First taste of awesomeness! (Peach, Mixed Berry)

[yaeyama]

Hi all:

Some of you may remember that I started a 6 gallon peach wine back on August 17th. After racking several times, fining and filtering, and about 2.5 months of bulk aging, I finally bottled the peach yesterday. The hydrometer showed a 0.90, and because the recipe started out as a 1.100 does that mean I have about 15% ABV?

I poured the sample from the hydrometer into a glass and chilled it. It fermented to dryness and had a nice kick to it. I was surprised by how good it was, especially considering how much water I topped up with each time I racked. But, the wine tasted more like a regular white instead of having a real peach flavour. It also had a pleasant colour to it, and had legs as well.

I added some wine conditioner to semi-sweet and poured out 17 bottles. I then added a bit more conditioner and got another 13 bottles, this time a sweet. I only managed to fill the 30th bottle about 80% of the way, so I was forced to drink it that evening. The smell was not that pleasant, but I believe this was due to the campden solution I rinsed the bottles in. The wine itself was fairly cloudy with some dregs, but this can be expected from the last bottle of the batch (the other bottles show no sign of this problem). The taste was great though, the peach flavour had returned with the sweetness!

I'm going to age the remaining bottles for a couple of months and start drinking them around March of next year. Assuming I can wait that long!!

I also did a 2nd racking of a mixed berry wine I started a few months ago. Again, I had posted about it on this forum. This one is only a gallon, and I've also had to throw away a lot of lees on both rackings. However, after racking I decided to taste the nasty dregs from the syphon hose and was blown away by how incredible it tasted. (So far, I have been able to top up using marbles instead of water so the taste is pure berry goodness.) I added some oak chips and really look forward to the finished product.

One thing is for sure...after all the backbreaking work sanitizing, syphoning, bottling, etc. I will =NEVER= make a 1 gallon batch again...it just isn't worth it. My 1 gallon is now exclusively for running top-up batches in parallel.

And I'll definitely be making another mixed berry again. Absolutely awesome!

 

[zeppelin9899]

glad to hear about your experience!

 

[sandmanxy]

mixed berries

what was your recipe?(if you dont mind sharing)

 

[Wine Maker]

Making one gallon batches of wine is probably as much work as making a 5 gallon batch. The benefit is that if you are making a wine for the first time or you are experimenting and the wine does not come out as you expected it is a lot easier to dump 1 gallon than 5.

 

[yaeyama]

The recipe is from the "Winemaking" book by Anderson and Anderson. I scaled it up to 6 gallons from 5 as follows:

8.16 Kg of fresh peaches
1.2 litres of white grape concentrate
4.8 kg. sugar
7.2 litres of hot water
2.5 teaspoons yeast nutrient
2.5 teaspoon pectic enzyme
3.6 teaspoon tannin
10 campden tablets
9.6 litres cold water
1 pkt champagne yeast

I used two primaries for this, which is why my campden tablets are a little on the high count. Sugar is +/- and was added gradually until the SG was 1.100. The hot water was used to thoroughly dissolve most of the sugar before adding the cold water. Then, SG brought up as required.

I started this on August 17th, racked to secondary on August 22, racked again on September 1, racked again with fining on September 24, filtered and set aside for bulk aging on October 7. Bottled on December 1; gravity was 0.90. Added approximately 150 ml of wine conditioner for 17 bottles ("semi-sweet") then another 50-100 ml for remaining 13 bottles ("sweet"). Bottles were laid on side on December 5th.

I think I'm going to pop my first "aged" bottle on my birthday, near the middle of March. :-D~

 

[yaeyama]

Btw, what I'm *really* looking forward to is this mixed berry batch sitting in secondary now. But that'll be an even longer wait. :-(