Strawberry wine with just strawberries?

I searched through the forums, and it seems that most people add sugar to their strawberry wines, or they add honey and make a melomel. Is there a reason no ones uses just strawberries, with no additives? I assume I would need a lot more strawberries if I didn't add sugar.

I've got about 40 strawberry plants in my garden right now, plus I have a ton of wild strawberries vines running along the side of the house. I thought I might try to make a couple of one gallon batches once the fruit is ready.

LeverTime said:

I searched through the forums, and it seems that most people add sugar to their strawberry wines, or they add honey and make a melomel. Is there a reason no ones uses just strawberries, with no additives? I assume I would need a lot more strawberries if I didn't add sugar.

I've got about 40 strawberry plants in my garden right now, plus I have a ton of wild strawberries vines running along the side of the house. I thought I might try to make a couple of one gallon batches once the fruit is ready.

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Most strawberries don't have enough natural sugar to give a sufficiently high OG to make wine. You can certainly try it- smash the stawberries well (it's easier if you freeze them first) and take an OG reading with your hydrometer of the resulting juice. It's easiest if you have a refractometer, and you can do it the same way you test grapes and other fruit. But if not, the "smashing" up and juicing of the berries would be the only way to tell.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I'll check the sugar content once I get some ripe fruit and report back.

Yooper's right on about the sugar content. Wine grapes have just about the perfect mix of sugar/acid levels that they usually do not need to be adjusted but they sometimes are.

The other problem with fruit other than wine grapes is they are very high in acid. So much so that if you were to concentrate the fruit juice to get the desired sugar levels the acid content would be through the roof.

cyberlord said:

The other problem with fruit other than wine grapes is they are very high in acid. So much so that if you were to concentrate the fruit juice to get the desired sugar levels the acid content would be through the roof.

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That's true- I didn't think about that. but a good example is raspberries. They are so wonderful tasting that it's hard to believe that they make a very acidic wine, and have to be diluted. I'm not sure about strawberries, but it sure could be a factor.

cyberlord said:

Yooper's right on about the sugar content. Wine grapes have just about the perfect mix of sugar/acid levels that they usually do not need to be adjusted but they sometimes are.

The other problem with fruit other than wine grapes is they are very high in acid. So much so that if you were to concentrate the fruit juice to get the desired sugar levels the acid content would be through the roof.

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So, apples can be used without sugar to make cider. Is the acid content the reason no one makes cider out of most other fruits?

LeverTime said:

So, apples can be used without sugar to make cider. Is the acid content the reason no one makes cider out of most other fruits?

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That is correct. The levels in apples are just right for cider that not much needs to be added to the fermentation process.

It's a little strange to think about, but strange things can happen to the acid levels during fermentation. Grapes are the oct naturally attuned to creating wine without doctoring up, but as listed above many of the other fruits need to be tampered with in order to create the right mixture.

I've also wondered when fresh juice can be substituted for concentrated juice. I wonder if this is the reason people prefer using concentrate as opposed to fresh.