Raisin Wine

[Jim Karr]

Start with five pounds of regular raisins. (Same as SunMaid)

These must be put through a grinder, similar to a sausage grinder (with a crank and a screw). Blender will not work, food processor will not work.....the resulting paste is so gooey and sticky it becomes a large "turd" and will only spin around and around inside anything motorized. Grind by hand.

Place paste into fermenter, and add about four pounds of sugar. The raisins contain a lot of sugar already, and they are sweetened to boot.

Boil about three to three-and-a-half gallons of water. Pour water into paste and sugar mixture, stir well.

After must has cooled to about 80*F, pitch yeast. I used about two teaspoons. Fermichamp will not strip out the color as it ferments, and it's great in starting with high sugar contents and finishes well in high alcohol levels.

The paste will settle to the bottom of the fermenter. When bottling or racking to secondary, the paste/lees on the bottom will need to be strained or squeezed to get out a sizable amount of wine. The paste will squeeze out quite easily, and leaves perhaps a pound of dry sediment.

I started my batch on January 8, and bottled it just before Memorial Day. I haven't put any into my hydrometer, but the alcohol level is quite significant. Two or three glasses will put you down "nicely".

 

[Yooper]

Jim sent me a sample of this wine- and it's really GOOD! It's a nice dessert wine with wonderful flavor. It seems a bit labor intensive (grinding all those raisins!) but I think it is worth it. This is on my list to make- thanks, Jim!

 

[Revvy]

sounds great...I have a recipe from CRAFT or MAKE magazine from a couple months back for a great sounding fig wine I want to do...

OOOOHHHHH 23 minutes til REDWINGS!!!!

 

[Killinger]

I started this recipe last weekend. I don't have a grinder. I ran 1 pound batches of raisins in a blender with 1.5-2 cups of hot water. It seemed to work well.

 

[Jim Karr]

Cool! Let us know how it turns out!

When you first sample it, it may have a tendency to be very hot, very strong of alcohol, almost like rocket fuel. Let it age, and it becomes very pleasant.

 

[ubermensch]

I got inspired by this and made a 20 L batch yesterday with 5 kg of sultana raisins and no sugar. The total amount of sugars in the raisins is ~3.5 kg, estimated from the nutrition label, giving me a potential abv. of 9% max if all sugars were fermented.

What I did is to soak the raisins in a large pot with warm water for an hour, strained the liquid in the fermentor and went at the raisins with a large electric hand mixer. That was relatively easy and the result looked like fresh diarrhea. I dumped the puree in the fermentor, added pectinase, raised with water to 20 L, mixed, pitched K1-V1116 at 22°C and stirred again 20 min later to mix in the yeasts (it's a very thick brew). It started bubbling 2 hours later and a very dense cap formed under 6 hours, burping continually.

This morning, I stirred the cap in and it was liquid enough to take an SG reading, I got 1.042. This evening, same maneuver, I get 1.020 I guess the raisins are rich in nutriments. It's stinking up the kitchen good too, one hell of a brew!

I'll not sure what I'm doing, but experimenting is fun

 

[budney]

I got inspired by this and made a 20 L batch yesterday with 5 kg of sultana raisins and no sugar. The total amount of sugars in the raisins is ~3.5 kg, estimated from the nutrition label, giving me a potential abv. of 9% max if all sugars were fermented.

So how did this stuff turn out? Considering the price of practically everything these days, your recipe would be a bargain if it comes out good...

 

[digdan]

I'm thinking of making this recipe too, but I thought it was called "Stepony". I'm also interested on how this stuff turned out.

Is the flavor like grape wine?

 

[jkpq45]

Yep, looking for an update from those who've experienced.

 

[Killinger]

Just wanted to pass this on...

I'm loving this. Maybe it's that I'm three glasses deep tonight, but the flavor has really improved since my last glass, maybe two months ago. It was good to begin with, but after a year, I think it's less a dessert wine and more an anytime wine. I don't think it dried out in the bottle (that could be tragic), but the flavors have become more pronounced, more distinct. The tannins are sharp. There is an accompanying bitterness that is smooth and delightful.

Excellent wine. Love it.

 

[brazedowl]

These must be put through a grinder, similar to a sausage grinder (with a crank and a screw). Blender will not work, food processor will not work.....the resulting paste is so gooey and sticky it becomes a large "turd" and will only spin around and around inside anything motorized. Grind by hand.

I had the same problem... BUT if you add enough water to the raisins to just cover them in the blender they will get chopped to tiny separate tiny little pieces without congealing into a goo. I pour this into a nylon straining bag in a large bowl and add the liquid (essence of raisin) to the primary along with the bag (tied shut).

Just a thought for those without a grinder or the upper arm strength to chop raisins by hand

 

[jkpq45]

Brazedowl--I used the same idea. I actually used hot water, this allowed the raisins to be chopped up quite fine. By the time it was in the fermenter, it was just cool enough to melt any added sugars. Topped up with cool water, it was down to pitching temp!

 

[brazedowl]

I saw that... I just did up some for an experimental batch of sweet potato wine... I tried the hot water method. It seemed to soften them up some for sure.

 

[PVH]

Just ran across this recipe in preparing to make a raisin wine this weekend. This is really one of my favorites. After Thanksgiving dinner, we enjoyed one of the last bottles I have from a 6gal batch I made four years ago - only three bottles left now. The recipe was almost identical to the one above.

Having tasted this wine as it has aged, I won't even think about opening a bottle of the next batch until after a year. The raisin flavor is intense, and the wine is high in alcohol. Once it mellows out, it's fantastic, and it stays that way.

Cheers to raisin wine!

 

[WIMARIPA]

I threw my raisins in with some mead that had just started to bubble then a day later I went at it with my hand blender stick thing. Worked well, but now a week later I am still stirring it twice a day to mix the raisins back in. Any suggestions on what to do to get the raisins to stay in suspension? Perhaps there is just too much fermentable sugar and the co2 from the resting fermentation keeps pushing the raisins up. I'll see if it calms down with time.

 

[TheWeeb]

I just made this this evening, a five gallon batch using seven pounds of raisins and six pounds of organic raw sugar (thought it would add an interesting flavor component). I boiled three gallons of water, added the sugar, then used it in the blender with 1.5 pound batches of raisins blended on the "puree" setting. It took 3-4 cups of hot sugar water to cover the raisins each blending cycle which created a nice brown slurry. I used a large grain bag secured around the opening of a six gallon bucket, and poured the slurry in. Once all of the raisins were thus blended and added, I tied off the bag, dropped it in (it had leaked out quit a bit of "raisin essence") and cooled the remaining sugar water and topped to the six gallon mark (I figured there would be a gallon taken up by the 7 pounds of raisin pulp).

I pitched two packets of Red Star red wine yeast, as that is what I had on hand. I trust this will be okay?

My OG was 1.074 but I am not sure how reliable that is with all of the mush in the mix.

Will this ferment rigorously? The two batches of Apfel Wein I have made (using champagne yeast) barely had a krausen and I did not need a blow-off tube.

Thanks and I cannot wait!

 

[TheWeeb]

Bottled this today; four wine bottles as is, the remaining primed with honey and bottled in 1-liter flip tops for some light carbonation. The sample was most delicious; final reading came in at 10.7% ABV. The bag of raisin paste greeted me at the top of the fermenter, here is a pic....

 

[deviouslady]

I bottled this raisin wine in February, it is wonderful, mellowing as it ages. I soaked my raisins overnight in warm water and put them thru the food processor in batches. I suggest putting them in a bag, racking was a pain and I kept getting pieces in my mix.

I have also blended the wine with my Cherry Pie to take out the "bite" and it really surprised me.

 

[George_A]

The better results you would get if raisin wine was made not from "table" raisins ("Thompson seedless" or Sultana), but from seeded wine varietal raisins with stems, which are used in to the comericial winemaking.

 

[gracethomas]

As I was biting into a juicy, aromatic Muscat grape at a recent Wine & Spirit Education Trust tasting, it occurred to me that wine lovers don't often have the opportunity to taste the grapes tht go into our favorite wines. When was the last time you tasted a ripe Chardonnay grape, or a Pinot Noir grape.

 

[hewnizit]

I threw my raisins in with some mead that had just started to bubble then a day later I went at it with my hand blender stick thing. Worked well, but now a week later I am still stirring it twice a day to mix the raisins back in. Any suggestions on what to do to get the raisins to stay in suspension? Perhaps there is just too much fermentable sugar and the co2 from the resting fermentation keeps pushing the raisins up. I'll see if it calms down with time.

How did this turn out?

 

[TheWeeb]

THanks for the new post which drew my attention to this thread. I am going to make this today, with the addition of some brown sugar and medium char oak. Should be most excellent for this fall.

 

[TheWeeb]

Update if anyone is following or considering. I let it go four weeks on the bag 'o raisin mush, then secondary with a medium char oak spiral. OG 1.080, sampled last night - two months in - .994 and still tastes deliciously sweet with nice earthy tones and a bit of oak. I think two more months and then bottle and condition for fall. Good stuff!

 

[TheWeeb]

Here we are, three months later, just took a reading and sample. .984; calculated abv 12.6%. Taste is pretty hot, may have to back sweeten a bit. The oak is masked now, I may add another spiral to bring it out more.

 

[SpaDe]

Here we are, three months later, just took a reading and sample. .984; calculated abv 12.6%. Taste is pretty hot, may have to back sweeten a bit. The oak is masked now, I may add another spiral to bring it out more.

Any updates on this? I am curious to see how it ended up and if you did in fact back sweeten it some? Looking to make a batch of this as soon as I get a fermenter free to put it in.

 

[TheWeeb]

I just had a bottle over New Years, aging nicely, did not back sweeten. Very drinkable, but would like it to clear more. Nice musty raisin flavor.

 

[Ash_Mathew]

I do several different types of this. I took inspiration from a dried wine kit. My two most recent ones are one with Sultanas, 2 sliced lemons and 3 sliced peaches. The other is raisins with figs. They are still fermenting, but from the samples if have had, they taste amazing. Both Imperial 5 gallons batches. 4kg of sugar in each in fermentation bin.

 

[ennordagr8]

What yeast do u use as I want to give this a try

 

[Ash_Mathew]

I use Gervin GV5 for white wines. And the red equivalent.

 

[MadBoozer]

Does it matter if the raisins have some oil in it? The raisins I've got contains sunflower oil and sulphites, are they usable in any wine making?