Peach wine

Im going to be starting a batch of peach wine in the next day or so. I picked 38 pounds of Majestic peaches at the local orchard last week. I have a few questions im hoping to get answered. Ive looked at many recipes and im wanting to use all 38 pounds if peaches. I am wanting a strong peach flavor. I have seen some recipes that use 10 pounds per gallon with no water and other recipes with 3 pounds per gallon topped with water to get a gallon. Im assuming that to get a finished product with a strong peach flavor a recipe with more pounds fruit per gallon with no water would be my best bet? I like my wines more on the sweet side.

Also is there a general rule of thumb as to how many pounds of sugar to use per pound of fruit? I will be using a hydrometer but more or less want to know because i dont want to make multiple trips back into town to get sugar. Ive never made peach wine before and all the wines i have made thus far have been much smaller batches. Thanks

Peach wine is a little difficult to get right because it comes out real thin. There is usually a secondary ingredient used to introduce better body. Adding sugar will reduce body further In a peach wine so I like to try and keep it all juice. If you used all 38lb in a 5 gallon batch that is just over 7lb of peaches per gallon. A good way to raise the sugar content and body is to use Welch's frozen juice concentrates. White grape or white grape peach both work really well with fresh peaches. If you use 2 11.05oz cans per gallon that should give you a total gravity close to 1.070 which should be about 9%abv if fermented dry.

I second the suggestion of using the frozen concentrates. I made a sparkling peach wine last year and boosted the sugar with the white grape peach juice concentrate. Also, maybe a bit unconventional, but I boosted the body of mine by adding a pound of lactose. I've also read about people saying that the peach flavor seems to ferment out of the wine almost entirely, and they suggest using peach flavoring of some sort.

About how much sugar per pound of fruit?

If you really want to use sugar to bump up the gravity/abv of your peach wine then you can. It is your wine but it is known that peaches by themselfs lend little body and you may have a thin wine sweetening with sugar rather than fruit concentrates.

Peaches have about an 8.8% sugar content by weight. So if you used 38lb of peaches in a 5 gallon batch then 2lb sugar per gallon will give you a starting gravity close to 1.12 ish. That is about 15.5% abv if fermented dry. Bring that down to 1lb per gallon and you get a starting gravity of about 1.075 ish which is just over 10%.

Other ways you can add body to peach wine is use 1/2 cup raisins per gallon or 1 ripe banana per gallon. Raisins can just be tossed in but the banana may need to be mashed and boiled in some water for about 20 min and then can be mixed in with the peach must.

About two weeks ago I started a peach wine, and using white grape juice concentrate. I also added a banana, but I didn't boil or mash it. I just sliced it up and halved those slices adding them in, peel and all. Do you see anything negative that could happen? It smells very much like banana and is very active.

Well it may just be me but I get a funny texture from the banana peel and raw bananas. So I prefer bananas peeled and cooked a bit.

Fair enough. I'm rather new to all this, so I'm experimenting with stuff. I like to try and come up with a recipe and just sort of go with it and if it works then I'll let the world know! If it doesn't then I warn the world.

Haha that's all I have ever done. Just your experiments get better after every one you try so do what feels right. But man some of those first ones!?! I still have some of my cucumber mead and just bleh.

I definitely know that feel man. My first batch of mead in general was just not good at all. I made it in a cleaned milk jug with a balloon for the airlock and for three days the ballon had a big hole in it and it got a bad taste to it. I masked it with more honey and it was a bad idea. After 6 months it aged some of the bad taste out, but it should have been pitched.