Thread: Homemade Country Wine Production

It's really not advertised but Central Mississippi grows some fantastic Peaches. We jumped in the Escape this morning and blew to the Cracker Barrel first in Hattiesburg for breakfast. Afterwards onward to Meridian for 2 bushels of tree ripened Peaches. One basket is for my bride but the others will be processed for winter fermentation. I have a recipe for a very mild bleach wash to kill the stuff on the skins then to the knife for pitting before vacuum packing well and freezing. Freezing all the fruit before fermenting really helps with the juice extraction by the yeast.



Shoot, the baskets went all the way across the car. Tomorrow, Peach Processing.

Those look so good. We are supposed to go get some but my wife hasn’t told me when.

I got to weigh a basket tonight. They are 20 pounds each. The last Peach wine I made was with 3 pounds of fruit to the gallon and with peaches that is not enough. I brought a bottle to Bon Temps party and everyone who tried it liked it and it is semi-sweet towards the dry side. The peaches used were not the quality of these but still the fresh peach flavor was very lite. Add just a little wine conditioner and the peach flavor jump out. This time I'm thinking of 4-5 pounds to the gallon for a robust peach flavor. Also peach wines take a really long time to clear, lots of racking which when topping up waters down the flavor. At least this time I will have some homemade peach wine to top up with to prevent that.

We rolled on those peaches today. Some processed for cooking, some processed for Wine. The wine peaches gets a much bigger bag.



I made a short video of the Vacuum Packer in action. It does the job well.



The video is sideways and I can't fix it but maybe you will see the action, I hope.

Here is a picture of the Mayhaw Fuji Apple wine. I opened a bottle this evening to see how it is progressing. By not fully back sweetening the wines before bottling I'm having to age the wines a extra year for them to sweeten up a bit more. Country wines are meant to be drank within 5 years, by holding back on the Wine Conditioner my 2022 wines were slow to sweeten but this, Mayhaw Fuji Apple blend is perfect now. I'm glad because all the wines I backed off the wine conditioner.



I think my Peach wine needs a few more months to get to this point.

Since I expect to be fermenting Bon Temp's Honey all winter I'm getting a early start on the Country Fruit Wines. This is a totally new wine, after all fermentation has ceased I will chop up a 44oz container of Maraschino Cherries and add fruit & juice (for Back sweetening) to the product. Maraschino Cherries will not ferment due to all the Sorbate Preservative they are packed in. I figure a 30 day soak then filter the wine off the fruit before bulk aging. It's going to need to be bulk aged because I used Champagne Yeast, this batch will keep you warm.



First up is my standard syrup, 10 pounds of sugar to 1 gallon distilled water.



I bought this Dark Sweet Cherry Puree on sale, a end of year kinda sale, 50% off. It was packaged less than a year ago and I store all my Purees in a very dark, cool closet. The fermenting bucket came from Northern Brewer. They and Label Peelers have been great resources along with my local shop Yeastie Beastie. The graduations on the bucket make it very easy to keep a close eye on what your doing.



I add the requisite additives needed to support a very healthy fermentation. At this time I'm not sharing the recipe because it may be a bomb I don't want to post a bad recipe. I will follow up when racking begins, from there I will know if I have a winner.



So that's it for yesterday, day one. The Campden tablets I added produce a sulfur gas that sterilizes the Must killing any wild yeast that may be present.

Today



I start by microwaving 1/2 cup distilled water with 2-3 tablespoons of my syrup added. The perfect temperature to dissolve our Go Ferm Yeast hydration supporting nutrient but too hot for our yeast.



At this point I have been stirring the rehydration liquid till it cools to 104 degrees the perfect temperature for adding our yeast. EC-1118 is a Champagne yeast so by step feeding it will achieve over 20% ABV.



I just sprinkle the dry yeast on top of our liquid evenly so as it rehydrates it sinks away from the dry yeast.





The Yeast is Off to the Races. I have a short video of the yeast waking up and starting to feed on the syrup I included in our rehydration liquid.





This photo is after 20 minutes of feeding.



Now I don't want to shock my yeast colony before they even have a chance so I add about 1/2 a ladle of our Must to the colony so they get tempered to the Temp/PH changes.



Here I just dump the yeast colony on top of the Cherry Wine Must, no mixing in. Once the yeast is added I cover with a Tea Towel and wrap a rubber band around the top to keep anything like a fruit fly for getting inside spoiling the must.



This is 6 hours later. By developing these yeast handling practices I have a colony size in 6 hours that used to take 24. Now we ferment!

The mad scientist is at it again. Very nice. I always loved it when my fermentation kicked off strong and fast. Faster the better I always thought.

I got a 60 pound delivery of muscadines today. Another is due here Friday so to speed in processing for fermentation I stomped them! Really, a new pair of shrimper boots & a 45 Yeti worked fantastic. The video show how the fruit liquefied.