Recipe Type: Cherry Wine Yeast: Redstar Montrachet Yeast Starter: NO Batch Size (Gallons): 5 Original Gravity: NA Final Gravity: NA Boiling Time (Minutes): Heated not boiled Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 21d @ ~70F Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 21d @ ~70F Additional Racking (# of Days & Temp): 14d @ ~70F

~~Ingredients~~
8# Sugar
8 Strawberry Breeze Concentrate
2 Grape Concentrate
4 16oz Cans Cherry Pie Filling
1pkt Redstar Yeast (Green)
1tsp Yeast Energizer
1 Campden Tablet
Water to 5.5 gal

~~Prep~~
1) dissloved concentrates in ~3gal of water and the sugar in a separate 1gal
2) added cherry pie filling (and rinced cans a little) to the juice and steeped (~100) for a half hour.
3) Started yeast with a jar of juice solution.
4) Pitched sugar solution, then foamy yeast, then juice. Brought volume to ~5.5-6gal


~~Primary~~
Sat in an Ale Pail on my kitchen counter for two weeks. Regular room temp 70F-75F

~Secondary~~
Used blue plastic water jug (the type found at lowes etc). Already had a debate in another thread about oxygen permeability, and yeast settling but it ended up not being any problem (at least that I could taste or see).

Scooped off floating cherries and saved in the freezer. Put them in a blueberry cherry pie for thanksgiving which turned out GREAT.


~~Additional Racking~~
The wine refused to show any signs of clearing and had lots of floating cherry goobers. So I racked onto 2.5tsp pectic enzyme and 2tblsp of bentonite to help clear.

~~Bottling~~
Bottled into 24 regular 750ml wine bottles. Bentonite goo is VERY lite and likes to float around when moving to the counter to bottle. Had to let it sit overnight before bottling. In the end all the bottles came out crystal clear.

~~Notes & Comments~~
- OPPRESSIVELY Sweet. Closest thing I can relate it to is Cherry Kijafa. VERY good and still went through several bottles after dinner on Thanksgiving.

~~Moral of the story~~
Cheap. SWEET. Enjoyed by all.