Orange Juice

[k-moe]

I made orange wine in college. This was not done on-purpose, but it did get purposefully consumed. Juice made from unpasturized concentrate can ferment in the refrigerator if you forget about it for a few weeks.

 

[Sagatho]

i do mango and orange juice here in mexico, i use Jumex brand i think they sell them in USA also,

my recipe is:

2 Liters cans of Mango
1 liter can of Orange
1 cup of cane sugar
and Bingo

a Sweet but strong table wine.

i think you can do it only with orange with out any trouble.

cheers

 

[bracconiere]

#2 then, #2 now. Story of your life?

First!

Just bored wondering what fermented orange juice would be like...doing some searches, never let a good thread die....

 

[crisis_hamburger]

I'm going to continue the trend of resurrection here because I just started making orange juice wine. It's my first project—I don't like starting easy.

Here's my process so far:

• ~3/4 gal fresh-squeezed orange juice (about 30 valencia oranges, somewhat soft)
• 5g Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast (recommended by LHBS)
• 2 cups simple syrup (2:1 water:sugar)

Sterilized everything, ofc. Filled the 1gal carboy with OJ, created the syrup and let it cool. Added the yeast to the syrup around 100ºF, gave it a minute, and added it to the OJ in the carboy. Plugged & airlocked & put in the garage to ferment last night (40-50ºF overnight and up to 70ºF in the day, but on a cold concrete ground).

Overnight of course it over-swelled and popped the airlock out, so I resanitized it this morning and put it back in.

My plan for it is to move to secondary fermentation in one week. Then I'll rack it twice over the course of another week and evaluate it. Ideally I'll be able to bottle and carbonate it like a cider, but we'll see.

Anyone else remember how it's turned out for them?

 

[bracconiere]

Added the yeast to the syrup around 100ºF, gave it a minute,

hopefully the osmotic pressure didn't kill the yeast.....


sorry i should have finished reading, i would have been worried about the osmotic pressure

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi crisis_hamburger and welcome. A couple of quick thoughts.

Your experience may be very different but I find that using the juice of oranges makes for a very bitter wine. Oranges are one fruit that you may want to dilute the juice to reduce the acidity (TA , not so much the pH). Rather than ferment the juice I much prefer to ferment on the zest with perhaps a small quantity of the juice. In other words, to make a wine that is analogous to limoncello rather than a grape wine.

The other thought is that rather than use a carboy sealed with a bung and airlock as your primary you might consider using a food grade 2 gallon bucket. This for two reasons:
1. Yeast really need O2 when they are struggling to repair cell walls and begin fermenting and your bung and airlock inhibit their access to air. Loosely covering a bucket with a clean towel or dishcloth is perfect during active fermentation - especially, if you have also included fruit that needs to be punched down several times a day.
2. Fermenting in a bucket allows you to begin with more than a gallon so that when it comes time to rack to a secondary there is no issue about how to reduce headroom. You need to begin with a greater volume than you plan to bottle because of the amount of lees and other losses you have in the course of active fermentation...

 

[Jeff Wilson]

I’ve used orange juice in my wines several times though typically as a background flavor to some other fruit. I have made straight orange wine a couple of times and as I recall they were decent enough but, for me, they were a little one dimensional. I do very much like using it as a base in other wines.

I always use concentrate - not fresh squeezed - so can’t comment on if there is a difference. Also, while I don’t recall off hand the exact recipes I used, I suspect I diluted more than if I were simply using concentrate for its intended “juice” purpose. I can see how it might come out bitter or overly acidic as @bernardsmith mentioned.

I will also echo the bucket recommendation. Far easier to manage, they are cheap, and I can see how the volumes you mentioned, @crisis_hamburger, would overflow a 1 gal carbon. Lots of sugar in OJ so it could froth up pretty quick.

Good luck and let us know how it went. I am thinking I might try my hand at one again here real soon.

 

[crisis_hamburger]

I racked from the first jug into a second carboy today to clarify, secondary ferment, etc. I had the chance to test a bit, and it was surprisingly good at this stage. I would liken it to a dry orange La Croix or really dry sparkling wine, though with less carbonation (still a bit of sparkle though). It isn't yet something I would serve, but it certainly hasn't gone wrong (yet). In retrospect a bucket would have been a better way to primary ferment this, as Jeff and bernardsmith have suggested. Unfortunately since it's my first project I don't have a hydrometer and didn't measure any SG before or at this stage.

We're using about half the peels to make an orange liqueur in the limoncello style—washed, put in a sealable jar with some of the juicing pulp, tossed in a tablespoon of vanilla and a cinnamon stick, and then covered in 100-proof Smirnoff. As you can probably tell, my style is "naturalistic", not technical I come from a tasting background mostly.

My ideal goal is to bottle and try to carbonate/bottle ferment, like a sparkling cider. For a number of reasons I doubt I have the space to age it for months before bottling, so I won't be able to make a sparkling wine style. But given this taste, I think that may be a good goal for someone more experienced and technical.

 

[Jeff Wilson]

As you can probably tell, my style is "naturalistic", not technical I come from a tasting background mostly.

Hey, that works too! I went through perhaps a 5-year infusion phase years back. Sounds good to me.

 

[Erik the Awful]

My cherry-jalapeno last year turned out less spicy than I wanted. In February I ended up with a bunch of oranges that needed used, so I started a batch of orange-jalapeno with an intentionally large number of jalapenos. I bottled up a bunch of cider yesterday, and tomorrow I'm planning on racking the orange-jalapeno. If it's clear I'll bottle it. Here's my notes. I thought I had the specific gravity noted, but unfortunately not.

Surface of the Sun – Jalapeno Orange Wine
Box of mixed oranges, approx 3 gallons, half peeled, other half with peels
Note: peels increase bitterness, but was bending fingernails back
2 lemons, because they needed to be used up
12 jalapenos
20oz box of raisins

20210203
Blended oranges, lemons, jalapenos (with seeds), and raisins with one gallon water
Boiled ½ gallon of water on stove, added 4 cups sugar
Added 5 campden tablets

20210204
Added 2½ tbsp pectic enzyme
Added Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

20210211
Cap hasn’t fallen
Original must wasn’t blended enough, lots of intact raisins and oranges
Scooped cap out
Screened to secondary, lost 1 gallon
Rinsed bucket with pint of water and screened
Simmered ½ gallon water with 4 cups sugar
Let sugar/water cool
Added 2 tsp bentonite in ½ cup water to sugar mix
Added bentonite/sugar/water to must in secondary bucket

 

[Jeff Wilson]

@Erik the Awful - did you mix daily? or just let it sit from 2/4 to 2/11?

 

[Erik the Awful]

Stirred daily. I was busy this weekend so I haven't had a chance to rack it yet.

 

[crisis_hamburger]

I have a final update on my natural orange cider. I bottled after a second rack into 500ml swingtop bottles with two conditioning sugar balls and a packet of basic conditioning yeast (following the packet directions for amount). Then I waited three weeks, occasionally stirring the bottles up to check fermentation and do a mini-riddle.

Just opened one, and poured it off the lees. Tastes mediocre! A bit dry, a bit yeasty, so probably could've done with more clarifying and a bit more backsweetening. Overall flavor I would compare to a bottomless brunch mimosa, and then I added a dash of Chambord which helped a lot.

So it can be done, and easily! But with more patience it can probably be done better.

 

[Erik the Awful]

I bottled my jalapeno-orange the day before yesterday. It clarified nicely, but isn't as hot as I hoped. It's pretty dry, so I renamed it "Desert Sun". Here's the rest of my notes:

20210413
Racked, very clear
Lost one gallon to sediment
Bottled one bottle as-is
Added 1 tbsp sparkolloid dissolved in 1 cup water
Dry flavor, not very orange-ey, needs a little more sugar
Very spicy!
Bottle in ten days, probably also add 1 cup sugar

20210422
Bottled, didn’t add sugar.
Nice flavor, nicely spicy, very dry.

 

[Garfield43]

I am surprised that several of you have got orange wine to turn out ok.
Night Train is orange wine and it is vile.
This is coming from a man who will drink Wild Irish Rose and likes Boone's Farm so I'm no wine snob.
There is a home brew channel on YouTube featuring this old timer that looks like Santa in the off season.
He brews grape wine from Welch's juice or any fruit juice he can get at the store using bread yeast.
Likewise he is no wine snob.
He tried OJ wine and said it was undrinkable.
Only thing he found to do with it was use it as a marinade for chicken.
I may have to try your recipes just out of morbid curiosity.

 

[Erik the Awful]

If you look at my notes above, I used pectic enzyme, screened it to secondary, used bentonite, and then sparkolloid to get it clear. I knew it was going to be difficult to clarify. Also, I added 8 cups of sugar for 4 gallons, but probably should have backsweetened with another 2 cups. I already had it half bottled when I remembered I was supposed to add sugar.

 

[tkdgeek]

I've tried papaya in a 1 gallon experiment. Not good. Seems like I've heard that some of those like mango, papaya, pineapple have to be treated a certain way to survive the disposal step. Glad to hear yours worked

 

[Erik the Awful]

I was sitting here, sipping my Jalapeno-Orange wine after drinking a dunkelweizen, and it suddenly dawned on me the stuff tastes like an IPA! I wasn't too crazy about the dryness, and I'm more of a porter/stout drinker than an IPA aficionado, but it's growing on me.