Wine Making Tutorial – Lesson 2A (Fruit Wines)

Wine Making – Preparing Your Fruit Must for Fruit Wines
 

  • Prepare your wine making fruit by cutting up larger fruit, busting or bursting (not smashing) the skins on smaller fruits, and removing any large pits.
    • Over processing using a blender or other food processing equipment is not recommended as it results in too much bitterness from the skins.
  • Mix together all your ingredients called for in your recipe excluding the yeast. Collect your pulp or solids into a fermentation/straining bag.
    • These ingredients will typically (not always) include:
      • Fruit
      • Water
      • Sugar
      • Acid Blend, Malic Acid or Citric Acid
      • Campden Tablets or Sulfite (Preservative)
      • Pectic Enzyme (Helps break down the fruit)
      • Yeast Energizer or Yeast Nutrient (Food for yeast that helps guarantee healthy and complete fermentation)
      • Tannin
    • Put your mixed must into your primary fermenter and submerge your bag of pulp/fruit solids in your must in the fermenter.
  • Not every blackberry, raspberry or strawberry contains the same amount of sugar, either berry to berry or season to season so you may want to adjust your sugar level up or down prior to fermentation by adding additional sugar or water in addition to what your recipe calls for. This will control you post fermentation alcohol level.
  • Take a Hydrometer Reading
  • If your Brix Reading or Potential Alcohol Level is lower than you want, add sugar. If your Brix Reading or Potential Alcohol Level is higher than you want, add water.
  • To help know how much sugar or water to add you can check out our Brix Chart

Subsequent and Previous Wine Making Lessons: 


Winemakers Depot - Your Trusted Source for Wine Making Supplies, Wine Kits, Beer Kits and Homebrew