Low alcohol, no extra sugar, fruit wine

I'm an amateur brewer and so far been doing small batch (1gal) beers and really enjoy it. Lately I was wondering about simple fruit wines and most recipes call for extra sugar. I found some relevant discussions, for example: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/strawberry-wine-just-strawberries-329882/

I understand that most fruit don't have enough sugar concentration to reach high original gravitates, however the question I have is slightly different: is high OG and high final ABV (9+%) really required for fruit wines? I mean, does it taste really bad if it's ~5%? Is high OG required for wine yeast?

pavelgj said:

I'm an amateur brewer and so far been doing small batch (1gal) beers and really enjoy it. Lately I was wondering about simple fruit wines and most recipes call for extra sugar. I found some relevant discussions, for example: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/strawberry-wine-just-strawberries-329882/

I understand that most fruit don't have enough sugar concentration to reach high original gravitates, however the question I have is slightly different: is high OG and high final ABV (9+%) really required for fruit wines? I mean, does it taste really bad if it's ~5%? Is high OG required for wine yeast?

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You definitely can make a 5% wine if you want. It won't last as long in the bottle as a higher ABV wine, but then again a lower ABV wine won't require aging either, and could be drunk very young.

There is nothing wrong with a low ABV wine except for the reasons Yooper points out. But I also make some fruit wines with no sugar and use fruit juice concentrate to bring the OG up to a potential 9% wine. So if you don't want to add sugar then that is an idea.

Makes sense. Thanks for the advice.

You need to search the internet for this but there are a number of really (IMO) interesting peer reviewed papers that explore the viability of indigenous fruit wines in Nigeria, for example, with (I think) no added sugar as an alternative to grape wine. Paw paw, and mango and one or two other fruits come to mind. These wines are similar to hard cider in terms of the potential ABV (about 5 or 6 percent).
As Arpolis suggests there is a nice alternative to increasing the potential alcohol without adding any sugar and that "simply" involves extracting the fruit juice and then freezing the juice. You then allow the frozen juice to gently thaw and as it thaws you carefully collect it. If you measure the specific gravity of the collected juice you will see that the first thawed juice will contain about twice the amount of sugar than was possessed by the original juice (the sugars thaw sooner and then the water). If you wish you can raise the sugar level from the equivalent of about 1.3 lbs of sugar in a gallon to about 2. 25 lbs (or from a gravity of about 1.050 to about 1.080 but you will "lose" about 2/3 of the volume - so if you start with 6 gallons of juice you won't have more than about 2 gallons to ferment.

Try some and see what you think of the stuff.

I picked about a 100 pounds of past their prime cherries off our trees last year. Rather than turf them, we put them in a clean drum and let the wild yeasts run. Got 5 gallons of pretty decent, low-test wine off that, that was declared 'drinkable' by my niece and brother. Personally, I like the stuff with a splash of Diet Cola in it to sweeten it up and pull the cherry flavor to the fore.
Not a big bold red, by any means, but a pretty good sip on a warm day.


TeeJo