Making wine from freshly squeezed lemon/orange?

[razerivaldi]

Hello everyone! Some time ago I heard about this thing called fruit yeast water where you can basically use any fruits, crush them and top it with water, and the yeast that's present in the fruit skins will thrive, but it made me curious if it's possible to do it with just lemon/orange skins and the juice (no water added) , will the juice be too acidic for the bacteria? Has anyone tried it before? Thanks in advance for answering!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi razerivaldi and welcome. You can certainly make a wine much like limoncello except that you are not using alcohol to extract the flavors from the zest (not the skins which will have the very bitter white pith but the very surface of the skins) you are using water and then a lower ABV (alcohol by volume) than spirit to extract the flavor along with the action of the yeast.
In my experience, assuming that you are diluting the orange and/or lemon with some water the acidity is OK but an orange wine made from the juice of oranges or a lemon wine made from the juice of lemons can be unpleasantly bitter (because too acidic) to enjoy.

But two quick thoughts: 1. It is possible that the fruit you buy has been treated in the warehouse and it may not in fact have any significant colony of indigenous yeast. Certainly, if the fruit is imported that is likely to be the case. But if you harvest tree-ripened fruit it will have all the yeast you might need BUT
2. Indigenous yeast are not the same as lab cultured yeast. Lab cultured yeast have been selected and then cultivated to produce specific outcomes - and so for example, they tend to be far more robust than indigenous (wild ) yeast; they tend to produce and enhance flavors and aromas we prefer. You have no idea what flavors and aromas the indigenous yeast may produce or their tolerance for sugar or alcohol . In other words, indigenous yeast might collapse in a solution with 5% alcohol compared to lab cultivated yeast that may have tolerance beyond 15% ABV.
Bottom line: you could test the waters by zesting some fruit and adding enough sugar to water to give you a starting gravity of about 1.040 (a potential ABV of about 5 - 5.5%) and if the colony is large enough and robust enough and it ferments that amount of sugar you could then add a little more sugar and repeat until you have the wine you want or the yeast quits from alcohol poisoning. Good luck!

 

[razerivaldi]

Thanks for the detailed answer! Ohh, I wasn't actually aware of the difference between the skins and the zest, I've always thought they were one and the same ahahah
If not for that info I'd probably just put everything in and end up with a really bitter ferment!
That actually does make sense now that I think about it, lemon juice itself can be extremely unpleasant to drink, so might as well just dilute it with some water!

Oh yea! I notice that too in one of the grapes I used to make wine in the past, it literally took 2-3 full days for it to start bubbling and by that time there was already a tiny amount of mold on the top, although it was partially my fault for not submerging the skins, but it made me realize that people probably did stuff to the grapes that I'm not aware of. That particular grape doesn't feel as "alive" as the other grapes I had success with, so probably I can use my intuition to pick the good grapes (hopefully )
I actually have a muscat grape plant that's about 3 months old in my garden right now, but I bet it's going to take years before it starts fruiting eh xD

Aaahhh so that explains why a lot of people chose to buy yeast! I've always wondered why they sell yeast packets when it's possible to just do a wild fermentation, now it all makes sense

Out of curiosity, is it actually possible to make alchohol that's less than 5%? I know it would probably taste like water , but it does make wonder since I know some fruits don't have that much sugar by default

 

[bernardsmith]

In fact most fruit that we enjoy very likely has about 1 lb of sugar (or slightly more) per gallon of expressed juice. So, if you were to press apples the specific gravity of the juice would be about 1.045 and that juice then has a potential alcohol by volume of about 5% ABV. It's the same with berries and stone fruit (mangoes and peaches and plums and the like)... BUT
1. Wines with an ABV of 5% have a short shelf life. It's the alcohol and acidity and sulfates that prevent spoilage and oxidation and
2. Most wine makers unless they are aiming for a cider or what brewers might call a session drink (where you drink by the pint and not the glass) will increase the sugar content either by concentrating the juice (freezing and then collecting the first 1/3 of the juice when it is allowed to gently and slowly thaw OR by adding sugar to increase the starting specific gravity to around 1.090 - basically doubling the sugar content. The wine that results will be around 12% which is basically what grapes grown for wine provide (wine grapes have far more sugar and are far more acidic than table grapes.

 

[razerivaldi]

In fact most fruit that we enjoy very likely has about 1 lb of sugar (or slightly more) per gallon of expressed juice. So, if you were to press apples the specific gravity of the juice would be about 1.045 and that juice then has a potential alcohol by volume of about 5% ABV. It's the same with berries and stone fruit (mangoes and peaches and plums and the like)... BUT
1. Wines with an ABV of 5% have a short shelf life. It's the alcohol and acidity and sulfates that prevent spoilage and oxidation and
2. Most wine makers unless they are aiming for a cider or what brewers might call a session drink (where you drink by the pint and not the glass) will increase the sugar content either by concentrating the juice (freezing and then collecting the first 1/3 of the juice when it is allowed to gently and slowly thaw OR by adding sugar to increase the starting specific gravity to around 1.090 - basically doubling the sugar content. The wine that results will be around 12% which is basically what grapes grown for wine provide (wine grapes have far more sugar and are far more acidic than table grapes.

Ohh, that explains why I've never seen alchoholic drinks that has less than 5% ABV.
Speaking of oxidation, I've heard that exposing it to air even just for a few seconds can cause it to oxidise, is that true? Every single youtube video I watched uses this tube thing whenever they bottle their wines, and everytime I make my wine I always finish it within a few days after storing it in the refrigerator because I was afraid of the wine tasting bad if I leave it at room temperature. Everytime I bottle my wine, I always pour it over a mesh strainer and a funnel, hence exposing it to air. Should I invest on the tube things as well?

Wow, concentrating the juices sounds like a lot of work compared to just adding some sugar
Ohh so that's why! One time I was on a budget and decided to use some table grapes (Red Globes), and I notice the alchohol content isn't as high as the store bought wine (which are 12% most of the time) but definitely more than beer, so I suspected table grapes yield around 7-10% alchohol, come to think of it, I should probably invest on a hydrometer too hehe

 

[bernardsmith]

An hydrometer is just about the only piece of equipment a wine maker needs. Everything else is useful. An hydrometer is as necessary as brakes for your car. It allows you to see what the yeast is doing.

Oxidation is the equivalent of rust. You expose the metal of your car to moisture and it will rust. But it won't rust in minutes or days or weeks. It takes time to rust. Simple exposure to air won't do any damage to your wine in a few minutes or hours. And here's the complication: during active fermentation yeast need some oxygen and they will use that oxygen in minutes. After active fermentation has ended the yeast have no use for the O2 so it sits on the wine and that oxygen will eventually oxidize with compounds in the wine changing the color to a more brownish tint. And it changes the flavors.

Now, since grape wines are often aged for years and since all well made wines tend improve with age, if you have added O2 then that aging process will likely show evidence of oxidation and that is not an improvement. And that is why most seasoned wine makers add K-meta (Campden tabs are one simple way to add potassium meta-bisulfite ( K-meta) every time they transfer wines from carboys to carboys (to remove the lees) or from carboy to bottle. And they transfer the wine so that the least amount of O2 is introduced - and that means siphoning the wine rather than pouring it.

If you siphon the wine the only part of the wine that is in contact with air is the first wine to travel into the target container. You siphon by inserting the tube towards the bottom of the container and not the top. BUT if you are making micro batches of wine and you are not aging the wine then you really have no reason to be anxious about oxidation. But it is always good practice to use best practices when you do anything unless you know exactly what you are doing and in what ways "rules" can be broken.

 

[razerivaldi]

An hydrometer is just about the only piece of equipment a wine maker needs. Everything else is useful. An hydrometer is as necessary as brakes for your car. It allows you to see what the yeast is doing.

Oxidation is the equivalent of rust. You expose the metal of your car to moisture and it will rust. But it won't rust in minutes or days or weeks. It takes time to rust. Simple exposure to air won't do any damage to your wine in a few minutes or hours. And here's the complication: during active fermentation yeast need some oxygen and they will use that oxygen in minutes. After active fermentation has ended the yeast have no use for the O2 so it sits on the wine and that oxygen will eventually oxidize with compounds in the wine changing the color to a more brownish tint. And it changes the flavors.

Now, since grape wines are often aged for years and since all well made wines tend improve with age, if you have added O2 then that aging process will likely show evidence of oxidation and that is not an improvement. And that is why most seasoned wine makers add K-meta (Campden tabs are one simple way to add potassium meta-bisulfite ( K-meta) every time they transfer wines from carboys to carboys (to remove the lees) or from carboy to bottle. And they transfer the wine so that the least amount of O2 is introduced - and that means siphoning the wine rather than pouring it.

If you siphon the wine the only part of the wine that is in contact with air is the first wine to travel into the target container. You siphon by inserting the tube towards the bottom of the container and not the top. BUT if you are making micro batches of wine and you are not aging the wine then you really have no reason to be anxious about oxidation. But it is always good practice to use best practices when you do anything unless you know exactly what you are doing and in what ways "rules" can be broken.

So to test my understanding, the yeast actually needs some O2 when it's still actively fermenting the wine, but the moment the bubbling stops, any exposure to oxygen will cause it to oxidise, and the less oxygen the wine is exposed to, the slower it will oxidise and hence last longer before it turns brown?

Is it a good idea to bottle the wine before it finishes the primary fermentation and let it finish fermenting + aging in the bottle itself?

 

[bernardsmith]

Others may have a different thought but short answer is , No.
And the answer that it is not a good idea is because if you cork or cap a bottle you trap all the CO2 that the yeast is making and any CO2 that you have not removed . Do you know how much gas the yeast will produce after you bottle the wine? Do you know what pressure that gas will exert on the sealed glass bottle? Do you know how much pressure the cork or cap can hold or how much pressure the glass can withstand if that is less than the cap? In short, unless you have measured the amount of sugar remaining and the amount of gas build up possible then you are creating bottle bombs and shards of glass exploding under pressure are quite literally, life-threateningly dangerous.

What brewers do and what wine makers who make sparkling wine do is ferment to completion and THEN add a known and very specific amount of sugar and use bottles and closures that they know will unquestionably not fail under the pressure created by the carbon dioxide.

For the record, if your wine is made with 2 lbs of sugar per gallon, then the yeast will have produced BY WEIGHT 1 lb of Carbon Dioxide. By weight. That is not small change.

 

[razerivaldi]

Others may have a different thought but short answer is , No.
And the answer that it is not a good idea is because if you cork or cap a bottle you trap all the CO2 that the yeast is making and any CO2 that you have not removed . Do you know how much gas the yeast will produce after you bottle the wine? Do you know what pressure that gas will exert on the sealed glass bottle? Do you know how much pressure the cork or cap can hold or how much pressure the glass can withstand if that is less than the cap? In short, unless you have measured the amount of sugar remaining and the amount of gas build up possible then you are creating bottle bombs and shards of glass exploding under pressure are quite literally, life-threateningly dangerous.

What brewers do and what wine makers who make sparkling wine do is ferment to completion and THEN add a known and very specific amount of sugar and use bottles and closures that they know will unquestionably not fail under the pressure created by the carbon dioxide.

For the record, if your wine is made with 2 lbs of sugar per gallon, then the yeast will have produced BY WEIGHT 1 lb of Carbon Dioxide. By weight. That is not small change.

OHHH right, darn, I completely forgot about the CO2 buildup! Thanks for reminding me, it could've been pretty scary to have a timebomb in your kitchen.

But what if I do the same exact thing, but instead of bottling it, I transfer the still-bubbly wine into a non-airtight container and then let it finish fermenting + age there?

 

[bernardsmith]

That is exactly what every wine maker does. It's called "racking" and racking is the jargon for siphoning from one container into another.

 

[razerivaldi]

That is exactly what every wine maker does. It's called "racking" and racking is the jargon for siphoning from one container into another.

OHHHHHHHHHHH, so that's what racking means! I see that word literally EVERYWHERE but for some reason I never bothered to search it up since I thought "racking and bottling" is one single phrase it makes so much sense now, thanks for taking your time to answer all my questions btw!