Strawberry Wine Problem/Error?

[nickglassfl]

Hay-lo!

So I decided to give my first attempt at strawberry wine. Here is what I did.

-Cleaned 2 lbs fresh strawberries
-Put in food processor for about 3 minutes
-While the processor was still running, I added about 1/2 c sugar and as much sterile water as the processor could hold.
-Added another liter or so of water in a pot

Here is the problem. I could not get the juice to strain...at all. It was just a gelatinous glob and wouldn't produce any pure juice.

I decided to just go ahead and prepare the must, and did so as usual adding my acid blend, sugar, and water up to a gallon.

I was able to decant off the pulp WITHOUT the majority of the seeds, but am still worried this will not turn out right. My other concern is that since there will be unknown sugars, etc, in the must, that I might have higher concentrations of methanol and esters in the final product.

Any thoughts on this?

-Nick

 

[robie]

I am not a fruit wine maker, but someone will get with you I am sure. Just be patient.

 

[jswordy]

Thoughts:

Strawberries do not do well when run through a food processor. Much better to freeze the berries, then thaw and put the berries in a straining bag, tie it off, and put that in with the liquid that comes off the thawed berries.

Then add your water, etc., at a minimum to surround your berries in the bag. Add pectic enzyme quite heavily, sugar etc. to a recipe or to your own hydrometer or whim.

When the wine has fermented, then you can either squeeze the straining bag well to extract remaining juice or you can press the berries to get the remaining juice.

Doing it this way keeps all the seed and most of the mush inside the bag. You will be able to clear your wine much feaster and better.

Alternately, I have frozen the berries, pressed them off, and then just used the resulting juice. But I like the bag method better.

Hope this helps for next time.

With the batch you have now, I would simply ferment it out, rack off what will be heavy lees, and proceed with settling in carboy. You might need to use a clearing agent to get it all cleaned up. If you have not started your ferment yet, I would add bentonite to the bucket before you add yeast. It will help a lot, but you may still have to use isinglass or something else at the end.

Don't worry about methanol and esters. You may have to age quite long to get it to all smooth out, but it will. It will taste much better at a year and beyond. Strawberry tastes best at 2 years, I have been told. I have some I am trying to keep that long, myself.

 

[Julie]

Worring about methanol and esters is the least of your worries. Way too much water, you should have used at least 4 pounds of berries for a gallon batch. Jswordy has give you some good advice, I would add - go buy a hydrometer, without it you have no idea what your starting sg is, or your ending ready so you have no idea what your ABV is.

Rule of thumb when making fruit wines use at least 4 pounds per gallon and 5 is better and then there are some fruits that should have no water at all. Take a hydrometer reading before adding sugar and bring that sg up to 1.080, then buy yourself a titration kit, I think they are about $12 and test you acid before adding that blindly.

 

[Turock]

I agree with Julie. Strawberry doesn't need more acid--it needs calcium carbonate pre-ferment to bring the PH higher.

Without a hydrometer, you have no idea what you're shooting for when adding sugar to adjust the brix.

When we make strawberry, we use 10# of fruit per gallon and no water. Freezing the berries first yields all the juice you'll need. We ferment on the fruit, bagging it first. Optionally, you can press them and just use the juice as jswordy suggested.

 

[Scott]

If it's too thin in flavor after ferm you can always make a F-pack to bring up the flavor.