sashurlow

Recipes 

My latest attempt is going to be raisin wine. I just bought four bags of mixed raisins. Did I just waste money on mixed raisins opposed to regular old raisins?
http://www.sun-maid.com/en/products/products_golden.html#jumbo_raisins Third one down.
Scott

bengerman

Recipes 

may i point out that this could just be called "previously dehydrated" wine?

Daedolon

Recipes 

I don't know if you wasted your money or not. My guess is no. The more important question is: Did you grab a handful of the raisins and give it a good taste test? Did you like the taste? If you liked the taste, it was not a waste. I find that if it tasted good going in, it will likely taste good post-fermentation (likely being the key word) If you didn't taste the raisins... well ... you have better self control than I do.

I currently have a couple gallons of a test batch of something similar sitting in secondary. I loved the smell of it so much, I made a second batch. But I love raisins. (hence the self control issue)

And I do agree, it does sound like "dehydrated re-hydrated wine" - but that is like saying that if you were to soak raisins in water for a couple hours, they would taste like wine grapes. As this is clearly not true, I can only rationalize that raisin wine would taste like fermented raisins. Shocking, right? But my tests aren't far enough along for me to give anything other than an opinion. Still smells good, though.

smyrnaquince

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Try a raisin pie. My wife hates it; I love it.

I have a gallon of raisin wine aging right now. I tasted it after the first racking and it has potential, but without a year's worth of aging, I really don't know what the final product will be like. I used a red wine yeast (Red Star Pasteur Red, I think).

renshaw

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I thought i'd ask here rather then posting a new topic,
Did you boil the raisins first or just add them to water with sugar and yeast?

thanks

Yooper

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My friend Jim sent me a bottle of his raisin wine. (Recipe here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f79/raisin-wine-30147/ ).

It was wonderful! I highly recommend looking at his recipe and instructions to see how he did it, and I think it was pretty easy aside from grinding those sticky raisins!

I use golden raisins in my white wines for body, so I think a mixed raisin batch would be really good.

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Daedolon

Recipes 

Personally, I dreaded the thought of chopping all those little raisins. I barely trust myself with carrots, never mind a raisin. So, I cheated.

I took a few handfuls of raisins and put them in my blender. Added about an equal amount of water, and ran them through. Chopped them quite nicely. They didn't turn in to pure "mush", but they were decidedly much smaller than when I started. I started adding more raisins, less water, etc experimenting until the texture was where I wanted. And I ran out of fresh water prior to getting them all chopped, so I used raisin water to puree raisins further. That was all in an effort to keep it right around a gallon total.

In retrospect, for my second gallon, I didn't worry about keeping it at a gallon. I put the whole gallon of water in there, and started it out in a big pot. Once the raisins started to settle, I racked the liquid in to a one gallon carboy - with no headspace like I had in the first batch.

smyrnaquince

Recipes 

+1. I saw this hint in a different thread and used it myself. I think I need to chop them up just a little less finely next time, though. I had a lot of sludge at the bottom of the fermenter.

Daedolon

Recipes 

And then the other hint that I completely spaced on - a grain bag. Or as I call it - a 5 gallon paint strainer from home depot! I had problems racking the wine off of the bottom, too. Next time, I won't have that problem because I'll just pull them out in the grain bag.

smyrnaquince

Recipes 

I actually put my "blended" raisins in bag, but a fair bit came through. Next time, I'll go for bigger chunks.