# Strawberry wine recipe please



## Vinmakare (Jan 3, 2016)

Does anyone have a good 5 gal or 6 gal strawberry wine recipe from scratch? I'd like to try it this summer when I can go to the strawberry farm. They have the small sweet berries that I think would be great for this.


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## BernardSmith (Jan 4, 2016)

Hi Vinmakare - and welcome... I don't have a recipe as such but I would suggest that you use as many berries as you need to express the juice to make the volume you want. In other words, use just the juice and add no water*. Strawberries are very light in strawberry flavor so added water simply dilutes the flavor. I think you may need to use as much as 10 lbs of berries for each gallon. I made a gallon batch two summers ago that way and the flavor is good. (I froze the berries and added pectic enzymes as I allowed the frozen fruit to thaw. Freezing and the addition of the enzymes enables more juice to be extracted). 

You also want to watch the color. Strawberry wine is very apt to discolor and I think the cause is reaction of the anthocyanins in the fruit to oxygen, light, high temperatures and a drop in pH - so you may want to keep the wine on higher acidic side and ferment cool and age the wine in the dark. Blanching the fruit may also help to fix the color but that may also fix the pectins and so result in a wine that is next to impossible to clear... 

*The Cornell Extension suggests 30 lbs of fruit to make 5 gallons but they also suggest the addition of water. I have great respect for the Extension when it comes to growing fruits and vegetables... I am not so certain that they are as top notch when it comes to wine making.. The Cornell Extension also suggests that you can use damaged fruit.. but, Dr. Murli Dharmadhikari suggests that moldy or otherwise damaged fruit should NOT be used (especially if you are interested in producing a red and not an orange colored wine) .. https://www.extension.iastate.edu/w...files/wine/WinesfromCherriesandSoftFruits.pdf


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## wineforfun (Jan 4, 2016)

I can certainly look in my notes for mine, but it was the usual fruit, nutrient, acid, tannin, pectic, yeast, etc. I used Red Star Pasteur Red yeast.
I went with 6 lbs. per gallon of fruit and then added a strawberry fpac when sweetening. Color is a nice pink with good flavor.


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## Vinmakare (Jan 4, 2016)

I didn't consider that water would have a negative impact on the recipe. It makes sense. That's more strawberries than I thought. How long would a wine like this be aged before drinking? Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it.


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## cmason1957 (Jan 4, 2016)

Vinmakare said:


> I didn't consider that water would have a negative impact on the recipe. It makes sense. That's more strawberries than I thought. How long would a wine like this be aged before drinking? Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it.



I find that most fruit wines can take 6 to 9 months or even a full year of aging. Less water is a good thing. I just started a strawberry banana wine with 30 lbs (or maybe more) of strawberries and almost the same of bananas and added just enough water to invert the sugar I added 12 lbs and 2.5 gallons. I froze all the fruit, let it thaw for a day and then hit it with the nearly boiling hot water.


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