Hey everyone. My gf wants me to make her a raspberry and peach wine. This is the first time I'm gonna be making my own wine. I've done the home brew shop boxed wines b4 and meads but never a fruit wine like this. Any tips or recipe help?
Not really- it's pretty straight forward. I put my fruit in a sanitized mesh bag, and do the primary in a bucket, to make it much easier to remove the fruit as well as to stir it well in primary. Use pectic enzyme (1 teaspoon per gallon) and it will help extract the juice from the fruit as well as aid in clearing down the road.
When you mix up the must, you usually mix it up with everything except the pectic enzyme and the yeast. The campden tablets (crushed and dissolved- one per gallon) sanitize the must, killing any wild yeast or bacteria on the fruit. Then 12 hours later, you add the pectic enzyme (it works better when it's not in the presence of strong sulfites as when you first add the campden). Twelve hours after that (24 hours total), you can add the yeast.
Fruit will tend to float and form a "cap" so you'll want to stir it down twice a day to keep the fruit wet. Otherwise, it'll dry out on top and can actually mold. Just use a sanitized plastic spoon or stainless spoon, and "moosh" up the fruit under the surface of the must.
Starting with an OG of 1.085- 1.100 is good for fruit wines, the lower OG for strawberry and peach wine, the higher for stronger reds like cherry. Move the wine to secondary at under 1.020, and remove the fruit at that time. This may take 5 days or so.
Raspberry makes a nice wine, but once fermented they are TART. Don't worry- you can always sweeten later, but it's surprising and disappointing if you're not expecting that!
That's about all I can think of right now. But always feel free to ask if you have any questions!
