Peaches!

Hello all,

I have recently acquired almost 30 peaches and 10 lbs of sugar. Im looking to do a 5 gal batch of peach wine but I am open for suggestions. I have on hand Ec1118 yeast, pectin enzyme, campden tabs, yeast nutrient, and a few other random essential brewing Items. I do want the wine to finish somewhat dry.

A couple questions I do have, how ripe should the peaches be & is 30 of them enough for 5 gal?

thank you in advance!

I made one a few months ago from a recipe book I got from my LHBS. (it's for 1 gallon, but I scaled up to 3.5 based on how many peaches I had)

1 gallon:
2.5 lbs peaches
4.5 cups sugar
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1.5 tsp acid blend
2 tsp pectic enzyme
1/4 tsp tannin
1 campden tablet
1 packet EC-1118 yeast

I added sugar to make it to 1.100, which ended up being 7.5 lbs in 3.5 gallons. (the amount of sugar in a cup can vary...) Scaling that, you could make 4 2/3 gallon batch at 1.100, or 5 if it's a little weaker (or if your peaches have more sugar).

To process them, I put the peaches and some water in the blender until it was mostly small chunks. I would recommend making it more like a purée. It will give you more debris when you rack, but you could use a sanitized strainer and a pot to get the half gallon or more of wine left in the debris. I think doing a purée would give you better use out of the peaches.

I'm not sure how much 30 peaches weigh, since that depends on their size. Based on the recipe, you need 12.5 lbs which seems possible.

As for ripeness, they just need to be "ripe". For peaches, that's a little bit of softness but not mushy. If they're rock hard, put them in a paper bag until they soften.

Mine is still in bulk aging, but the peach flavor it has even though it's at 0.996 is incredible. Here's a blog post I wrote about my whole process:

http://beernoulli.blogspot.com/2012/07/peach-wine.html?

Thirty peaches for 5 gallons may be a little light on flavor. Four or five pounds per gallon would be a good start. I've used a much as eight pounds per gallon to make a rich peach wine. Let them ripen first, slice in half to remove the pit, leave the skin on, add sugar and water to about 6.5 gal in order to net about 5 gallons. Add kmeta, let it sit for a day, stir well and check SG. Use a good dose of bentonite, double up on pectic enzyme in the primary and feed it yeast nutrient. EC1118 is fine. Try to keep the ferment on the cool side. Stir the must at least twice a day to avoid Hydrogen Sulfide.

Peach wine is really good with some spices. I suggest using a few cinnamon sticks, some whole allspice and maybe some clove in a nylon strainer bag, then transfer it from primary to secondary. Ferment dry but before bottling add kmeta, sorbate, and sweeten a little to taste to bring out the rich peach flavor.

I'm bottling 16 different batches of peach wines now. The best ones used more peaches, some spices, and some sweetening.

Good luck.

got my hands on a case of palisade peaches (people in colorado know what i am talking about) for the second year, and did up a recipe which i stumbled upon last year. last year's batch is still a little hot, coming up on one year, but i think that has to do with the fact that when i froze the peaches last year, i added a bunch of sugar not accounted for in the recipe (it was suggested as to keep the color of the peaches when frozen since it took me a short while to get to the wine). i also didn't take a reading either year, so who knows where the gravities started. this year i froze and fermented in less than a week. last year's wine is nice and clear with a light peach tint (very beautiful), and the peach flavor is there.

here is the recipe

I really appreciate all your replies and now I can't wait to kick this off. I will be grabbing some more peaches to make sure I don't underflavor this wine. I also really like the idea of throwing in some spices.

Hummer,

I was wondering about what benifits there are to leaving the peach skin on. I'm just imagining all the little peach fuzzies floating all over the place. Also how long many days do you stir to keep the hydrogen sulfide down?

By the way, congrats on having 16 batches going! If I had that much going on... my wife just would not appreciate it

AlcoSensored said:

Hummer,

I was wondering about what benifits there are to leaving the peach skin on. I'm just imagining all the little peach fuzzies floating all over the place. Also how long many days do you stir to keep the hydrogen sulfide down?

By the way, congrats on having 16 batches going! If I had that much going on... my wife just would not appreciate it

Click to expand...

I fermented with my peaches in a nylon bag, no fuzzies in my drink.

If are getting hydrogen sulfites, add some yeast nutrient. Nitrogen deficiency is one of the causes.

AlcoSensored said:

Hummer,

I was wondering about what benifits there are to leaving the peach skin on. I'm just imagining all the little peach fuzzies floating all over the place. Also how long many days do you stir to keep the hydrogen sulfide down?

By the way, congrats on having 16 batches going! If I had that much going on... my wife just would not appreciate it

Click to expand...

Flavor, color, and the work it takes to remove the skins. Of course, on a single batch, removing peach skins is not that big a deal. A dip in boiling water for a few moments, then they come off easily. But I don't think it's necessary or desirable, check Jack Keller's peach wine recipes.

I happened to process a lot of peaches and didn't have time or interest in removing skins. I did wash the fruit by hand in the process of removing the pit, so I don't think any remaining peach fuzzies were a problem.

With one exception I didn't ferment the peaches in a nylon strainer or pressing bag as Novalou did, but that would be an advantage if you don't have a press. With the pulp in a bag, you can progressively squeeze the juice out. You'll still get a lot of fine fruit solids, probably more than with pressing, but that will just take time and successive rackings to clear. I pressed my fermented must using a pressing bag [which is not as fine as a (paint)strainer bag] in a basket press. If you press by hand you might have difficulty getting juice out of a very fine mesh bag, it'll clog pretty quickly.

You should stir the must every day throughout the initial fermentation, until you press the pulp off and transfer to a carboy. I had a problem with H2S on some of my batches, which thankfully I was able to cure. I didn't stir often enough, particularly given the heavy fruit content. I did use several doses of yeast nutrient and some yeast energizer. In the end, they all came out wonderfully.

At the same time I had 37 batches going with apricots, apples, cranberries, and various combinations with peaches and Alexander's wine grape concentrates. Did some wines from red and white grapes, too. I hope to finish bottling them all in the next week or so.

Here's some pics of the project beginning with a 900 lb. bin of Palisade peaches, the best peaches in the world.





Apricot Peach Fruit Potpourri

Again I want to thank you all for your replies. The peach wine has been started! I added 5 more lbs of peaches, cut them up, did the campden pectin soak over night and pitched the yeast with yeast nutrients. For the first three days I stirred twice a day. Now Im stirring once a day. OG: 1.100 So far so good. Very nice peach Aroma.

I also added three cinnamon sticks, im not sure if that will be enough for 5 gal.

Thanks. Getting ready for my 2nd batch of peach. Last time it was weak, and not special. This thread was a great find. Gave me some ideas to increase volume of peaches, add allspice and cinnamon.