Sunday, October 24, 2010

2010 Strawberry Wine

15 pounds of fresh June strawberries makes 3 gallons of strawberry wine, ready to bottle in October! This batch took a bit of work, from the picking of the strawberries, to the mushing up and constant agitation through primary fermentation, to the straining of the yeast-digested fruit when it went into the secondary fermentation carboy. (Mushing vs. a blender, because the latter would've chopped all the tiny strawberry seeds, releasing a bitter component the wine could do without...)

I was concerned that the wine would go straw or golden in color, but it finished as a dark reddish-amber. The specific gravity started at 1.110 and wound up at 0.990 in the end, so it took a goodly amount of sweetener to bring it back to a semi-sweet bottling stage. Due to the high acid levels of fresh strawberries, I used champagne yeast, so there's a relatively high alcohol content - but it is subdued in presence by the strawberry flavor, with a very clean finish on the palate.

I'm sure this batch of 15 bottles will disappear well before I pick another 15 pounds next spring.

2 comments:

mcat7 said...

Thank you for the wine making information and reserch for strawberry wine. It has to have many pitfalls in the process because of the particullar features of the strawberry fruit.
I'll keep your information and hopefull let you know the results of my making strawberry wine next fall.

Gewehr98 said...

Mcat7, how did your attempt pan out? I've made it a regular yearly effort here, for a minimum of 3 gallons each summer.