Question about fruit wines?

[Ty520]

a fan of wine,and now that I have the mead bug, I'm curious to try fruit wines.

Was hoping someone could share a reliable,simple and versatile (ie, works with various fruits) recipe?

The recipes I have found online so far online seem to be all over the place. Although one of the better reviewed recipes I could find was a bit intimidating: multiple rackings, and lots more hands on management than mead.also Sounds like they need much longer before they become palatable?

 

[mannye]

Sounds like you want to search "melomels" to scratch that fruit itch.

 

[bernardsmith]

What fruit catches your fancy? Recipes are for cooks. Wine (or mead) making does not really involve a recipe. If you are talking about a mead, you select the honey that you think will go well with the fruit you want to showcase and you decide what yeast will best work to bring out the flavors you want given the conditions you will be fermenting in - and then you decide whether you want the alcohol to extract the flavors from the fruit (in which case you add the fruit to the secondary) , you want the yeast to be at its most active when it ferment the sugars in the fruit (and so you add the fruit to the primary ) or you want a bit of both (fruit that is added to the secondary tends to taste brighter in the finished mead. If you are simply making a wine - not a mead you can still add fruit to the secondary: the alcohol in the secondary is a better solvent than water in the primary when it comes to extracting flavors.
All that said, most fruit has a starting gravity of about 1.045 (+/- 5 points) , so the least amount of water you add the less you dilute flavors. Most fruit has pectins and pectins cause haze so you might want to add pectic enzyme about 12 -24 hours before you pitch the yeast. Most fruit expresses more juice when you thaw fruit from a frozen state (the ice crystals burst cell walls); and rather than add sugar to fruit to up the gravity you might consider simply expressing the juice and then slowly thawing the juice that you then freeze. If you carefully collect about 1/3 of that juice this will contain virtually all the sugar and flavor so your gravity will have hit about 1.090

 

[Squatchy]

I feel wine grapes take longer than other fruits to come good from my experience

 

[mannye]

you might consider simply expressing the juice and then slowly thawing the juice that you then freeze. If you carefully collect about 1/3 of that juice this will contain virtually all the sugar and flavor so your gravity will have hit about 1.090

That's a neat trick! Going to try this with mango!

 

[Medsen Fey]

If you check out Jack Keller's Blog site, he has recipes for just about any fruit you can think of. His site is full of good info, much of which can apply to meads as well.

 

[brian stoner]

Hi, all, first time here. Just tried my first batch of fruit wine (mango) and had a question about what (if anything) I can do with the must/sediment. Didn't see how to start a new forum/question, so am asking here. Can anyone help?
Great site, I'll be back, I'm sure, with questions, as I'm going to try some apple wine next.
Thanx!!

 

[MightyMosin]

The simplest thing to do is leave it be for a while and let it settle to the bottom and then rack into another carboy.
Let that sit for a few more weeks and then rack again if you have a lot of settling.

If you have suspended haze from the fruit, you'll need pectic enzyme (assuming you didn't use in primary or maybe didn't use enough). If you didn't use any in primary, I believe I heard that you'll need approx 4x the normal quantity in secondary to try and get rid of any pectin induced haze.

If that isn't your issue, you can always use some of the various fining agents like Super Kleer or Bentonite and Sparkolloid.