Raisin Wine

[Ash_Mathew]

My raisins and sultanas do, too. Never seem to cause any issues. It will be a "trace" amount, anyway. Something to stop them clumping together properly in the bag. But as I said, I make these all of the time with no issues. If I can make great tasting wine for about £8 for an Imperial 5 gallons, then I am going to do it. Haha I just use it as my general drinking wine, anyway. Other fruit wines and kits go into storage to age.

 

[TheWeeb]

I am coming up on the two year mark for my batch, I think I have only one bottle left, tempted to open it but also thinking about another year to age...

 

[tryingmyhardest96]

need some help making white grape wine need some direction i have 2 gallons of water ,15 oz of white grape raisins , 7 grams of yeast , 1 pound of sugar

 

[tryingmyhardest96]

i have it in a glass 5 gallon cask burping it threw water

 

[tryingmyhardest96]

need some help making white grape wine need some direction i have 2 gallons of water ,15 oz of white grape raisins , 7 grams of yeast , 1 pound of sugar i have it in a glass cask burping it threw water

 

[codyfree]

The other day i made a one gallon version from jack keller. Today i left for 4.5 hours and came back to an exploded carboy. It was spilt everywhere. I guess the raisin cap pressed against the airlock and caused to much pressure. Im pretty sad. :'(


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[StrickSW]

I had some raisins lying about so I thought about making wine with them. Looked up recipes and found this forum...very cool. Well... I can't ever leave a recipe well enough alone, I must experiment! So, here's what I am doing. I ferment into a 5 gallon carboy and rack over to a secondary 5 gallon carboy. My initial recipe is 6.5 lbs of sun maid raisins, 3.5 lbs of prunes, 1.5 lbs dark brown sugar, 1 lb of clover honey and 1 gallon welch's grape juice. I pitched a wyeast sweet mead smack pack. I began last Saturday and fermentation activity has been very heavy up until last night when it slowed considerably. Since it's in the bathtub, I ran a warm bath of water an activity resumed until I drained the tub last night before bed. Just an FYI I used a 2" x 4' long blow off tube into a one galling jug of water for my primary airlock until the craziness subsides. The initial specific gravity was about 1.050 but was hard getting a read as the pulpy mix seemed to suck the hydrometer down like quicksand. I will probably rack into the secondary this evening. I also used a meat grinder attachment to grind the raisins and prunes. They looked like worms so this will be worm wine! There certainly is a big mess in the carboy, lots of pulp sediment below and a pulp infused krausen at the top.

 

[StrickSW]

After 6 days of strong activity, the fermentation pretty much stopped. I racked over to my secondary carboy and topped up with 64 oz of prune juice and 64 oz of grape juice, having lost about that much volume due to solid waste removed from the first fermentation. Activity barely resumed, a bubble here or there and the temp was about 72f. I ran another warm bath and raised the temp again to about 80f, activity resumed moderately, as long as the water was warm and the temp near 80f. I drained the tub and activity ceased. It only ran for about a half day, should I keep the temp up in the 80's for a while longer? Should I rack back to the cleaned first carboy as the wort has settled? Should I pitch more yeast? I'm just concerned that there should have been more activity for that extra gallon of juice than what happened. Thanks!

 

[StrickSW]

Racked over again to get off of trub. Topped up with 64oz of welch's grape juice. Took sample before adding and took a reading...1.012. Tastes ok hints of port and some other type of wine. Looks like no activity so I am running another bath. Volume of liquid increases and moves up into the blowoff tube about 3". Seems like more should be happening.

 

[Mirilis]

I want to do a 1 gallon batch of Raisin wine but I need a little help.. i have ~3-4 pounds of raisins i bought from sams club I want to use (sun maid i think)..

I want to throw them in the blender with some bottled water and chop em up then put it in the 1.5gallon plastic wine bucket that I have with some sugar and more water

Ill throw in a campden tab and wait a day then stir and pitch. Do I need any other additives?

and How much Sugar/Raisins should I use?.. im kinda dim witted when it comes to wines.

 

[Yooper]

I want to do a 1 gallon batch of Raisin wine but I need a little help.. i have ~3-4 pounds of raisins i bought from sams club I want to use (sun maid i think)..

I want to throw them in the blender with some bottled water and chop em up then put it in the 1.5gallon plastic wine bucket that I have with some sugar and more water

Ill throw in a campden tab and wait a day then stir and pitch. Do I need any other additives?

and How much Sugar/Raisins should I use?.. im kinda dim witted when it comes to wines.

You shouldn't need any campden- most raisins are loaded with sulfites.

I have had a bottle of this wine, but never made it, so I don't know what the SG of the raisins alone are, though!

 

[Mirilis]

I was right about the sugar extraction from the raisins. I checked my gravity at pitch was 18.5 Brix... today about 24 hours after pitch it was 20.5 Brix and it was plugging away

 

[markowe]

Just found this thread - for a couple of years I have made ginger wine using locally-obtained grape must which is cheap and not great quality (used for making commercial mass-produced grape brandies). I would get 10L of the must and add another 10L of water and 7kg of sugar for sweetness, plus almost 2Kg of ginger and a few lemons and bananas and things, and it has turned out very nice, and I have had to make extra for friends etc.

The grape harvest failed big-time last year due to heavy rains, and my supplies of my favourite winter warmer are running low as I couldn't make it. I am thinking using raisins as a base would be just as good for this. I would also like to avoid using added sugars, and just produce alcohol from the raisins. "Ubermensch" back in 2008 mentioned "20 L batch ... with 5 kg of sultana raisins and no sugar" (that's about 11lb per 5 gallon batch) - others have given somewhat different numbers.

Any idea on what sort of ball park of ratios of raisins to water we need to be in to arrive at a "winey" sort of ABV - 11% or something?

 

[meatcleaver]

I too would like to make 1 gal of this.
could someone please clarify how many lbs of raisins + how much sugar per gal of water = 1 gal of finished wine?
thanks in advance

 

[markowe]

I too would like to make 1 gal of this.
could someone please clarify how many lbs of raisins + how much sugar per gal of water = 1 gal of finished wine?
thanks in advance

Mine was the previous post before yours but I never got round to making this raisin version of my ginger wine. I missed the grapes again this year so I've got to do the raisin thing like NOW if I want it ready for Christmas/New Year.

In answer to your question, I quoted a post that mentioned 11lb of raisins for a 5 gallon batch WITHOUT sugar. The idea being you use enough raisins to get your desired abv without adding unnecessary sugars, since obviously they have as much sugar as your undehydrated grape.

The weight ratio between fresh grapes and raisins is ABOUT 4:1 (perhaps a bit more - Google "raising drying ratio"). So that would suggest that to get your "wine" (raisins + water) for a 19L (5 gallon) batch, around a quarter of that would need to be raisins: 19L = 19kg, i.e. 4.75kg of raisins, or 10.4 lb. That's actually not at all far off the 11lb figure the previous poster gave, so I think we're onto something there.

Note, this of course would be to get a completely dry "white wine" (it wouldn't win any awards, to be sure). I want to make ginger wine, for example, which is pretty sweet. I think this is where backsweetening would come in and I might have to concede it would be easier to just add sugar to taste like OP did, though you could use more raisins of course. The added complication is that the yeast will probably handle plenty more sugar, so you will actually get additional fermentation and to get your desired sweetness you will just end up having to experiment anyway, so maybe all these calculations are pointless and you should just chuck in like 15lb of raisins and take it from there .

 

[Pitron]

Raisins have around 60g of sugar per 100g. To get to 11% AbV in 1 Gallon (~4L) of water you need 700g of sugar fermented dry. So if you add (700g / 0.6) = 1.17kg of raisins to 4l of water (volume will be more than one gallon because the raisins add volume) you end up with 11% AbV.

That's what I just put down too! Keen to see how this goes.

 

[reynardthefox]

sorry to rekindle this forum but I made this wine scaled to 20 liters, it's gone fine so far and it tastes and smells nice. my question is when to strain the raisins off. it's been two weeks now and the Sg reading is not reliable since the must is so thick. will it be problematic if they stay or is two weeks enough?

 

[ESBrewer]

It reminds me of the dry Italian red, Amarone della Valpolicella, which is made of red grapes (Corvina/Rondinella) that are dried for 100+ days on straw mats before fermentation. When the fermentation is stopped early, they get a sweet, red dessert wine called Recioto. The standard raisins are probably even drier and more concentrated and not from wine varietals, but it is a related process anyway.

 

[amber-ale]

How are you guys measuring the original gravity?
don't the chopped up raisin bits change the reading/floating of the hydrometer?
isn't some of the fermentable sugar segregated away INSIDE the raisin bits?
amber

 

[lari]

I made a few raisin wines in the past and they all tasted rather astringent, I dunno if its tannins of something else..

 

[amber-ale]

This thread made me curious about raisin wine, so I gave it a try...

it was very easy to make (raisins from Costco, pour boiling water over top and soak overnight to re-hydrate, puree in sanitized blender with sugar, pour into sanitized fermenter and add Lavin EC118, rack into new fermentor thru sanitized filter bag, top up with Knudsons "just cherry juice"). I did sprinkle in some pectic enzyme, just to see if it made much of a difference (yes it is hazy)

Since this is my first attempt, the mechanics were a little rough around the edges.

and it is still in the secondary and is still very sweet, but basically ....this is really good!

not too astringent, and I will have to wait a while to see if it is too sweet or needs tannin or acid blend

Is anybody else out there making this now? or regularly?

 

[brewgar]

Amber, I made lots of raisin wine years ago. It always turned out way good. Bet yours does too. Best wishes.