Tuna Wine

[voltron]

Im was in the desert of AZ and on the green cactus there were these pink things, I asked what they were and was told they are tuna fruit aka prickley pears. When they said fruit I got an idea for a new home brew. Got some thick gloves and some prongs and went about the desert picking the fruits. Anyway a year later it has been bottle aging and decided its time to open a bottle. So lets see what prickly pear wine aka tuna wine taste like. I made only a gallon as i wasnt sure if it is going to be good. also I cant call this a dugeon brew since it isnt weird, its just different. The wine is clear, just you cant tell from the picture bc my camera phone is not great. This was made traditional method and not inmate style like my dungeon brews.

 

[voltron]

So The wine sort of turned out, but and a big but, it had a pleasant scent when I opened and it leans towards dry as the prickly pear is not narurally loaded with sugar like say a grape. It also had an earthy taste. The bad was the after taste, it had a cough syrup feel. So something went wrong at one point. I learned from my brewing experience that the cough syrup effect is usually due to high alcohol and low acid. I did not check the ph when I made so thaymay have been the issue. On the bright side, I have learned that when mishaps occur there may be a way to salvage it. So i decided to squeeze a wedge of lime into my glass of prickly pear wine and wow it was great. So this batch as a solo wine not too good bc of the cough syrup effect, but if you throw a wedge of lime it is great. I was looking at recipes on eating cactus and it seems like lime is used in many of the recipes so I suspect the prickly pear is a low acid fruit. I have a second batch that I started with prickly that is in secondary so when I rack next time im going to check the ph and most likely add some acid and see how the second batch turns out.

 

[Yooper]

I have a friend who is an award winning brewer and mead maker and he makes a tuna mead that is awesome. I never tasted the tunas for acidity, but I suspect that there is more than you think because I used them for margaritas instead of limes, and was pleasantly balanced with acidity.

 

[voltron]

I been looking up Prickly pear and it is listed as low acid, ph ranging from 6 -7.5