boiling wine like beer?

I made a five gallon batch of wine with frozen blackberrys', raspberrys, and cranberrys. I had not made wine before so I made it like beer. I mixed it up I think I used about 8lbs or so of whole fruit, added a couple cups of sugar and then but it to a boil. I mashed the fruit while it was boiling and boiled it prob for an hour. I put the required additives in and feremented it. It turned out very well but was nice and strong around 19 percent. I filtered out he fruit when I put it in the secondary. It turned out well and was done in about 6 weeks.

I've been hearing that you don't need to boil it and that you should not boil fruit but let it steep in a sugar solution for a while then add the yeast. Any input?

Generally fruit wine is made adding sulfides to the fruit, water and sugar and letting it sit overnight. Then the yeast is added. Towards the end of the fermentation, the wine is racked off the fruit. The fruit is pressed to remove remaining juice.

I've read that you don't want to boil fruit because of pectin haze. I'd also think you would lose a lot of the aroma. 6 weeks is a bit young for fruit wine. I'm guessing that boiling it may have sped up some of the aging process.
What did your experience tell you? Do you think you lost aroma? Was the wine cloud?

It wasn't really cloudy. I did mix it up a little when I was racking it to a bottling bucket so that didn't help with sidement. I also didn't use any isinglass either. There was a nice aroma from the berries but I think the strong abv hurt that a little.

Most people do not boil the fruit. They use something like Campden tables to kill wild yeasts.

I don't like a "cooked fruit" taste (think strawberry jam vs. fresh strawberries) so I don't boil my fruit. I just ferment on the fruit for about 5 days until it's a pulpy used up mess of pulp, then remove the fruit and rack into secondary.

How did you come up with 19% ABV? That's a big wine for some fruit and a couple cups of sugar.

You boil beer to isomerize the alpha acids in the hops (i.e. bitter the beer) moreso than to sanitize it.

If you boil 15 minutes, its sanitary. You cooked the fruit.

I thought boiling was also to kill the amylase enzyme in beer?

gregbathurst said:

I thought boiling was also to kill the amylase enzyme in beer?

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It has that effect, but you don't really need to boil it to destroy the amylase enzyme. Somewhere around 185F will destroy the amylase. Furthermore, you don't need to boil it for a full hour. Beer is boiled for an hour primarily to extract the bittering acids from the hops, but it also has other benefits: sanitizes the wort, destroys the amylase enzyme (as you mentioned), drives off DMS.

Enzymes aren't alive, you denature them.

ericd said:

Enzymes aren't alive, you denature them.

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Correct. They are produced by living things, but I don't think that one could properly say they are alive.

ericd said:

Enzymes aren't alive, you denature them.

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Sounds painful.

YooperBrew said:

I don't like a "cooked fruit" taste (think strawberry jam vs. fresh strawberries) so I don't boil my fruit. I just ferment on the fruit for about 5 days until it's a pulpy used up mess of pulp, then remove the fruit and rack into secondary.

How did you come up with 19% ABV? That's a big wine for some fruit and a couple cups of sugar.

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Yeah I was using some turbo yeast I had around the house and being my first batch I kinda threw it together. I can't find my notes but the starting gravity was very high. And it was fairly dry.

On a side note where are you in the U.P I grew up in Iron Mountain and now I live in Ky.

ramz7887 said:

Yeah I was using some turbo yeast I had around the house and being my first batch I kinda threw it together. I can't find my notes but the starting gravity was very high. And it was fairly dry.

On a side note where are you in the U.P I grew up in Iron Mountain and now I live in Ky.

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I live about 45 miles west of Iron Mountain. I love it here!