Making Watermelon Wine: 1 Gallon

now in this video we're going to be making one gallon or four liters of watermelon wine hi i'm charles and welcome to diy fermentation your site for doing fermentation on a shoestring budget now there are no new members to report at the time of this video however memberships are an excellent way to help support this channel as our being a subscriber there is a channel paypal account for donations for equipment which this channel always seems to need any support you can you can give would be appreciative there however that being said let's get on with the video all right to make our watermelon wine we will be using the following watermelon i've got three of these we need to make at least two quarts more would be better to give us our one gallon of wine i'm gonna be using granulated sugar i'm going to be using a red star classic wine yeast this time around if you don't have this use what ever you've got we're going to need black tea which is going to be our tannin substitute going to need the juice of half a lemon which is going to be our acid blend substitute we're going to need enough water to give us our full one gallon measure we're going to need something to do primary fermentation in we're going to interlock with stopper or bung as you prefer and we're going to need something to do secondary fermentation in because after a couple of weeks in here you're going to transfer it over here and then you're going to do it make that transfer called racking every four or six weeks or so until your wine is gone clear it's going to be helpful if you have a hydrometer so we can determine how much alcohol we're producing and when fermentation is actually complete and of course using your sanitizer of choice make sure that all of your equipment and utensils are clean and sanitized and there we go that's what i'm going to be using to make this wine okay one of the first things we need to do is that we need to slice our watermelon and get them in the pot we're not going to boil it this time nice bright watermelon but we just need to juice the watermelons so in order to get that process started take your first watermelon decide how you want to slice it whether what not you want to go lengthwise or crosswise and then cut them into various slices i mean however you want to do it is entirely up to you i think in this case on this one i'm going to try going crosswise i'll probably regret it but be very careful make sure you have a nice sharp knife make sure your fingers are well away from the business end of the knife and just go ahead and cut it on through [Music] all right now all we need to do is decide and these were seedless watermelons by the way although i kind of have to wonder i mean if they're seedless watermelons why are there seeds in it anyway from that point on i mean we can either scoop it out and put it in the pot or slice it up and dice it up and put it in the pot uh either way will work i think in this case i'm going to try even though it means a lot more cuts being very careful once again try to slice it this way and then from there from there i can just pretty much cut around the rind portion of it make sure i got the good parts to go in the pot put that off to the side and then from there we can just pretty much just dice them up slice and dice however we see fat because we're gonna have to mash these up so i'm thinking the smaller the chunks the better all right and into the pot they go of course not to think about it spatula or something like that would have been useful but as you can see the process is going to be a little wet and that's just one slice so i'm going to slice the rest of these up and then we'll move on to the next step okay i've sliced and diced just one of our watermelon because i'm curious to see just how much juice i'm gonna get from one melon uh there are a number of ways in which you can mash up try to extract the juice from your watermelon but i've decided since i've got one and i don't really use it for mashing potatoes anymore i'm gonna use a potato masher that i've sanitized and then i'm going to take the results or what remains and i'm going to put those in a straining bag and strain out the rest of the rest of the juice now you can use a muslin bag or you can use a cheesecloth or whatever you got but that's what i'm going to do here so let me get started i am getting even with one watermelon a fair amount of juice i think i might be able to get me a full gallon out of just two melons which would be cool because i don't get a chance to eat watermelon all that often it would be kind of nice to have one available because it is 90 degrees outside all right now that we've squeezed out every every last little bit of drop we're going to out of that one watermelon let's find out how much juice we got this is a two quart container and go ahead and add two more cups okay so i've got i've got two cords here and i also have four cups here so looks like we've got uh well we're getting there we got three quarts of uh watermelon juice which means we only really need the juice of about half a melon so when we're going to the store next time around to make one gallon we're getting two melons but we're only going to use one and a half and since we're not going to have to water it down with water uh this would be a much more fuller flavored wine so that having been said it's time to uh it's time to go ahead and start working that second melon this i'm just going to put aside into the refrigerator if for no other reason just to get it out the way all right time for us to start preparing our tannin substitute so we're going to drop in one tea bag and add about half a cup of water cover that up and we're going to bring that up to a boil want a nice strong cup of black tea all right now that we've had an opportunity to get our tea together we can actually at this point turn off the heat put our cover back on and we can just let that come down to a good room temperature while we start preparing our acid blend substitute so again we only need the juice of half a lemon okay let's start incorporating all of our ingredients together uh there's no special order go ahead and add in our black tea and our acid blend substitute and the recipe calls for three cups of sugar or 1.5 pounds of sugar all right that's three cups we're going to get that incorporated all right after a pretty good vigorous stir i'm gonna go ahead and take a an initial hydrometer reading that's coming in at 1.096 all right my next trick is to get as much of this juice in our cowboy bringing the level up to about here-ish because i don't know how much it's going to start bubbling up when it starts doing real fermentation so go ahead and get that process started just about there now i should know that i should stop it right about there but since i've got about half a cup of this left all right common sense there stop there because it starts bubbling it's just going to bubble through the airlock and it's going to create a mess and i don't want to deal with that so we're going to stop it there all right it is now time to change our watermelon juice into watermelon wine again we're going to be using a quarter of a teaspoon of yeast and i'm just gonna do our best to sprinkle it around as best as possible without dumping it in there now if you're using a wide mouth fermenter then yeah you could have used the pulp the watermelon pulp that was left and put those in straining bags and then put everything into the fermenter but since my wide mouth fermenter is currently in use i can't do that so plan b once that's in there we want to go ahead and insert our airlock after it's been properly filled with uh the appropriate amount of of liquid and the last thing that we need to do is that we need to label our creation all right let's go ahead and give our creation a name we are making watermelon wine we started making it on that date and our starting gravity was 1.096 now if you are using a wide mouth fermenter for the next three days give it a good pretty good stir bigger stir some oxygen in there help the yeast out a bit if you're using a regular cardboard one gallon cardboard like i am and you still and you still have your cap you just go ahead and remove your air lock screw cap back on nice and tight and give it a good little shake probably more than that but just a good little shake after three days don't do that because you're do more harm than good the first three days are all you really need and there we go one gallon or in this case four liters of watermelon wine now i should also point out that this is just first stage of the fermentation process i mean there's still some follow-up steps after well i don't know a couple of weeks three or four weeks you might want to begin thinking about racking this into a secondary cardboard container that's when you start seeing a layer of sediment building up along the bottom and continuing that process every four or six weeks after your wine starts to become clear and at which point you can probably start thinking about bottling it but you're looking at another long-term project at least 12 months to turn watermelon juice into wine just like with any other wine the longer you wait the better it is if you like what you see here please click on the subscribe button memberships are always welcome appreciate those and as our donations to these channels paypal account so again i'll see you in the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: DIY Fermentation

Views: 161,738

Keywords: Wines, homemade wine, how to make wine, fermentation, diy fermentation, african-american, fruit wines, watermelon Wine, watermelon, wine making, homemade wine recipe, homemade wine making, make wine at home, winemaking, home winemaking, make your own wine, wine making for beginners, wine easy homemade wine, making fruit wine, make my own wine, make own wine fruit, easy wine making, making home made wine fruit, wine fermentation, simple wine making

Id: ur7HVol6aXA

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021