Can I use green peaches?

My peaches were in the process of ripening when the weight brought down two branches. I picked them and ended up with 5 grocery bags of peaches.

From what I've read they won't actually ripen any further, just soften up some.

Can I make wine with this or should they go to the compost pile?

HOLY PEACHES BATMAN!!!

Fairly sure that you can throw a pound or 2 in paper bags and let them ripen that way
If they still don't ripen you might be out of luck.
There most likely tart and not that sweet....not good for wine unless you cut it with apples or pears and make a cider or perry to lighten up the flavor.

Definitely use the bag trick. Don't squeeze them at all, peaches shouldn't be squeezed or they over ripen in the places you squeezed basically.

It is too bad they fell so soon.

I user green peaches with a batch and it turned out just fine i say go for it

I've been letting the soften on my counter. The ones that have at least some color taste decent, not the best I've had but okay. The little green ones are edible but not very sweet.

I'm guessing that good peaches would make good wine so I think I'm gonna pick through for the best ones and compost the rest.

Are you expecting to get some good peaches from the rest of the trees? If so why make some poor wine from your green peaches instead of waiting for some really good ones? WVMJ

Yeah, still a ton more left. I initially didn't plan on making any wine. My plan was to can and eat what's on the tree. The wine was more of a what the hell can I do with all of these other peaches?

It is a LOT more fun opening a bottle of crisp peach wine than a jar of slimy soft soggy peaches WVMJ

Well this is where I'm at at this point. A lot of the peaches were pretty tasty already. As I cleaned and sliced them to make the wine my kids were devouring my slices. Some were still too hard and green so I ended up with about half for the wine and half for the compost.

I decided to go with this recipe http://www.mrsteves.com/RecipeDetails.aspx?ID=48

I didn't measure OG the first night, I just put all 10lbs of sugar in. Also the peach weight I went with was sliced weight instead of pitted weight. Wondering if this all contributed to the OG being too high, I'll get back to that later.

I put the peaches, water, sugar, acid and campden together the first night. After putting it together I realized I had no pectic emzyme. So the next morning I picked some up and put it in about 12 hours after everything else had been put together. I pitched the yeast 24 hours after the enzyme was added. Before adding the yeast I checked the gravity and it was 1.114, is this going to be a problem? From what I'm reading that's a little on the high side.

We're now on day 4 after the yeast has been pitched and today there was a thick layer on top. I'm assuming this is just peach pulp?

I'm fermenting in a ale pale with towel on top. I've also been stirring every day. Is this the correct method and do I need to worry about oxidation doing this?

When should I move to secondary? Right now it's sitting right at the ale pales 5 gallon mark. Will a 5 gallon carboy have the proper amount of headspace or will volume loss from the peaches cause too much?

Very good, they ripened up after 10 days, What yeast did you choose, that would help determine if your gravity is to high. Did you add any nutrients? Why would sliced weight and pitted weight be different? Stirring is good, when the gravity hits about 1.02 (everyone has an opinion on when to transfer to your carboy) you can siphon it into your carboy. Yes you are going to loose some volume to the pulp, you can offset some of that now if you want by adding some sugar dissolved in a half gallon of water at like 1.095 gravity or you can top off after you rack into the carboy, but you have to be careful then you dont create a valcano by adding the sugar water to fast.. Does it smell peachy? Sometimes, just FYI, peaches can give an awful smell while in the primary, so if that happens you will know you are ok. GOOD LUCK! WVMJ

I used Vitners Harvest MA33 and I did not use a nutrient. It smelled pretty delicious before I added the yeast. I'm afraid to smell it now, I made that mistake once with fermenting beer and got face full of CO2.

I just took a gravity sample 1.1. I smelled the sample and it's delicious.

The stuff floating on the top is getting pretty thick and it got really fizzy when I stirred it and you can see bubbles in the tube I'm using for the gravity sample.