Who knew these make great wine?
I started making my own wine last year. I was gifted a link to a gentleman who makes his own wine from store bought juice, granular sugar and bread yeast. I don't like sweet wines and I really didn't like how his recipe turned out. It's good to add to other things, just not to drink straight. Link to super easy homemade wine for shrubs. (No equipment necessary)
I also have a home orchard and I thought I'd try my hand at using my own fruit and vegetables. I bought a fruit wine making kit and started looking for wine recipes.
Tequila bottles repurposed for homemade wine.
In the wine kit there was a recipe book for a bunch of different fruits and even vegetables. I like light, dry wine so I was researching ingredients that would give me that end product.
I had about a zillion homegrown Armenian cucumbers (these are actually melons that taste like cucumbers.) and I thought I'd see if anyone had used cucumbers as a base. You can use regular cucumbers. They each make a similar wine.
Peeling and seeding.
I was lucky enough to find a cucumber/citrus wine recipe and went to work.
All you need for two gallons of wine.
I have now made many bottles of cucumber/citrus wine and I'll take you along and show you what I decided was the best ratios and the best base of fruit ingredients.
So, for the fruit mash that you add at the beginning: I tried a few things that were OK, but that I changed a little in subsequent ferments. In the first gallon that I made, I peeled, seeded and sliced about four pounds of Armenian cucumbers.
I put them in a fermentation bag and then zested and juiced two oranges and two lemons. I then used a meat tenderizer on a finger length piece of ginger, it generally holds together like this. Plus by mashing, instead of slicing, I didn't have to fish little pieces of ginger out later.
Ginger and a meat tenderizer.
Since I usually really like lemon and orange zest in my baked goods, I didn't second guess the recipe that called for it. (If you decide to use zest: zest your citrus before you juice it.)
Zest and cukes.
Then I assembled the fruits and vegetables in the fermentation bag, plus I added the citrus juice.
You can attempt to weight the bag down, but honestly: it has so much gas in it when it is fermenting that it floats, regardless of what you do. Even three glass fermenting weights didn't help. I had heard this, but I figured I could find a work around. I couldn't.
As long as you turn the bag over daily, with a sterilized instrument, you don't have to worry about complete submersion.
To the fruit bag and bucket: I added fourteen cups of previously boiled water (you can pour your water in once it is back at room temperature or use bottled water.) seven cups of granulated white sugar and three campden tablets. This is also when you add pectic enzymes.
Couple of buckets filled with fruit bags.
I waited the prescribed 24 hours for the campden tablets to clean up the fruit mixture.
I attempted to use my hydrometer, but I really didn't understand it or know what my starting values should be. In subsequent batches, I had watched a lot of YouTube videos (this is a great one for reading the hydrometer) and nobody was really helping me with a range of specific gravity to start with.
Then I found this site and I had an idea of what I was doing. Per the linked site you should be aiming at: "a starting specific gravity between 1.070 and 1.100 for wine."
This recipe has a little too much sugar.
In my opinion: too much sugar is actually the better way to start, because then you are only adding water to dilute the sugars (I just used bottled water, so I didn't have to bother with boiling and cooling more filtered tap water.)
Boiling water and then adding sugar.
I'd rather do that than trying to calculate, measure and add sugar and hope to get it mixed well enough that the reading is accurate.
There are calculations, per your starting specific gravity, that involve measured amounts of sugar that you can use to hit the correct range. But: I hate math in the middle of something complicated, so I'd rather move in the opposite direction and simply dilute until the hydrometer reading is right.
Once the gasses from the campden tablets (these use Sulphur gas to kill off any errant yeasts and bacteria that may have come in on your ingredients) had left the must, I hydrated 1 package of wine yeast (to hydrate yeast: Stir the yeast into chlorine free water then let the mixture stand in a cup for ten or fifteen minutes, make sure it is bubbling and then add it to the must. It doesn't generally matter what wine yeast you use, because you won't know what the difference is until you've made multiple batches with different wine yeasts. However, when looking for a wine yeast, look for one that says it works well for a vegetable/white/dry or sparkling wine.) Also, for future calculations, you should know your wine yeast's alcohol tolerance. Most yeast manufacturers do not add this to the packet information: so you need to look it up online.
Add a tsp of tannins, plus the yeast nutrients.
You can use old bottles. I don't drink store bought wine very often, but I have champagne bottles. Plus, my husband likes tequila. So I usually get a razor blade out, soak the bottle in Star-san solution and then scrape the labels off of whatever bottles I'm using (this works on shrink/ heat wrapped, hard liquor bottle labels, too.) Used bottles need a good bottle scrubbing brush (like this) and to be sanitized. You can use whatever sanitizing method you like. I use star-san because you don't have to rinse it. (It doesn't even matter if there's bubbles of star-san in the bottles as you are filling.) Other times I buy wine bottles. I usually use corks in liquor bottles and just screw on caps for the bottles I buy in bulk.
Bottles draining with star-san bubbles. You don't to worry about those, they will not affect taste or fermentation.
I immediately did not like the way things were going. There was a really pungent, almost: "burning tire" smell, coming from the bucket. I am glad I didn't chuck it, because that smell goes away, but it's from the citrus zest. Like I said earlier: this is a light refreshing wine. The zest added too many off flavors and made the wine unbalanced. There is a distinct heavy floral note in this wine, when you add zest, and it just doesn't need it. It does need the citrus juice though, and the ginger is a great addition.
Turn the bag over and gently press out the gas for 5-7 days. Some people have air locks on from the very beginning. I don't. I add the lid and the air lock once I remove the fruit bag. There is so much bubbling (and you want the starting gasses to escape) in the beginning and you have to open it to turn the bag anyway. I just don't bother with an airlock until later.
Once you have removed the bag you can strain the wine through a seive, if there are any pieces of plant matter that escaped the bag. I would be very careful doing that though, because adding air in the middle of fermenting can create vinegar instead of wine.
Another way to do the straining is to slowly run a small sterilized seive through the wine and just scoop out any larger stray materials.
Bottle your wine (siphons work better in tall narrow containers. If you have a ton of wine at the bottom of your bucket or glass carboy that you can't siphon: pour it into a clean, sterilized wine bottle and let it settle and separate. Then use your siphon to get the last of the usable wine out. BTW bottling is so much easier with two people. One at the starting end of the siphon and one at the container you are transferring to.)
Every time you rack you will lose liquid. If you have a ton left over:
Pour the wine (as clean as you can) into a bottle. Let it separate, and later, try siphoning out of the bottle.
Your choice at this point is to: let this continue to ferment in the bucket, and add a lid and airlock (fill the airlock with sterilization fluid like Star-san and watch that it doesn't totally evaporate during aging or fermenting. Gnats will crawl through plain water in an airlock if they can smell something fermenting.) Or you can rack it into a glass carboy (with a bung and an airlock filled with sanitized liquid.) I have done it both ways and since you lose some liquid racking: I rack as infrequently as I can.
You can see, with this bottle I racked right after I removed the fruit bag. It wasn't done fermenting and cleared later. There's no real good reason to repeatedly rack. I don't get sludge in the bottom of the bottles. You just have to be careful with the siphon.
So, you can just throw your lid on your bucket with the bung and airlock or you can transfer it over to a glass carboy. I usually wait to rack until it starts to clear. All the solids will fall to the bottom of your container. That's when I do my first rack into a carboy. It's also when I use my hydrometer again. This should be your finished wine value.
Again, quoting the above linked site and assuming you started in the range I listed: "you should expect a final specific gravity for wine somewhere between .992 and .996 on your hydrometer." Take a finished reading, then wait a week and take another reading. If it's the same, you are done fermenting. For the sake of simplicity, I transfer the wine into bottles after I have aged the wine about three months in a glass carboy. As long as you are not getting any bubbles in your air lock, you are actually done fermenting. I usually have a couple of one gallon carboys aging at one time.
I rack into bottles when I have an evening to dedicate to it. Which isn't often.
Once you are done with the fermentation (when there's no more gas escaping in your airlock, this can be a couple of weeks to a month. Then (plus or minus a few weeks) your wine will naturally clear. You don't have to buy something to clear it, unless you are impatient.)
This was the first gallon I made. You can see the dead yeast and other particulates at the bottom of the carboy. After I started this I had some extra from the bucket that I put in a glass covered with saran wrap. I filled the bottle higher, so there was less air in the neck.
Taste a sample of your wine before you bottle it. For me this comes out super dry and needs back sweetening. If your wine tastes more like jet fuel than wine, it probably needs a bit of sweetening to bring out the flavors, rather than tasting like straight alcohol. For this you can do two things.
One: you can add sugar to your finished wine. But, this can start up the fermentation process again. There are ways to make sure that doesn't happen, you can find out more about that here: City Steading Brews . (This is an excellent channel and they are who taught me the basics.) However, there's a second option.
Option two: if you are using a sugar substitute or you don't want to do extra steps for adding sugar. (You will not have to worry about starting up fermentation again this way.) you can backsweeten, by the glass, as you serve the wine.
This is my preferred method, because I am generally eating as low carb as I can get. I tend to back sweeten with my favorite brand of liquid Stevia. Artificial sweetener (depending on what you use), can do weird things: if you age it in your bottles.
This is my preferred method of back sweetening and drinking dry wine.
That's it. Cucumber wine is refreshing, light and crisp. It's perfect for a summer night. It's definitely on the dry side and will need additional sweetener (sugar or substitutes)
After about six months, your rocket fuel will have mellowed and the wine is really enjoyable. Keep in mind, homemade wine usually has much more alcohol than a bottle you can buy at the store. Go easy until you know how you will react to it.
Multiple wine batches.
I especially recommend not adding any rind, in any form, from the citrus. I think it's too much, but you can try it if you still think you might like it.
Here's the recipe, plus, example links to the products I list for wine making.
Equipment
Primary fermenter (carboy holds 1 gallon or bucket holds two gallons)
long spoon or spatula to turn the bag daily (keep a pot with lid, full of sterilizing solution like star-san to continue to sterilize as you go. You need enough to get through the first week.)
hydrometer (be super careful with this piece of equipment, it's very fragile and breaks easily), wine sampler tube and wine thief (hydrometer, sampler and thief usually come as a set)
siphon kit airlock and bung Fruit Bag
Star-san Wine Yeast Yeast Nutrients Campden Tablets Pectic Enzymes Tannins
If you are like me and just want to jump right in, without having to buy everything individually: I recommend this kit. I actually own two of these kits. I haven't needed anything else, other than bottles and the Star-san I use.
First: sterilize every piece of equipment and keep a container of Star-san or other oxygen sterilizer ready to resterilize anything you use.
Ingredients, #1
4 pounds peeled and sliced Armenian cucumbers
Juice of 2 lemons Juice of 2 oranges Finger length piece of ginger, macerated with a meat tenderizer to keep it in one piece
7 cups sugar
pectic enzyme (Add 1/2 tsp per gallon of juice, or 1/10 tsp per pound of fruit, at least one hour before start of fermentation.)
14 cups of chlorine free water
3 campden tablets
Combine all in your fermenting bucket, with all fruit inside the fermentation bag. Cover with a cloth and secure it to keep airborne things out. Let sit for 24 hours (until the campden tablets have finished off-gassing.)
Ingredients #2
Add to must:
1 package wine yeast
Yeast nutrients (1 gram a litre or 1 tsp for 5 litres/1 gallon. Or as your nutrients state on the package.)
Test your must liquid with your hydrometer. Add sugar or water to get the starting reading somewhere between .992 and .996 on your hydrometer.
(Again, everything but the fruit/juice/ginger, sugar, water and bottles all come in the wine kit.)
Cover with secured fabric, as before. Check daily. Turn bag of fruit and use a spoon to squeeze out the gas in the bag. Incorporate as little air into this as possible after adding the yeast. Leave bag in bucket for 5-7 days. After 5-7 days remove the bag of fruit. You can gently squeeze any remaining juice in the bag into the wine. Strain if there is any fruit left from the bag in the wine. Add a bucket lid, bung and airlock, or: siphon into a glass carboy and add a bung and airlock. Let sit until the wine clears and no bubbles are coming from the airlock, approximately 4-7 weeks. Test your wine's alcohol content with the hydrometer. If you started with the correct value on the hydrometer reading, you should finish somewhere between: .992 and .996 on your hydrometer. If you are off a few points it doesn't matter. What does matter is: taking a reading a week later. If the reading hasn't changed, you are done. If it has, repeat this step until your reading is the same between a two week testing.
Regardless of what container you use to age this wine, it needs to sit about 3-6 months. If you are back sweetening by the glass, that is the last step before you enjoy your homemade fruit wine.
I hope you are inspired to use your own fruit to make a home brewed wine!
I obviously enjoy this recipe enough that I've made it repeatedly! Next time I'll show you how I make fig wine.
Meet you out in the garden,
Crazy Green Thumbs
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