Watermelon Wine

I have tried watermelon wine a few times and the watermelon flavor never seems to survive very well..anyone run into this and came up with cures?

I think I will try a combination of watermelon and another fruit next time to compare...does anyone have favorite duos using watermelon to share?

You might try one of these:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques11.asp
Or this:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques4.asp
Regards, GF.

I made a strawberry watermelon wine last june that is amost all watermelon tasting. It's crazy. It was like a #14lb watermelon in a 5gal batch.

brazedowl said:

I made a strawberry watermelon wine last june that is amost all watermelon tasting. It's crazy. It was like a #14lb watermelon in a 5gal batch.

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Care to share the recipe? Most of them that I find indicate straight watermelon has little body and needs another fruit to make it a little more full and a little less watery jungle juice tasting. Most say to add white grape concentrate or strawberry something or the other. Curious how you created yours.

Side note, I'm sure they make watermellon extract somewhere. Anyone ever use this to fortify that summertime taste? Watemellon schnaaps?

#14 (ish)lb watermelon cubed up
#10lb strawberries
#10lb sugar
water to 5 gallons
1/2tbls Nutrient
1/2tbls Energizer
Montrachet Yeast
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cubed watermelon and put in a nylon bag and put in primary. Put all juice from cutting into primary also.

Halved the strawberries and put in a different nylon bag and let sit.

Dissolved the sugar in ~1-2gallons of water.

Added water, nutrient, energizer to primary

Used some of that solution to do a starter of the yeast and pitched when bubbly.

Let it sit until clear.

This sounds amazing. I'm going to have to give this a go this Summer!

I've been looking for a watermelon wine recipe for awhile, and this looks pretty cool. I made it tonight and have a few questions. I only added about 2.5 gallons of water and it went slightly over the 5 gallon mark, will the fruit break down that much into liquid? How long do you normally leave this in the primary before racking to a secondary?

Been my experience that the watermelon breaks down to practically nothing.

I advise against pairing it with lime. Which from what I have discovered should be a 'duh'. I put too much lime in mine. Now its pink lime wine.

The way I make water melon wine is I do not use water. I have a garden and on the back row I plant watermelons I found this to be the cheapest way. I juice my watermelons until I have a little over 5gallons. I add about 7lbs of sugar. Or to the the desired reading on the hydrometer. Then I add a camden tablet let it sit in the fridge so the juice doesn't spoil over night. The next say I pull out of the fridge let it warm up to room temp then I pitch the yeast. After fermentation during tue first racking top off with watermelon juice. I learned never use water in in watermelon wine it will alter the taste.

Jeremy_84 said:

The way I make water melon wine is I do not use water. I have a garden and on the back row I plant watermelons I found this to be the cheapest way. I juice my watermelons until I have a little over 5gallons. I add about 7lbs of sugar. Or to the the desired reading on the hydrometer. Then I add a camden tablet let it sit in the fridge so the juice doesn't spoil over night. The next say I pull out of the fridge let it warm up to room temp then I pitch the yeast. After fermentation during tue first racking top off with watermelon juice. I learned never use water in in watermelon wine it will alter the taste.

Click to expand...

How.many watermelons make 5 gallons!? I must grow some watermelon and try this it sounds so good!

There IS a watermelon flavoring on the market that will assist in fixing the smell and taste if you are lacking. Look on JimsHomeBrew.com

About 6 or 7 large watermelons thats also to have extra to top off with. If your just going to make small batches maybe one or two I like to have extra watermelon juice. I make large batches of it my friends and family love it.

We planted three varieties of watermelons in our garden this year and have enough for a five gallon batch of wine. We used a juicer to extract the liquid, it was surprising how much liquid you can get out of a watermelon, about 3.5 quarts for a regular sized one. My question, after it was extracted (today) do I need to pasturize or boil it before adding yeast?

Well, I will let you know if bringing it to a light boil and quickly cooling it works, its in the fermenter.

I've wondered if simmering the watermelon juice to reduce its water content would work?

Just moved it from primary to secondary, the kitchen smells like a huge watermelon fart...terrible smell.

The recipe was about as simple as I could think of. Five gallons of watermelon juice, one lb corn sugar, OG 1.055, Monserat yeast. It fermented quickly, stopped producing measurable CO2 in about 48 hours. Sat in primary for one week, FG 0.99. Took a sip out of curiosity and it tastes like watermelon, just smells like a pair of old gym socks that have been soaked in watermelon juice.

I'll let it sit for a week and see if it stops being odiferous.

Well, its been almost a month, taste is better and it smells better but at the current rate of improvement we won't be able to actually drink it till next year.

I just juiced 12 Texas Black Diamond Watermelons and strained the pulp. I added inverted sugar and ended up with a OG of 1.068 I was thinking of fermenting it out dry and then adding Potassium Sorbate and then creating a sweetening blend with a fresh watermelon and sugar. Does this sound okay. What would be the best way to create the sweetening blend, I have never done this, I have only really done preboxed wine kits.

I think my watermelon wine has an infection. It has a slight film and filmy white spots on it.

How do I fix it? Add k meta? It has not finished clearing, if I add k meta, how much do I add, and do I need to add more once its cleared?

Hmmm, Watermelon Sour, sounds delish.

Can't help you in regards to fixing it.

Racked my watermelon wine today. Smelled god awful but tasted fine. Anyone experienced this?

I have a 5 gal batch of apple, grape and watermelon juice (Wal-Mart) that is done fermenting and cleared. I stopped the yeast and next I will be adding watermelon flavor (as it got lost in the fermenting process). This is the stuff http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00016V2DC/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20 I may also add some malic acid and simple sugar to fix the taste too.

Just finished 6 gallons of watermelon. Used no water. Bulk aged six months. The smell is a little different, but better than it was. I added acid blend and extra tartaric acid to it at the beginning to get the pH to a reasonable level. Tasted off at the end so I cold crashed and it came out fantastic. The flavor in a watermelon fruit is much more subtle than a blackberry or a peach or strawberry, same with the wine. I really enjoy mine. I would recommend getting a pH meter though. Had to use that (and taste simultaneously) to find an acceptable acid range that didn't make it taste overly tart.

I did something a little different, and it seems to give the wine more body and flavor...
I used a recipe, but instead of just a whole ripe watermelon, I used 3 more pounds of dehydrated watermelon.
Which I dehyradated myself.

Hi, I am new to this site & found you while searching for some info on watermelon wine. In July of 2016, I juiced 6 large watermelons which gave me about 6.5 gallons of juice. I used one of Jack Keller's recipes to make 6 gallons & froze the remaining half gallon for topping up. After racking a few times, we are only just now about to finish and bottle. I was hoping the wine would have at least a little pink color but it does not. However, it is a very pretty clear yellow. The alcohol content was overpowering the watermelon flavor so I strained the remaining leftover juice until it was clear, then used it to make simple syrup. I added a little at a time, stirring well and tasting after each addition. It ended up with a flavor & body of an ice wine! It is much better when chilled. There is still this flavor that lurks in the background that puzzles me. I think it is just that when you eat a watermelon, that same flavor is there, but it is unexpected when you are drinking it. My husband and I were discussing what we should do to help balance that flavor. He asked "what goes with watermelon?" and I responded "salt!". We sat & looked at each other contemplating this & I jumped up and pulled a sample with a sanitized wine thief. We sprinkled a tiny bit of salt onto our hands, touched our tongues to it, then took a sip of the wine. Surprise! It really made the flavor pop! I don't plan on putting salt into the wine now, but can see us sometimes serving it in a chilled wine glass with a lightly salted rim! We will be bottling tomorrow. We also currently have about 25 gallons of peach wine, 6 gallons of blackberry, & 11 gallons of banana, that are all ready for bottling.

I have started a 5 gallon batch of watermelon wine and I am seeing multiple differences in the amount of time it should ferment/age before bottling. Can anyone tell me the earliest it can be bottles and consumed? I understand the longer it sits the better but if I can have an idea of how early it is technically drinkable then it would give me a starting point on where to go from there. Thanks in advance.

From my experience (we have made 34 batches of wine in sizes from a gallon up to 25 gallons) the timing for bottling varies so greatly that I would be hesitant to put a time frame on any wine. We allowed our watermelon to bulk age in the carboy for about a year to be absolutely sure it was completely clear so we would not have any sediment in our bottles. Up until that time, it had a very astringent flavor because the alcohol level was so high. I wish that I had not used as much sugar initially, or that I had stopped the fermentation early to leave some residual sugar and lower alcohol content. But I have also made fresh blackberry wine that was incredibly clear within a couple months, yet the flavor had not developed yet. We allowed it to bulk age at least 9 months before bottling & then the flavor was much better. Another blackberry wine that we started within days of the previous mentioned batch took much longer to clear & had better flavor from start to finish. Patience & bulk aging really pay off so don't rush into bottling too soon.

I thought about back sweetening it with dissolved watermelon jolly ranchers! What ya'll think??

I know this is an old thread, but I've made a watermelon wine in July 2023. It's still not finished, but I think I've hit the mark and are on to something. I coarsely cut up of seedless red watermelon, bagged it in large freezer bags and froze it all, then thawed it (helps with the breakdown). I also went with strawberries as an addition (also froze/thawed), too help with color and sweetness! When I was ready I put it all in an 8 gallon polypropylene wine bucket and lightly mashed it up. I added Pectic enzyme and let it sit a few hours. Then i added sugar-water mix, acid blend, and Earl Grey Black Tea for tannins.

Ingredients List:
Yeast used: Lalvin 71B
- 22 lbs of seedless red watermelon meat
- 4 lbs of Strawberries
- 7 lbs of Sugar melted in a pot with 2 quarts of filtered water
- 1 full cup of Earl Grey Black Tea (steeped about a half an hour
- 4.5 teaspoons of Acid Blend to get my pH at approx 3.5 (also helps to keep it bright ants fresh tasting)
- 2.5 grams Fermaid O at start of active fermentation (about 24hrs)
-1.5 grams Fermaid O (I reduced to 1.5 because it didn't seem lacking in activity) added at 66% sugars left, i.e, after 33% of sugars were used up.
This produced about 3.25 gallons of must
SG was 1.120
I punched down the fruit cap once or sometimes twice a day and at about the 10 or 11 day mark my gravity was .998!
Transfered it over to glass carboy for a few days and then racked it. Stabilized it with Potassium Meta. and Potassium Sorbate. 24 hours later I backsweetened to taste (semi-sweet) with simple syrup made with 4:1 ratio cane sugar with some Erythritol (only sweetener substitute i will use) mixed. About 2 days later I mixed in some bentonite and it is clearing with that at the moment. My plan now is to finish it by cold crashing and adding some fresh watermelon juice. After about a week past stabilizing, it has lost a lot of it's young wine funk, but it's still not there yet and it has a decent watermelon to alcohol taste. As it ages it just keeps getting better. I have a tester bottle for that. 25 over 3 gallons, so I'm checking, smell and taste daily.
Hope this helps the folks considering running a watermelon wine.
Later I plan to run a watermelon mead!