I tried making white and red wine
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:50 pm
I have a few hundred feet of vines in my yard. I tried making white and red wine this year. The white is barely palatable so far (6 months old) and the red is awful - lot of off flavors. I have 24 bottles of it I don't know what to do with. I used ec1118 for the red. Very little of the grape flavor came through. I used kv1116 for the white and it's okay... Still very little muscadine flavor came through, it's still sort of yeasty but improving with age. I didn't know what I was doing and added sugar, each wine is about 15-16%. Tried making apple wine too... Using juice. It fermented well but there's very little apple flavor.
I keep my grapes frozen in gallon ziplock bags until ready to use. When frozen and thawed, they mush up really nice and a lot pop open on their own. It might make it easy if you just want to use them for flavoring.
They make amazing jelly, and nice juice, but so far I've had issues turning them into wine. I've got another 5 gallons in the fermenter now, added sugar to 11%. Hoping it comes out better this time.
I've still got several gallons of frozen grapes in the freezer.
I keep my grapes frozen in gallon ziplock bags until ready to use. When frozen and thawed, they mush up really nice and a lot pop open on their own. It might make it easy if you just want to use them for flavoring.
They make amazing jelly, and nice juice, but so far I've had issues turning them into wine. I've got another 5 gallons in the fermenter now, added sugar to 11%. Hoping it comes out better this time.
I've still got several gallons of frozen grapes in the freezer.