Peach wine

In the spring i'm planning on making a peach wine,I have 6 white peach trees, these peaches are super sweet and super juicy and i was just wondering if you could make it like cider, you know grind, press and use just the juice?

Sure you can but the skins will add some body to it which fruit wines typically lack. Will make some good stuff. Make sure to use extra pectic enzyme in this as Peaches have lots of pectin is can usually give you a hard time clearing, also have a package of SuperKleer handy just in case it doesnt want to clear on its own.

There is a fruit wine maker in Astoria, OR who does exactly what you are proposing. He is quite proud that there is no added water, sugar, fillers, flavors, etc. He also says that he has a hard time getting it stable, and the last two bottles we got from him later had lees. He puts a "Refrigerate" sticker on them, and we didn't, so that probably is why the lees were there.

Website: http://www.shallon.com/chocwine.htm
Peach: semi-sweet, gold awards in past years, may make again, difficult to make, the ultimate food to serve with - lobster.

Newbie here on wine but what are "Lees"?

Brew-boy said:

Newbie here on wine but what are "Lees"?

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You guys call it trub. It's the sediment leftover after primary fermentation.

DaveAllen said:

You guys call it trub. It's the sediment leftover after primary fermentation.

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In addition to being sediment, it is usually thought of as being dead yeast and can mess up the flavor if the drink is allowed to remain in the container with them too long when fermentation has stopped.

Lees are dead yeast and remains of solids that have fallen out of the wine. If wine is left on lees from primary fermentation they can spoil due to these fruit solids and ruin your wine, if these are lees from secondary fermentation then they are much finer an d they can actually add body and mouthfeel to your wine but if left too long still then the yeast that uis still alive can actually start cannibalize (eating then dead yeast in there) and give your wi ne an off flavor and taste.

CandleWineProject said:

In addition to being sediment, it is usually thought of as being dead yeast and can mess up the flavor if the drink is allowed to remain in the container with them too long when fermentation has stopped.

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You have two different logins? CandleWineProject/ByCandleLightWinery? That's interesting.

When i make my peach wine will the wild yeast be the same as on my apples when i make my apple wine? I've done afew batches of apple wine now and the wild yeast is MUCH better tasting than any other yeast that i've used like 1116, 1118, or d47, all had about same abv but the wild yeast is so much smother it is unbelievable.

DaveAllen said:

You have two different logins? CandleWineProject/ByCandleLightWinery? That's interesting.

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Yes and no. Long story short, I want to open a business, and thought up a name, but it didn't feel right, so I changed it 2 days ago. The "project" is me.

Do you have a point?

DaveAllen and Miloa - I'm sorry if I confused you. It was not my intentions. Things just didn't feel right with that handle. I will disable the account as soon as I come back from a trip this week.

No my fault,we both replied at the same time.I was asking basudec19,he quoted a couple replies and nothing else.

Thank you for clearing that up DaveAllen.

Just cut the peaches (skins and all) into quarter sized pieces, add water and sugar. Use about 2-3 pounds of fruit per gallon of water, and the weight of the sugar will be the same as the weight of the fruit. Add some campden tablets. Lightly cover your vessel with cheesecloth, and let it stand for a day or so.

Stir the mixture, add some yeast, and recover with the cheesecloth. Don't even think about making your primary airtight until fermentation starts vigorously.

After stirring it daily for a period of two-three weeks, and the fruit no longer floats to the top to form a cap, rack into a carboy. (You may want to press the last remaining juice from the fruit into the must.)

Wait for fermentation to subside, age and bottle.

It is just a lot easier for me to use juice than use the actual fruit.Will i lose a lot of flavor that way?

Jim Karr said:

Add some campden tablets. Lightly cover your vessel with cheesecloth, and let it stand for a day or so.

Stir the mixture, add some yeast, and recover with the cheesecloth. Don't even think about making your primary airtight until fermentation starts vigorously.

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Is that what my problem was, that I had too much of a "seal"? I had some home processed frozen peaches, added the sugar. I put in some lemonade that didn't list preservatives, but I've always thought that maybe it did. I put it in pitchers and put some cotton balls in the opening and stirred it daily. After one week, I had the exact same SG, so I called it a failure and dumped it, and went and bought a decent primary and some acid blend. I know peaches can be difficult to work with, but since then I have a nice bell pepper/peach wine going.

That Bell Pepper-Peach Wine wine sounds wonderfull. Care to share your recipee?

Sure, I'll start a new post

I just started a peach wine, i think its gonna turn out great. I just took 4.5 lbs semi-ripe peaches, removed the pits and chopped them up in 1/2 inch bits. I put them in a sanitized bucket and added 3.5 lbs light brown sugar and 0.5 lbs cane sugar (that's just what I had lying around, no rhyme or reason). I diluted it until I reached a SG of 24 deg. Brix, 1.101 (final volume including fruit about 2.5 gallons). I then added two crushed campden tablets and let it set for 24 hours.

I checked the SG again and it was 23 (1.097) right before adding 1 packet of EC-1118 (also what i happened to have lying around). After about 24 hours later (maybe sooner, but that's the soonest I could check it) the fermentation was intense, about the strongest start I have ever seen. It smells absolutely heavenly. I will keep everyone updated.

Well, the fermentation was vigorous indeed, it has reached its final gravity (0.99). I have a bunch of peach chunks floating in the wine now and are starting to turn brown on the tops (when I swirl them around, the bottoms are still bright). Should I let it go until the peaches sink as suggested, or should I go ahead and rack to secondary? I also want a little more peach flavor, which may come with back-sweetening, but should I add more peaches to secondary, maybe after adding campden tablets to stop yeast? Any suggestions would be awesome. Thanks.

How much peach after removing the pits?

Seems like not very much for more than a 1 gallon batch. I think it will be thin.

4.5 lbs for about 2.5 gallons including the volume of the fruit

miloa said:

In the spring i'm planning on making a peach wine,I have 6 white peach trees, these peaches are super sweet and super juicy and i was just wondering if you could make it like cider, you know grind, press and use just the juice?

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miloa said:

It is just a lot easier for me to use juice than use the actual fruit.Will i lose a lot of flavor that way?

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Your proposal doesn't make sense. It can't possibly be easier for you to grind and press peaches into juice, and then ferment the juice, as opposed to simply fermenting the whole (de-pitted) fruit. Besides the extra unnecessary work, you will definately lose much of the juice, flavor and tannins.

I'm making several peach, apricot, and peach-apricot wines now. They are fermented from whole fruit. I ferment the halved fruit in a pressing bag within a 10 gal. Brute barrel. When it's time to rack to a carboy, the fruit is broken down sufficiently that the juice can be squeezed from the pulp by hand, without need for a press.

With peaches and apricots, ferment the whole fruit.

I'll add that fermenting apples and pears for making hard cider, perry, and apple or pear wine are the exceptions to fermenting the whole fruit. While you can certainly ferment apples and pears, pressing the fermented pulp from them is difficult and will result in lower yield. That's why they are juiced before fermenting.

Here's a wine I started yesterday, an Apricot Peach Muscat, sort of a clean-out-the-refrigerator wine. I has 11 lbs. apricots, 9 lbs. peaches, 2.5 bananas, a handful of figs and table grapes, 1 lb. of raisins, a 46 oz. can of Alexanders Muscat white grape concentrate, 7 lbs of sugar, and a bag of spices including 3 cinnamon sticks, cloves and allspice. Also, some pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, wine tannin, acid blend, and 1/4 tsp. potassium metabisulfate.

The fruit is fermenting vigorously on Lalvin V1116 and should be broken down to soft mush in about 6 days, ready to press or squeeze out by hand to finish fermentation in a carboy. It tastes great as juice, and should make a nice country wine.