FAST Wines That Don't Take Long To Bottle/Drink

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Sultana Banana - Could have bottled after 6 weeks.

Cold, good info. How soon to bottle/drink?

It could have been bottled after 6 weeks.

It is still sitting in the gallon jug (secondary fermenter) though.
 
Last edited:
I'm happy to say that our first wine making attempt using Pears (wine made with pears is called a Perry) came out great! We just bottled it yesterday at almost 9 weeks, and I'm sure we could have bottled it sooner as the first 3 or 4 rackings we didn't know what we were doing and kept putting most of the sediment back into the jug. At our last racking about 3 weeks ago we knew not to try to recover any juice from the sediment by running it through a mesh bag and then about a week ago the wine really got super clear with no clearing agents used or anything. At that last racking 3 weeks ago the wine was a dry wine, so we put in Sorbate, Campden, and two cups of sugar to insure the sugar wouldn't be converted. We got lucky, because we didn't use a hydrometer yet the wine is just slightly sweet like we wanted it. Having used 10 pounds of sugar along with 37 pounds of pears and 6 pounds of white rasins along with champain yeast in the primary it had converted all that to alchohol, so though it doesn't taste strong it sure will hammer you back after about 16 ounces of the stuff. Gave me a nice buzz.

I couldn't be happier with it and I'll post the recipe in a day or so along with another "wine" (perry) recipe using pears that uses apples as the secondary fruit instead of the rasins. This one also says it can be bottled in weeks as well.
 
Here is a pear "wine" (really pear wine is called a Perry) recipe from an excellent book called "Strong Waters...A simple guide to making beer, wine, cider and other spirited beverages at home". It's not the recipe we used that I just talked about above but it's very similar. Really the big difference is they used apples as the secondary fruit where as we used 6 pounds of rasins in our 7 gallon primary along with 37 pounds (before cutting) of pears along with 10 pounds of sugar and champain yeast. About 6 or 7 weeks out we stopped fermation by adding Sorbate and Campden on our last racking along with 2 cups of sugar and two cups of water to make up for the lost volume. Really we would not have lost that much at that racking but like I said we kept putting most of the sediment back in because we kept putting the sediement through a mesh bag. Really that should only be done on the first and second racking probably (1st being moving it from primary to secondary). Anyway, here's their recipe and I'll post ours in a day or two...

In a blurb in this book the author says "pears have more sugar than apples and more unfermentable sugar as well, so perry is naturally stronger and sweeter than cider". We found ours was a dry wine until we added the two cups of sugar once fermation was over and we put in the Sorbate to insure no further conversion of the two cups. We hit it right on, as the wine isn't too sweat. Somewhere between a dry and a sweet wine I'd say in sweetness. The book also mentions the fact that perry's and ciders take much less time to make than "conventional" wines using grapes and such.

"Basic Perry

Check the labels when buying pear juice. Many brands already blend pear and apple juices. If this is the case with your juice, simply use 1 gallon of blend.

2 quarts apple juice
2 quarts pear juice
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1/2 teaspoon pectin enzyme, if using unfiltered juice
1/2 teaspoon grape tannin, or a cup of black tea
1 packet yeast: Premier Cuv'ee or Lalvin KIV-1116
7 teaspoons corn sugar, if making sparkling perry

1. Pour the juices into the primary fermenter. Stir in the yeast nutrient, pectin enzyme, and tannin (or tea).
2. Add the yeast, snap on the fermenter lid, and attach the airlock.
3. Fermentation is usually complete in 7 to 10 days. You can bottle it as is, or if you want a sparkling perry, add 7 teaspoons corn sugar and bottle the perry in Champagne-style bottles, beer bottles, or soda bottles. Whether you make a still or sparkling perry, you don't need to age it more than a couple of weeks, but it does become better conditioned after a couple of months.

Serving Suggestion: Served chilled in a white wine glass with blue or creamy cheeses."

(END QUOTATIONS)

I'm not sure if it's important or not but with ours we added the yeast 24 hours after adding everything else. Maybe it's because we used fruit while the above is using juices? Either way, I'll post our recipe/steps soon for comparison. Like I said, we bottled yesterday at almost 9 weeks and it's clear and tastes great. I bet if we would have racked properly early on we could have bottled it in half that time.
 
Last edited:
Still looking for more "fast" recipes that take say 2 or 3 months or less to bottle/drink. In particular right now I'm looking for any ones using cheap juice from Walmart or something, with cherry, peach, blueberry, blackberry, or other fruits being used (in that order of preference).
 
If you are looking for a fast recipe, you can do that with pretty much any 100% juice. The frozen welch's that many others have recommended is one of the easiest. However, pretty much any juice will work it just may take a little more work to get fermentation started. That will get you practically any flavor you want.

Cheap, fast, and good tasting would probably be skeeter all the way!

You can also speed up pretty much any wine by doing things like adding clarifiers and using a drill mounted stirrer to degas.

There are so many flavors to try, I bet you'll be busy for a while! Good luck!
 
I actually make the WE selections Chilean Merlot as my fast drinker. By fast drinker I mean that I fill one of those "Wine bags in the garbage pail" for a daily drink as soon as it is done and then bottle the rest. :sh

Some of it has reached a decent age and is better but you really need to make a lot of wine at my house if you want any of it to age for a couple years! (hasn't happened yet) I also need to be able to hide it well. (from myself!!!)
 
Still looking for more "fast" recipes that take say 2 or 3 months or less to bottle/drink. In particular right now I'm looking for any ones using cheap juice from Walmart or something, with cherry, peach, blueberry, blackberry, or other fruits being used (in that order of preference).

Are you writing a book and need lots of recipes?
 
Almost all of the wines I've made using concentrates (Alexander's, Sun-Cal, or straight Welches) have cleared very quickly. What takes longer is degassing, which I just let happen, so it generally takes me 6 months to bottle a wine. If you can speed that up with a degassing tool like many on here use (either a drill attachment or a vaccuum system), you should be able to bottle many wines made from concentrates in 2-2.5 months if you rack often.
 
Does anybody have any other "fast" wines (3 months or less, though 2 or less would be more prefered) recipies to post? In particular, I'm looking for some kind of peach/apple, peach/something else like perhaps peach/cherry, or any other combo juice recipes that can be bottled in 3 months or less and the juice can be bought somewhere like Walmart or Aldis.

Are you trying to make jail house wine or just cut corners. It sounds like you would be better off sticking to skeeter pee but experiment with it with different flavors and report back on the progress. This wine is fast and exciting. Julie is the queen on this!
 
On these juice recipes- Wouldn't it be better to back sweeten with a frozen concentrate such as Welch's grape or other fruit?
 

Latest posts

Back
Top