Wine, Wine- Strawberry Wine

Making this wine is easier than figuring out the song references. Promise.

Finished & yummy

A simple, easy to make wine. It’s done in a month & doesn’t need you fussing over it. A very good starter wine. That is, where you’re starting to make wine at home. Home brewing is allowed in the USA, check the laws of where you are.
It’ll make a just under a gallon & a half.

4-4.4 lbs frozen strawberries (2 kilos)
1/2 lb fresh strawberries (chopped)
2.2 lbs sugar (1 kilo) (4 lbs optional)
6.3 Cups (1.5 L) boiling water
more (1.5L) bring up to 5 liters (optional)
1 packet of yeast

Nearly everything

Careful adding the whole 4 pound bag of sugar in, it’ll get a bit potent! We did, & it was, well is!

Boil 6 1/2 cups of water. Add the sugar to your mixing bowl. Pour in boiling water & dissolve sugar. Add frozen berries & pulverize with your stick blender. Let it sit a moment while you chop the fresh berries, or blend them all together if you’d like. I opted to blend everything together.

What I did was measure out a gallon of water & put it to boil. I stirred the sugar into that. I wanted a bit higher alcohol content, so used a full four pounds of sugar. Having under the amount of water, is nearly equal to adding more berries for a better tasting wine. The extra sugar bumps up the alcohol to almost liquor status (whew).
I/we pulverized the berries with stick blender & left the fresh berries till last which we left to float on their own. They got mushy over time.

We poured the berries into a canning/jelly bag. We put the sugar water in the brew bucket, then added 1 packet of yeast to the berries. We tied off the bag, & stuck it in the bucket. Poked it down about five times, secured the lid, put the the carbon vent in place & stuck it under the back laundry room sink for a month.
We only checked it a couple times to be sure it didn’t leak, & “looked” ok.

I was shooting for an easy clean up, as well as reducing the sediment/haze in the wine. We got a very good color, not those brown overtones.

The mesh bag we used

One month later, we took out the canning bag & emptied it into the compost container. Don’t let coffee grounds touch this, it ruins the bag. Ooops.
We bottled the wine a bit after tasting. We didn’t rack it, filter it nor fine it.

It has a nice berry after taste, but it was a bit bitter. Not to mention strong. She doesn’t like a strong wine, or a high alcohol content, so we made some modifications to the above recipe. Well, I did, I just kept feeding her sips till it was good.

squeezed

To the above, after a month of fermenting.

3 Cups filtered water
3 Cups cane sugar

This I used to sweeten the wine more. It did good. I did let it sit for three weeks, to settle some. This is when I added some strawberry flavoring.
This I added equal amounts of filtered water to wine.

1 Qt wine
1 Qt water
1/4 tsp LorAnns strawberry flavoring

What I used

To each quart we had made, of the gallon, we added 1 quart of water & 1/4 teaspoon of flavoring. This produced a decent, mild alcohol, with a very noticeable strawberry flavor. Something those who need to watch their alcohol intake can appreciate.

Quart (beer) bottles & the “tester” jug

That’s it. You don’t have to dilute nor flavor your wine. I wanted to do so on this batch, to show it could be done. This produces a great country style wine that you can enjoy. Two pounds of sugar is ample, & tasty. If you want, you can transfer it (racking) to another container. You would let it set for another month, so let the haze displace. I didn’t find that was the case. I found it built up pressure, & there was very little to filter out, that wasn’t contained in the filter/canning bag already.
I purchased my wine supplies from More Beer. The Bottles are from my Mr. Beer collection, as well as Brew demon. I won’t mention the tea jug.

OH, don’t forget to sanitize everything! No bad bacteria! You can soak the blender part of your stick (Cuisinart) blender, just not the handle. All three of the above companies offer a no rinse sanitizer.

Just to make fermenting easier here are two items that will help you along. You don’t have to purchase from anyone specifically, I don’t get any compensations if you do or not.

fermenter
2.5 Gallon Fermenter With Lid & Spigot #FE355 21.99

mesh bags at Amazon
2 Pack – 80 Micron Nut Milk Bag – 12X12 Inches 5.99

Quart bottles
Brew demon 1 liter bottles 17.99/8 comes with lids

You can twist open the Fermenter spigot & fill your bottles. The Brew Demon bottles come with lids & fit right back in to the box.

Good luck & happy brewing