How to Make Strawberry Wine - Easy Recipe For Beginners

hello everyone and welcome back to mossy bottom last summer i made a video all about growing harvesting and propagating strawberry plants which is something i do every year on my small holding here in the west of ireland i have about 300 strawberry plants out there and at the moment two volunteers working assiduously to harvest strawberries from them i had to turf them out of the cabin so i could film this video and as you can imagine um 300 strawberry plants produces a lot of fruit particularly between late may early june and sort of mid-july so i also talked about what i do with all that fruit apart from gorging on it myself of course some of the strawberries i sell at my stall some go to my animals some i turn into jam some are frozen for the winter i have a fairly big chest freezer here and some particularly at the end of the season like now i turn into this and this is my homemade strawberry wine which as i um boldly but i think accurately said in that first video i stand by it um is one of the most delicious things i've ever tasted and it still boggles my mind that um for the most part strawberry wine isn't sold commercially you certainly can't buy it in supermarkets around here and as a result of that video last summer the biggest request i have ever had be it through comments emails instagram messages or even a couple of times at supermarket checkouts has been to show you the process of making uh that strawberry wine to share my recipe with the world which is exactly what i'm going to do in this video but let me just say before i get started i'm not an expert at making wine this is very much a home brew made with cheap unsophisticated equipment there are loads more videos out there on youtube of people who really are experts but when you're starting out with something like wine making you don't want to be bombarded by too much science and information you just want an easy way to get into it my equipment cost less than 30 euro it was part of a starter pack and i'm going to keep it really simple and just tell you exactly what i do okay let's get started so my intention today is to fill this 25 liter fermenter but i can't do that in one go because my pans and my bowls just aren't big enough so i divide everything into four batches repeating the following process which i'm going to show you um until this fermenter is as full as we can safely make it you could make less or more this way probably depending on how many strawberries you can get um that's the key factor because it does take a lot of fruit to get the flavor right as you will see so step one remember i'm repeating this process four times until i've filled up my fermenter firstly i have one large mixing bowl full of strawberries and i've already decored them making sure the sepals are taken out as well and those are the little green leaf-like structures around the stem of the berry and they often have bugs hiding in them so you want to get rid of them i've also washed the strawberries thoroughly and i've taken out any that have gone a bit bad since i picked them it's really important when you're doing anything that involves fermentation cleanliness is key you don't want bacteria or foreign yeasts contaminating your brew so wash everything really well including your hands sterilize as much as you can then i'm going to boil 2.5 liters half of one of these of mineral water i would not recommend using tap water as it could affect the flavor or indeed distilled water people say you shouldn't use that you want the best tasting natural spring or mineral water that you can buy and apparently 2.5 liters is about the same as 2.5 us quartz i had no idea what a quart was uh until i did a bit of research for this video and it's not a measurement we use here in europe but it seems to be about the same as a liter so from now on if i say liter and you're in the us or canada then just assume i mean about one quart okay so once boiling you want to add one kilogram which is one of these of granulated white sugar which is about 2.2 pounds according to mr google and if that seems like a lot don't worry it's for the yeast not for you so by the time fermentation is over it'll all be gone it'll have been digested by that yeast once it's in there leave it to boil for a few minutes until the sugar is completely dissolved okay so step four is to add the strawberries one mixing bowl to the sugar water solution i usually leave it on the heat then for just a minute or two more then turn the heat off and then i add the juice of one lemon and then i leave for about 10 or 15 minutes for the fruit to soften after which when the fruit is nice and soft you use a masher to release all the flavor from the strawberries into the water some people say you don't need to mash and you can leave your fruit as it is but i think it gives a stronger strawberry flavor in the finished wine if you do do that some people will use a blender but that tends to make the finished wine very cloudy there are chemicals you can add to prevent cloudiness but the method i use seems to avoid it altogether at that point you want to leave it until it's cooled down to something i guess 20 25 degrees room temperature but don't stick your hand in there to test it and that's really important because of course you don't want any contamination time to find my lemons the easiest way to do this of course would be with a lemon juicer alas i do not have one of those so i'm using finger power works pretty well you don't want to get any bits of the lemon in there especially the seeds so just be a bit careful when you're doing it that's why i'm using a bowl first rather than doing it directly into my strawberry mixture so time to do a bit of mashing now and all i'm trying to do here really is bruise and crush the fruit i'm not trying to blend them the strawberries into the mixture i just want to release as much of the juice as i possibly can it's all about flavor so i've already cleaned and sterilized this i'm just giving it an extra wipe to make absolutely sure there's nothing in there that shouldn't be so at this stage then you just want to repeat that four times um water sugar strawberries lemon juice and then let it cool mash it up and then add it to your fermenter and by the time you're finished that 25 liter fermenter should be looking fairly full i bet you can't guess what i'm going to do with these so now i've got the fermenter filled or as full as i want it to be i'm going to take a sample and i'm going to measure the sugar level using this and this is called a hydrometer which just measures water density 1.00 is pure water and what i'm aiming for is about 1.09 so that's telling me how much sugar is in the water and i know having done this a few times now that the recipe i'm using will give me roughly that ratio but if you start messing with the amount of sugar versus water versus strawberries uh then this is definitely something you need to check because otherwise the end alcohol percentage of your wine could be off so what you do is you fill up a test tube and add your hydrometer to it make sure the water or the wine is cool because the temperature will affect the hydrometer and then you can just read off on the hydrometer what the water density is and i'm about 1.8 which is close enough i'm pleased with that so next we have to make the starter now you could just add your yeast directly to the fermenter and i have done that in the past and i did that the first year and it worked really well but i've read that it's better to make a starter in a measuring jug in terms of giving the yeast a bit of a head start and to do that you just take some of your wine mix and i'm going to use the mixture that i used with my hydrometer because i've just freshly taken out the fermenter so it's not been contaminated i'm going to add my yeast i'm going to stir cover and then i'm going to leave for a few hours at room temperature in terms of the yeast itself i use this special country wine mix made by cross my loof which is a small home brewer based i think in scotland and i have no affiliation with these guys whatsoever but they do have a variety of home brewing yeasts for different purposes and i've had fantastic results with this particular one so i just keep buying it every year it's a high alcohol yeast and it says in the description makes a tasty hedgerow wine it certainly does for the quantity i'm making which is probably about 20 22 liters something like that and you technically only need five grams of yeast but i tend to put 10 grams in maybe i shouldn't i'm not sure but it's worked for me in the past so i'm going to keep doing it but if you only have 5 grams that's probably enough whatever yeast you do use make sure it's a wine yeast because yeasts are not interchangeable you can't use baking yeast for bread or beer yeast at least that's what i've read i can't claim to have actually tried it myself i think it'd be rather a waste of strawberries so after leaving it for an hour or two your starter should be bubbling away which is a good sign at which point you can add it to your fermenter and you can see i've now added the complete four batches to the fermenter and so all i have to do is add my starter and it's good to go once you add it you get to use this which is provided with the wine making kit an extra long wooden spoon um essential for stirring because you have to stir like mad for a few minutes to really get that yeast well integrated into the solution it smells absolutely unbelievable it's a mixture of strawberries obviously um you could smell that sugary sweetness and also the um the kind of acidic citric quality of the lemon is coming through it's really amazing the aroma i think it smells nicer like this than when it's actually wine so now comes the part where you have to be very patient right now we have very sweet very very sweet water with strawberry lumps in it and zero alcohol it might be something a child would like to drink but i certainly wouldn't definitely not wine but the potential to become wine so put the lid back on your fermenter make sure you add one of these an air lock because as the yeast digests the sugar it will release carbon dioxide which has to come out somewhere and you don't want this thing exploding um and also without an air lock if you have a hole bacteria can get in through that hole and foreign yeasts and other contaminants could potentially ruin your brew so you're going to want to place your fermenter somewhere dark at room temperature you definitely don't want it to get cold at night because that will harm the yeast and slow down and the digestion of sugars and you'll notice pretty quickly um it should start bubbling away within a couple of days which actually can be quite enthralling to watch uh knowing that with each bubble that comes up more of that sugar is becoming alcohol in terms of when it's ready you need to wait until it stops bubbling i like to keep things simple once it stops bubbling i know that the yeast has digested that sugar i consistently make my strawberry wine in late june or early july like it is now and usually the fermentation process is over by kind of early to mid august so it takes a couple of months now of course that's during the summer so perfect conditions for the yeast to thrive it's going to take longer at different times of the year or in cooler places so once it's stopped releasing that carbon dioxide it's time to filter the mix into five liter bottles and i use the same bottles that i purchased the mineral water in people often use glass demijohns but they're expensive and water bottles are cheap and in my case free because i had to buy them to buy the spring water but if you don't intend to drink the wine fairly quickly certainly within a year or maybe two at most then you should probably invest in some glass containers and because of course they don't leak microplastics or at least better quality plastic ones that are made for long-term storage so in terms of how you get your wine into the bottles you could just scoop it out and pour it in or you could use a siphon like this there are also electric siphons which make the process a lot easier you're definitely going to want to use a funnel with some muslin cloth in it or a really good sieve because you want to exclude as much of that pulp as you possibly can but personally i think if a bit gets in that's okay and it just adds to the fruitiness so this is my final five liter bottle from last year as you've probably guessed and yes it doesn't go bad that's one of the great things about alcohol it's a preservative however what's in this bottle right now wouldn't taste very nice i don't think and because all the sugar that we added and i suppose the fructose from the strawberries themselves has been eaten by our yeast to make that alcohol so it's about 13 to 15 alcohol and you can check that with your own brew using the hydrometer but it has no sweetness whatsoever even the sweetness from the strawberries would be gone if you like a very dry wine maybe you'll like it like this personally i think strawberry wine should be kind of medium sweet like a strawberry but we can't just put the sugar back in because the yeast is still alive and we'll just continue to digest it so alas at this point we have to murder our beloved yeast which has done all that hard work for us really isn't fair is it and to commit that act of yeast genocide we need this stuff potassium sorbate also known as wine stabilizer and this is fairly inexpensive again i think it was about five euros from an online store it's commonly used in home brewing for this exact purpose so it's fairly easy to get hold of and this is something i add as soon as i filter my wine into the five liter bottles from the fermenter so this one has already been done last year when i poured the wine into here back in august and you add the potassium sorbate at a rate of about half a teaspoon per gallon so i guess a little over that for one of these bottles and then for two or three days after that you have to swirl really well by turning the bottle upside down repeatedly in order to make sure every last molecule of yeast has been exterminated it's rather tragic isn't it so at that stage you will have exactly what i have in this bottle now and we can get rid of our potassium sorbate we don't need it anymore we've exterminated our yeast and now we really can make some wine so i like to serve my wine in glass bottles like this one here i have some lovely one liter reusable bottles with stoppers and first i'm going to almost fill it up and then i'm going to add some sweetness back in because don't forget right now it's incredibly dry there's no sweetness in there whatsoever and there is an element of choice here i personally like to add two tablespoons of sugar per one liter bottle but if you have less of a sweet tooth you could just add one tablespoon or if you have a really sweet tooth you could even add three tablespoons it'll almost be a syrupy consistency if you do that i add two then i add my secret ingredient which is a single stick of cinnamon and again this is optional but it just gives it a slightly spicy almost mulled wine quality i guess which i personally love and then of course you shake the bottle really well until all the sugar is dissolved and then you've got to refrigerate it until it's cool incidentally um you can add sugar alternatives like honey i tried that one year and even sweetener if you prefer that and you rather wouldn't have the sugar it definitely smells like wine now i can really detect that alcohol so there you have it folks mossy bottom brand strawberry wine with a hint of cinnamon exactly as i make it every year the magpies are impressed aren't they um of course there's a lot more complexity to wine making and if you do a bit of research yourself on the internet or on youtube you'll find loads of guides with a lot more expertise than i can provide if you don't like the cloudiness you can add pectic enzyme prior to the fermentation process which completely eliminates it but i don't think it's a bad thing it doesn't affect the flavor at all in fact i've tried to keep this guide as simple as i possibly can what i will say is that the method i've shown you works year after year without fail and of course you can substitute the strawberries for pretty much anything you like providing it's edible of course growing up my father would make lots of home brews uh in fact he had a kind of improvised wine shed at the bottom of our garden which also happened to be falling down and full of spiders webs but he loved it in there as i'm sure you can imagine elderflower wine and elderberry wine were some of his favorites uh but he made all sorts of different experimental brews pea wine i remember trying one year and yes he did let me sample his creations even as a 10 year old blackberry wine was another favorite and of course you can gather the fruit for free which makes it great but strawberry wine for me at least was always the best the only thing you have to figure out at this point once your wine is finished fermenting is what to do with the leftover strawberry pulp which of course is highly alcoholic i'm going to leave you to work that one out i hope you enjoyed this video folks um thank you as always for watching subscribing and supporting the channel and i'm off to celebrate another hard day's work and i know exactly how wherever you are in the world take care bye for now cheers oh is that tasty not impressed [Laughter] how about you i did check beforehand by the way that it's safe to give them citrus fruit it's definitely safe but they might not particularly appreciate it let's try again oh what's that what's that what's that i think oh did you eat i was titch very good very good

Channel: Mossy Bottom

Views: 81,586

Keywords: strawberry wine, home brew wine, beginner winemaking, how to make wine, how to make strawberry wine, make strawberry wine, winemaking guide, make cheap wine, cheap home brew, fruit wine, make fruit wine, easy winemaking, self-sufficiency, self sufficiency, self sufficient wine, homestead wine, off grid wine, off grid winemaking, strawberry wine recipe, wine recipe

Id: qF1_Zn4vCxs

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021