Strawberry wine help

[Raptor99]

When you make strawberry wine from fresh strawberries, do you need to trim off the green crowns and stems at the end of the berries? Or can you just freeze and mash them without the trimming?

 

[Eddy Monsoon]

When you make strawberry wine from fresh strawberries, do you need to trim off the green crowns and stems at the end of the berries? Or can you just freeze and mash them without the trimming?

Dont know for sure, but they won't add anything so leaving them is risking them spoiling your wine.

Trim them, quarter them, freeze them. Thats what I did and have got a good result from fresh.

Leave them to get as ripe as possible is my other suggestion.

 

[opus345]

When using fresh berries (not frozen), make sure to kill off any wild yeast (campden/potassium metabisulfite) before you start you pitch your fermentation yeast.

 

[BernardSmith]

When using fresh berries (not frozen), make sure to kill off any wild yeast (campden/potassium metabisulfite) before you start you pitch your fermentation yeast.

But if you are using frozen berries you can allow the wild yeast to do their thing? Why? Sure, if you are into natural wines, but then why is there a difference between fresh and frozen berries? Freezing is not likely to damage many of the indigenous yeast cells. Freezing is not an analog of pasteurization. If you view indigenous yeast as a problem use K-meta. If you view indigenous yeast as a tiny pool of microbes that may add a little complexity to your wine before they get swamped and over-run by a huge pool of lab cultured microbes, then let the wild yeast do their thing and if you are eager to see what kind of flavors the indigenous yeast will bring to your wine and how robust they might be to thrive in the ABV wine you are making then you may want to do everything you can to encourage those little critters.

 

[Raptor99]

I always use Kmeta with my fruit wines. Freezing will not kill yeast.

 

[opus345]

Bernard,

Great point.

I have always treated my fresh fruite, but not my frozen fruit. I think I've always been more afraid of the wild yeast on fresh fruit than I have with frozen fruit.

This study found "Survival dropped abruptly between -10° and -30°" and "that yeast that die as a result of being exposed to cold temperatures die because of intracellular freezing. Intracellular freeing is thought to occur when external ice crystals grow through the cell wall."

I suspect that my Costo frozen fruit is not stored below -10°

 

[sour_grapes]

Bernard,

Great point.

I have always treated my fresh fruite, but not my frozen fruit. I think I've always been more afraid of the wild yeast on fresh fruit than I have with frozen fruit.

This study found "Survival dropped abruptly between -10° and -30°" and "that yeast that die as a result of being exposed to cold temperatures die because of intracellular freezing. Intracellular freeing is thought to occur when external ice crystals grow through the cell wall."

I suspect that my Costo frozen fruit is not stored below -10°

You should understand that those temperatures are given in ºC. It turns out that -10ºC is +14ºF. I would suspect that your Costco fruit WAS held at that temperature.

 

[Raptor99]

You should understand that those temperatures are given in ºC. It turns out that -10ºC is +14ºF. I would suspect that your Costco fruit WAS held at that temperature.

My chest freezer is at 10 degrees F. I have kept brewing yeast in there for one year and used it with no problem. I don't know if wild yeast will be killed more easily in the freezer, but it is safer to always add Kmeta to frozen fruit.

 

[sour_grapes]

I am not offering an opinon on yeast viability or protocols. However, if you read the article, the cause of death was cited to be growth of intracellular ice crystals, which punctures the wall of the yeast cell. Dried, commercial yeast probably does not have sufficient intracellular water to do that.

 

[Raptor99]

Good point.

 

[JeffA]

I have never made strawberry wine with the caps on but would think it may ad a little bitterness to the wine. It doesn't take much time at all to slice them off with a paring knife.

 

[hounddawg]

I have never made strawberry wine with the caps on but would think it may ad a little bitterness to the wine. It doesn't take much time at all to slice them off with a paring knife.

i make strawberry every year, nor have i used the leafy cap, just pulled them, but never thought about it till now,
Dawg

 

[opus345]

You should understand that those temperatures are given in ºC. It turns out that -10ºC is +14ºF. I would suspect that your Costco fruit WAS held at that temperature.

Your right. Might explain why I haven't had issues with "untreated" Costco fruit.

 

[Ty520]

Bernard,

Great point.

I have always treated my fresh fruite, but not my frozen fruit. I think I've always been more afraid of the wild yeast on fresh fruit than I have with frozen fruit.

This study found "Survival dropped abruptly between -10° and -30°" and "that yeast that die as a result of being exposed to cold temperatures die because of intracellular freezing. Intracellular freeing is thought to occur when external ice crystals grow through the cell wall."

I suspect that my Costo frozen fruit is not stored below -10°

long term storage may not be cold enough, but commercial packagers like Costco almost always use blast freezers to flash freeze fruit first, which drops them to -30C or lower, and that would probably suffice