Cucumber Wine

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IrritableGourmet

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I planted several cucumber plants at the beginning of summer and they have....overgrown. I now have 11 1/4 lbs of cucumbers sitting on my counter. I can't eat them fast enough so I was considering making a cucumber wine. The only recipe I found online seems a bit sketchy, but it's a good start. It takes 4 lbs of cucumbers for a 1 gallon, so 11 and a bit should make 3 gallons.

I had a few questions:

I only found one recipe online. Is this a sign that it's a bad idea? I thought cucumbers would make a very mellow and light wine but would it be too mellow and light? Jack Keller's zucchini wine recipe recommends a can of Welch's grape concentrate for flavor and mouthfeel (as well as sugar).

I got a juicer a while back that I never used. Instead of crushing/boiling/steeping/etc would it make sense to use that? I read a few posts that said it will work and a few that said no.

Can I use a 5 gallon bucket for a 3 gallon batch or would that be too much headspace? I can rig up three 1 gallon jugs with airlocks if need be.

Thanks!


Recipe: http://scorpius.spaceports.com/~goodwine/cucumberwine.htm
 
yooperbrew is probably the best person to contact about this one but ide say for a cucumber- peel them with a potato peeler and then run them through the juicer. You should be fine. If you heat the juice you may need more pectic enzyme so you dont end up with jello so i would just use campden.
 
Made it. Didn't realize until I had all the cucumbers juiced that I only had enough sugar for 1 gallon rather than the 5 I made, so I campdened and added the sugar (10 lb and a can of grape concentrate) the next day. Fermentation appears to have started, but no bubbles yet. Will report when it's done.
 
Wow, you can really make wine out of anything! I can't imaging what cucumber wine would taste like. I would have just made pickles.
 
Wow, you can really make wine out of anything! I can't imaging what cucumber wine would taste like. I would have just made pickles.

I tried making pickles. These were the burpless cucumbers which are much larger and softer than the pickling kind. The pickles ended up very mushy.

A very fine sandwich I enjoy is sliced cucumbers on bread with a mashed avocado spread. But with 15 lbs of cucumbers we would have had to eat about 60 loaves of bread, so no go there.
 
I feel you man! I planted 4 vines, two Armenian and two Japanese cucumbers. I could not give or eat them fast enough. Sad to say a lot of them went to the worms, but we also made a lot of good soup.

May be next year we will try wine.
 
This is a great idea: Cucumber Vinegar.

I've had the Gegenbauer Tomato Vinegar and love it, especially in vinaigrettes and tomato sauces to add a little brightness. Looks like he adds a bit of sugar to give the yeasts a little extra to munch on.
 
I followed a recipie here in this forum for cucumber wine but am not sure what the end taste should be. So far I saw the fermentation occur. Its been 10 days and I have siphoned it to a glass secondary, gravity as at .990 or so... but it is too bitter for my taste... does anyone know what it should taste like? if I add plenty of sugar, will that change or will it just initiate fermentation again?

Thanks in advance for the help!!!
 
Resurrecting an old post. I too had a surplus of cucumbers. I ended up making aguas frescas out of them (basically cucumber, lime, sugar, and water). It tastes like a hybrid of gatorade and lemonade. It is delicious. This, of course, gave me the idea of fermenting it. I could see this as kind of a hard lemonade. Get the OG around 1.06 and get to finish on the sweet side. As a table wine, this might be pretty good, too.

I may have to try this next year.
 
Adding sugar will just restart fermentation unless you add an inhibitor, which can also add different flavors. Non-fermenting sweeteners are also an option.
 
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