Crushed vs Blended fruit

[Kalaloch]

all the fruit wine recipes I see say to crush the fruit (cherries, strawberries, etc). I’m wondering why they never recommend blending the fruit? Would blending fruit extract more fruit flavor and sugars?

I have a Vitamix so blending shouldn’t be a problem.

 

[S-Met]

Depends on the fruit. Some fruit you may not want on the seeds. I've heard long contact with blackberry/raspberry seeds could impart off flavors. Juice vs pulp, juice is easier to separate and clear. Some skin contact is good for color and flavor but I'm not sure what the pulp adds besides difficulty separating from the must.

 

[Kalaloch]

Thanks, I would rack it after 30 days, so seeds shouldn’t be a problem. But your right about the must being messy to siphon out

 

[S-Met]

I have thought about a 5 gal salad spinner to centrifugal separation. Not sure if it will really work though.
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/choice-5-gallon-salad-spinner-dryer/176DRYER5GL.html

 

[Mallerstang]

Depends on the fruit. Some fruit you may not want on the seeds. I've heard long contact with blackberry/raspberry seeds could impart off flavors. Juice vs pulp, juice is easier to separate and clear. Some skin contact is good for color and flavor but I'm not sure what the pulp adds besides difficulty separating from the must.

I agree with both points.

Even without blending, you get loads of tannin from blackberry seeds - so much that I started taking the pulp bag out after 3 days instead of 5.

And when I've made wine with canned mango pulp, which is very smooth, it's impossible to separate the pulp that sinks from the clear liquid that rises, so I've had to just siphon it and lose over a third of the volume.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

I've both crushed and blended fruit & I can tell you that blending it (in a blender) makes for a LOT of sediment in your fermenter. I blended plums once & had over 6 inches of sediment in secondary. You'll lose a lot more of your wine by blending. Crushing allows you to place the fruit in a mesh sack & remove it easily, you hardly lose any of your wine this way. Another option you might consider is juicing the fruit. Thing about juicing is that there are very few recipes out there specifically for juice. You'd have to either adapt a recipe to use juice or develop your own. Makes it tough to use a commercially produced juice, as you have no idea how much fruit makes a quart of juice; and the juice yield varies from 1 type of fruit to another.

Crushing fruit is easy if you freeze it 1st. I used to pit & quarter fresh plums, but now I just freeze them after washing; once they thaw, you can simply squeeze them in your hand to both crush & remove the pit. Freezing also helps to break down cell walls & gives you a higher yield of juice, which translates into more fruit flavor in your wine. Also makes it easy to buy fruit fresh in season & save it for later. I highly recommend using a mesh sack to contain the fruit in the must, like I said, makes it really easy to remove the fruit & retain more wine; though some fruits will turn to mush & can slip through the mesh if you leave the fruit in too long.
Hope that helps. Regards, GF.

 

[jgmillr1]

I've made a lot of blackberry wine with fresh blackberries. No need to crush them. Just add sugar and yeast. I press them after about 3 days. There is just enough tannin and the skins provide excellent body to the wine.

Strawberries will produce a slightly overly tannic wine from the seeds that can be dealt with using gelatin. The berries tend to completely fall apart during fermentation unless you press with a few days.

I like D47 for the berry wines. Clean and crisp with the advantage that it tends to not produce H2S. Color isn't as good as RC212. Many folks use 71B for fruit wine.

Ditto to everything @gratus fermentatio said.

Cheera