Peach juice advise

Ok... So my mother's church is having its yearly peach festival. The people of the church peal, pit, and slice around 30-40 bushels of peaches for their peach short cake. In this process they normally throw out the peals and dump the juices down the drain, saving the peach slices only. At my request they have saved the peach juice, so ill have about 5-6 gallons of pure, thick, natural peach juice.
Being a new brewer, I was wondering if there is any advise or recipes anyone would like to suggest. Have not attempted a wine that wasn't from a kit yet. Have made a few cider batches, and a hard tea batch... But I haven't the foggiest as to what I should add to this.. Be it pectin, acid blends, campden tablets, ect... Have the full supply, but headed into personally uncharted water and looking for some seasoned advisors.
Openly awaiting...

Score! I am in a rush to get out, but told SWMBO, Just one more! So I hope I don't error on ya.

I don't know what you currently know, so I will assume little. Fair?

Immediately you will need:

Primary bucket
Hydrometer
Sugar, maybe 10#
Pectic Enzyme
Yeast Nutrient
Campden Tablets
Yeast. There is a thread about what to use for peach floating around here. To sum it up, D47, Cote de Blanc and a few others were mentioned. I am pitching CdB when I do my peach.

Get a primary fermenting bucket. Like an "Ale Pail" or similar. It will have the volume marks on the side. Put all your juice in there.

We need to get a reading on the sugar content of your juice. Get your hydrometer out and test the gravity of it. I would target about 1.090. Others will have their preferences on gravity, but that's what I would be at. If your gravity is lower than your target (1.090) add sugar, higher; add water. It won't be higher unless you add too much sugar.

Optional: Add pectic enzyme. I would, but then I am a subscriber of "can't have enough PE." If you do, since it's already juice, you won't need a lot. Maybe add 3/4 to 1 tsp for each gallon. Luc has a blog post about PE, if you are curious.

Crush a Campden tablet for every gallon of juice you have, dissolve it in water. Toss in your juice. We will now call that your must from now on.



Some folks will wait 24 hrs for the Campden to do it's thing. I don't usually, do what's comfortable to you - If in doubt, just wait, it can't hurt. Someone out in the interwebs did some testing on Campden killing your yeast. Get your yeast starter ripping. Pitch when it's ready.

Now you will want to look at the marks on the ale pail, noting how much volume you have. Get a carboy ready to hold all your must. You want to have no head space. I'll let you Google pictures of that if you are unclear.

Now for the most important ingredient. Time.


I hope this summery has helped. I know others that are far far more experienced than I will chime in. I just wanted to get you a reply since, you were running dry.

Yeast thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/peach-wine-yeast-recommedations-424680/

About a month and a half ago I started a peach. I literally just added a little bit of sugar, some white grape juice concentrate, water to a gallon and yeast to 3/4 gallon of peach juice. Threw in a banana just for funsies. It's in the secondary and it's starting to slow down. I probably should have done some more, but I get boxes of fruit for $2 each. So I tend to experiment and try something, then when I know what to do I make it a quality wine.

Awesome thank you... I get the juice this weekend when I go to help the church. Ill be starting this Sunday night or Monday... Will keep u posted of progress.

Peach wine usually comes out thin and watery unless you have a second ingredient added. There are 3 different ingredients that I think do well to add body: Raisins, white grape concentrate, banana. Also I like to add tannin to peach wines to balance out the sweet with some bitter. For the tannin I prefer to use black tea, specifically Earl Grey. What all stone archer posted is awesome. Here is just my take on it all.

5 gallon recipe

All the peach juice
6 tsp pectic enzyme
Your choice (Five 11.5oz Welch's white grape concentrate, 2.5 lb raisins or 5 whole bananas sliced thin)
5 TBS black tea
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2.5 tsp yeast energizer
Sugar to a gravity of 1.09
Camden
Yeast (I like lalvin 71b or K1V but Red star Cote De-Blanc would do well too)

Use a 6.5 or 7 gallon bucket and add all your peach juice. Crush up 5 or 6 Camden tablets and mix in along with all other ingredients except pectic enzyme and yeast. Wait at least 12 hours then add pectic enzyme. Wait another 12 hours minimum and then pitch yeast. Stir twice daily for 3-5 days as long as the fermentation looks active. Let that ferment by itself and past about 2 weeks it should be fine to rack to a 5 gallon carboy and add airlock. Any extra can go into clean empty 2 liters and stored in the fridge for toping up later. Rack the wine every 30-45 days getting it off the yeast sediment until it stops dropping sediment.

I think peach wines are great dry but if you want a sweeter wine then stabilize with Camden/sorbate and back sweeten with sugar to taste.

Ok... Little bit of an update and possibly a hiccup..
5 gallons are set and ready to start when I get home tomorrow night. But they have another 5gallon they separated for me, but it is separated because they added fruit fresh to it... I had no clue what fruit fresh was, but upon googling I found it to be a short term preservative... Will it prevent fermentation?

Fruit fresh should not hinder fermentation really. Fruit fresh is basically sugar and citric acid. So that batch may be a little more acidic but I could not imagine it too much to cause any trouble. Sounds like you got a good score. I am enjoying some peach wine right now and ill say it is good stuff. You have a treat coming your way.

Ok so here is what I did...

6 gal peach juice/ sugar combo
(By itself only read about 1.100 on OG)

5# sugar
1qt water to boil:
2cups raisins
Yeast nutrient
Pectic enzyme
Acid blend

So I set the juice in the primary and checked the OG. Decided I wanted more ABV, so...
I added campden tablets and let sit 24 hrs.
Then added pectic enzyme before work at 2, came home went to Walmart, then boiled 2 cups of raisins in 1qt water. Boiled for about 30 min, strained and mixed in the sugar. Had to dump in primary and heat another few cups water to dissolve the rest of the sugar.
In the second sugar melt I threw in enough acid blen and yeast nutrient for a 5 gal batch, I don't like over doing the chemicals.
Let sit to cool for an hour or so, and pitched Montrachet yeast and air locked

I did about the same to a 3 gal batch as well only used bananas instead raisins its OG was almost the same but I didn't add as much sugar.. I think it's cause this batch is a bit more pulpy.

Oh and I did add about 5 tbsp earl grey to the big batch.

Just kind of went for it and combined some advise here with some stuff from an Internet recipe and an recipe I have in a book... Here's hoping

Let me know what u all think?

I forgot to say, I used red star champagne yeast on the little one... Happy to say they are bubbling away like mad!

Ok so I donno if anyone is fallowing this one or not... But I have another question.
So bot buckets are bubbling like crazy... More so than I have see any other batch I've done. I attributed that to the fact that they are the highest ABV I have fermented, though I don't know that is true.
The question I have is... Should I be smelling the ferment?
It is kind of yeasty, with a hint of alcohol. Although my GF says she smells kind of a sulfuric smell... But I also think she off her rocker.
Any possible answers to the new mystery?

Yes smelling the ferment is common of vigorous ferments. Also peach musts are common in giving off sulfery smells so the GF may not be far off. If the smell gets worse the add yeast nutrients and mix the must very well.

Ok so it's been about 10 or 11 days and the bubbles are finally slowing down. When I did the wine from a kit deal they had me rack to a secondary after 10 or so days. Should I rack now or let it sit for a good bit more?

Arpolis said:

Yes smelling the ferment is common of vigorous ferments. Also peach musts are common in giving off sulfery smells so the GF may not be far off. If the smell gets worse the add yeast nutrients and mix the must very well.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the response too... I was getting a bit weirded out until u replied with this

If you are using a hydrometer many rack to secondary when the gravity gets to about 1.01 or so. If not using a hydrometer just transfer to a carboy and airlock when it looks like it is calm enough to not cause a volcano.

Ok... So took a gravity reading today. .998

Started taking off to carboy secondary, but holy geez.. This stuff is pulpy!

I started with with the small batch, but I'm gonna be here for hours filtering this.

Should I just leave the large batch in the primary?

Fallow up... I had these sitting in their carbons since I last messaged. Last weekend I bottled it up it had a very dry alcohol flavor... So I stabs lizard with wine conditioner to sweeten..: I must say... This stuff is amazing! It turned out great!
I just wanted to put a thank u out there to any and all advisers... U guys rock!

cms2bit said:

Fallow up... I had these sitting in their carbons since I last messaged. Last weekend I bottled it up it had a very dry alcohol flavor... So I stabs lizard with wine conditioner to sweeten..: I must say... This stuff is amazing! It turned out great!
I just wanted to put a thank u out there to any and all advisers... U guys rock!

Click to expand...

Haha damn auto correct.

Lmao... Yeah... I guess the lesson is proof read before hitting reply.

That would be carboy and stabilized

Def don't want PETA thinking I'm here stabbing lizards to sweeten my wine

cms2bit said:

Lmao... Yeah... I guess the lesson is proof read before hitting reply.

That would be carboy and stabilized

Def don't want PETA thinking I'm here stabbing lizards to sweeten my wine

Click to expand...

A Treky may think you are making Klingon blood wine at that point. Which may also be dangerous.