cork or stopper. Two half gallon glass containers may be substituted and if you choose to go for smaller bottles, then use 4 one liter sized glass bottles and settle for the 4th being only about half full. Just be sure that all of your glass bottles are stoppable and have locking stoppers or corks. Any unfamiliar items I have mentioned can be purchased in large liquor stores, online or in brewery supply shops.
Wash all the strawberries and cut off the stems and leaves. Cut the strawberries into quarters and place them in the fermentation container. Cut the raisins into small pieces and add them to the mix. Crush the berries and raisins with a wooden utensil like a meat hammer or potato masher. After it is well mashed, pour over with 1 gallon of boiling water (use distilled, purified or filtered water). Cover the container at this time with plastic wrap and leave it to ferment for 24 hours. Stir the mix well late the next day and then recover it. Leave it sit for another 3 whole days.
On the second day, prepare the wine yeast according to the package directions. Make your starter solution by first boiling a half cup of water and then letting it cool back down to tepid and add 1/2 tsp of the confectioners sugar. Add the wine yeast to the sugar water for the full amount needed for the must (check package directions). Add a pinch of yeast nutrient to the mix and let it sit for an hour or until it starts to foam and smell like bread
Late into the third day what you have is the must. Add the pectic enzyme and the grape tannin to it and stir them in. Make the sugar correction at this point, using the saccharometer and a sample of the mix. This keeps the wine from ending up like kool aid. Add the sample of must that was used for the readings to the starter solution you made yesterday and stop it all up in a bottle overnight. Once you have corrected the sugar level, leave the mix until the next day (another 24 hours) and then add the starter solution. Once all of it is in the fermentation container, cover it over with plastic wrap and leave it to ferment. When the fermentation slows down and sediment starts to collect, it is time to bottle the wine.
Because the strawberries have pulp and seeds that are undesirable in the wine, they will have to be strained out over the cheesecloth. Place small amounts of the pulp into a double layer of cheesecloth using a small plastic cup or spoon, without stirring up the sediment that is collecting on the bottom of the fermentation container. Squeeze the pulp through the cheesecloth into a glass bottle. If some of the pulp or seeds get through into the bottle, strain the liquid from the first bottle into a second bottle through a cheesecloth lined funnel. You will just have to repeat the straining process as many times as it takes to remove the seeds and pulp. Once the liquid is clear in the bottle, then it can be corked and racked.
Once the wine has been transferred into the chosen bottles, the bottles should be capped with fermentation locks that are filled with water. If you have not been able to find fermentation locks, then plastic wrap around the top and held in place with rubber bands is a doable substitute. The wine is continuing to ferment at this stage and bubbles will be seen in the water inside the locks or at the surface of the plastic wrap. When the bubbles cease to appear, take another saccharometer reading. You should get a gravity reading of 1000 or a alcohol level reading near 0. At this point, you are ready for the second racking.
Move the wine into new bottles that have been sterilized and are very clean. Use a siphon to move the wine from one bottle to the other, making an effort to "splash" it along the sides of the bottle as it's poured in, so as to stimulate aeration. Cap the bottles with fermentation locks. There will be less fermentation at this point so the bubbles will come slower. Leave for a month. After the month has passed, redo the saccharometer test and look for a gravity reading of .990 or .995. Keep testing every 4 days until this reading is acheived. Once it has reached this level, the wine is ready for final bottling.
Dissolve the box of gelatin in warm water and then add it to the wine. This will force all the remaining sediment, seeds, pulp and other debris to sink to the bottom of each bottle and remain behind as the wine is tranferred to the final bottle. If you wish, now is the time to test to acidity level of your wine. Wine that is too acid is unpleasant to the taste. Use a standard pH kit, putting the strip into the bottle and then setting it aside to dry. If the pH is less than 3.5 then the wine is way too acid. This can be fixed by simply placing the bottle into a refrigerator for a week. Test it to be sure it is at 3.5 and no higher than 4.0. If in the initial test you have the opposite problem and the test reads a pH of 4.5, the wine is not acid enough. For this, you need to add small amounts of tartaric acid to the wine until the test shows a pH of 3.5- 4.5. Also, to prevent oxidation of the wine while it's aging, you will want to add Vitamin C to the bottle, at a rate of 50 mg per gallon of wine.
Now, at last, the wine is ready to be bottled. The final bottles should be sterilized before use. This can be done by boiling the bottles in hot water and then pouring the hot water into a sink or large container along with the bottles and adding a small amount of bleach. Let sit until the water cools. Then place the bottles in a dishwasher with no soap and run them through a hot cycle to remove the last of the bleach. This is as clean and sterile as it gets. You should also sterilize the corks you plan to use by boiling them in hot water as well.
Once the bottles are clean and dry the wine can be racked directly into these bottles. While filling each bottle, allow for a small amount of air between the level of the wine and the cork. Drive the corks in as far as you can but don't get too rough or you can crack the bottle. Store the bottles by laying on their sides so that the corks remain wet with wine at all times. Wine racks are ideal for storing wine this way. This wine, made this way, should be aged for up to a year but no longer. In fact, it should be ready to drink within 8 - 10 months.
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