Racked : Gooseberry Wine

Phew! A afternoon of racking Wine. Did the Gooseberry wine as well today.

Tastes great, tangy gooseberries. Cool colour as well.

Brewday: Gooseberry Wine.

With 1.8kg of Gooseberries collected from the allotment. Time to make up a Gooseberry Wine.

We made this Wine a couple of years ago with Pick Your Own Gooseberries (£7.00), but I couldn't  find my notes of how I did it.

Now after making up the Must, I have now located my notes from back in 2011, and I have made it wrong this time. Ah well, I'm sure it will make some sort of wine.

• Added the Gooseberries to a fermenting bucket and crushed with a potato masher.
• Added 1.3kg of sugar (this is where I went wrong)
• Topped up to 5 litres with water.
• Stirred until dissolved.
• 1 tsp of Pectolase added to the Must
• Then added the yeast.

Where I went wrong with this batch was to add the sugar to early. Last time I made it, the sugar was added after the gooseberries had fermented for 4 days and it was Racked onto the sugar. 

I am not sure what the outcome of this Gooseberry Wine will be, maybe if I left the fruit in fermenting for a lot longer before racking into a demijohn it might help. I'll just have to see. At least the gooseberries where home grown this year so I haven't wasted money on the fruit if it goes a bit wrong.

Brewday: Raspberry (& other mixed soft fruit) Wine

Over the last few weeks I have been collecting soft fruit from down the Allotment and putting them into a old Ice Cream tub in the freezer until I had enough to make up a wine.

I should have collected the fruit in separate containers really so I could maybe make up a wine for each fruit. Maybe next time I'll do it that way.

Most of the fruit in the tub was raspberries, I would say about 80%. The rest was a mixture of black, white and red currants, a few Jostaberries, and a couple of strawberries, I think even a gooseberry snuck in as well. A total of 1.2kg of soft fruit all grown by me is going into this wine.

• The fruit was all defrosted in the fridge then put into a 5 litre fermenting bucket.
• Boiling hot water was poured over the fruit so it was just covering the fruit.
• The fruit was then mashed with a potato masher.
• 1.2 kg of Sugar was then added to the bucket and stirred until it was all dissolved.
• 1 tsp of Pectolase added just in case.
• The bucket was then topped up to the 5 litre mark.

It is now cooling in The Cabin Brewery until it is cool enough to add the Yeast. Most likely tomorrow after work I'll add the Yeast and I'll leave this to ferment on the fruit for a good week to ten days before racking into a Demijohn.