# Stuff and Things > Cooking >  Summer Wine

## sandhurstdelta

For my next batch of home brewed wine, I am making Summer Wine from strawberries and cherries, just like in Nancy Sinatra's song of the same name from back in 1965.

The winemaking batch kit that I bought from the brewmaster at the homebrewing store is 1 gallon capacity.

So to fill it I bought 2 quarts of frozen strawberries and 2 quarts of frozen tart cherries, and in addition fine granulated sugar and a gallon of spring water.

I still have enough wine yeast, yeast vitamins, and yeast nutrients without having to buy more of these.

Wine yeast comes in big packages of 10 ounces mixed with vitamins and nutrients already.  There is fast yeast and slow yeast.  The fastest yeast is advertised as 2 day yeast, but even so it normally takes about 2 weeks for the yeast to consume all the sugar in 1 gallon of mash to make 10% to 15% alcohol in the wine.

All fruit wines are essentially sugar wines.  The fruit that you add to the mash simply gives it a residual flavor more than just the usual honey-mead taste of the sugar mash.

After 2 weeks of fermentation, you then test this for alcohol to see if it worked, and if it did then you can strain it through a clean kitchen towel and a strainer, pasteurize it, bottle it and chill it in the fridge.

The cost comes to about $7.50 per quart of wine.  That's about the same as in the store, but you cannot buy Summer Wine made of strawberries and cherries.  You must make it yourself !!!

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## Midgardian



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## sandhurstdelta

The first step in wine or beer or booze making is to create your yeast starter.  This is better than just sprinkling the yeast over the mash in the bucket. 

Note that wine or beer making at home is legal in the USA for up to 100 gallons total per year, or 2 gallons per week.  Most likely you will be making 1 1/2 gals every 2 weeks if you are using a 2 gallon mash bucket like I am.  There are also 5 gallon and 10 gallon mash buckets, and even larger vats.

1 gallon per 2 weeks is more like a hobby and any more than this is more like an industrial process however.

Booze making (anything that needs to be distilled or jacked) is not legal without a distiller's license from the BATF in the USA.

The first step in making the yeast starter is to clean and sterilize and thoroughly rinse the bottle and equipment you will use.

The best sterilizer is a spray bottle of store-bought unscented chlorine bleach cleaner.

Steps are:

- clean the bathtub and spray it with the bleach cleaner and let that set

- clean the bottle, lid, and all equipment with dish detergent in the kitchen sink

- take everything in a big clean mixing bowl to the bathtub and spray everything with the bleach cleaner

- let it set for about 5 mins to kill all the germs

- rinse off everything with hot tap water very thoroughly until there is no odor of bleach

- let everything air dry, turned upside down on a clean kitchen towel

- mix 2 shot glasses of sugar with 8 shot glasses of distilled water in a sterilized pot

- put the pot's sterilized lid onto the pot

- bring the sugar water to a boil with the lid on not ever removing the lid

- remove from the heat and let cool to room temp not ever removing the lid

- add 2 spoonfuls of dry yeast, yeast vitamins, yeast nutrients, and stir with a sterilized spoon

- pour this mix into the sterilized bottle with a sterilized funnel and close with sterilized bottle lid

- swirl the mixture in the bottle until it is well mixed

- loosen the lid but keep it capped

- place this it in a warm place at room temp for 1 day

- add this to your mash 24 hours later

- save about 1 oz of the culture in the bottle, add more cooled boiled sugar water, yeast vitamins, and yeast nutrients, and place this in the fridge for next time so it can start to grow.

All this is the first step for making the yeast culture.  You can get the wine or beer yeast and the yeast vitamins and nutrients from your local home brewing store.  These stores have crept up all over as beer and wine aficionados (means lovers of ...) have opened retail supply stores for the home brewing hobbyists.

The beer and wine you make at home yourself has no artificial additives or preservatives in it, and tastes much better than anything you can buy anywhere.  You need to keep your final product (the beer and/or wine) refrigerated however to make sure it does not spoil or turn to vinegar.  And you should drink it as you go along, not store it for long periods, for best results.

Thus you should always have a 2 gallon mash bucket going at any given time, so that you can further process and bottle this every 2 weeks for fresh beer or wine.

Right now my fridge has several bottles of freshly made sugar wine, which tastes like honey mead.  I am now setting up the batch of strawberry/cherry wine this weekend for the next round.

Fruit wines are basically sugar wines with fruit mixed in the mash.  The fruit adds its special flavor to the mash.  When you pour off the wine from the mash after 2 weeks and then test and pasteurize it, this will be a unique wine that nobody else on Earth could have made.  And it will be really good tasting !!!

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## sandhurstdelta

After only a couple of hours, the yeast starter solution is really bubbling and foaming !!!

These little yeasts have all the sugar, vitamins, and nutrients they could ever want !!!

They are happy, happy yeasts dancing around in there !!!

They are even singing out "Bring on the strawberries, cherries, and an angel's kissing spring !!!"

I'll make the fruit mash tonight.

The author of "The Alaskan Bootleggers Bible" gives the following proportions:

- 3 1/2 lbs fruit (about 2 large freezer bags full from the store)

- 2 1/2 lbs (6 cups) sugar

- 1 gallon spring or distilled water.

To make the fruit mash, first you sterilize a big spaghetti pot, it's lid, a 2 gall mash vat, it's lid, it's air lock, and a stirring spoon of stainless steel or plastic.  Sterilization is described above, and it entails washing, sterilizing, rinsing thoroughly, and air drying everything upside down and covered.

Then you combine the water and sugar in the spaghetti pot and cover it and bring it to a boil.

Then you add the fruit and bring it back to a boil.

Then you take it off the heat and let it cool to room temp.

Then you check the temp with a sterilized thermometer.  The temp should be around 75F and no more than 80F or no less than 70F.  If need be you can warm it up a little on the burner.

When it's the right temp you pour it into the mash vat, pour in the yeast starter solution, cover loosely, add the air lock (most people use ethanol in the air lock), then let it set for a week.

Check it after a week, and stir it up, then reclose it.

Let it set for another week.

After two weeks of fermentation, test it for alcohol. If it tests positive for alcohol then strain it, pasteurize it to prevent vinegar formation, then bottle it, let it separate, and siphon it into new bottles.

I like to keep mine in the fridge when bottled.

1 gallon of home brewed wine lasts me about 2 weeks.

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## sandhurstdelta

The fruit mash is boiling now and the house smells like a strawberry candy factory -- yum !!!

Time to turn off the heat and let the fruit mash cool to room temp.  This will take a couple of hours.

The little yeasts are still singing and dancing in their yeast starter bottle.

Can't add them to the mash until the mash has cooled to room temp however.

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## sandhurstdelta

If this was a SHTF situation then there would be no sugar only the fresh picked fruit and the fermentation vat.

In that case any fruit would do until you collected a batch of about 3/4ths gallon of it.

This you would then mash up with a potato masher and then boil together with water.  A potato masher is a good tool for mashing the fruit before boiling it.  Pots with lids to boil the fruit mash in over a wood fire with some kind of grate would be needed.  A big spoon to stir it all up with is needed too.

Stockpiling yeast would be the most important thing.  There is natural yeast that grows on potato skins and grape skins, but these are very slow yeasts.  And with wild yeast you never know if you are getting a yeast good at producing alcohol or not.

The reason for boiling the fruit mash is two fold -- to free the nutrients in the fruit for the little dancing, singing yeasts -- and to kill off any wild yeasts and bacteria on the fruit.

Transferring the boiled mash to a fermentation vat with a lid and air lock, then adding your yeast starter after it has cooled, can proceed as usual.  You would need a thermometer to make sure the mash was cool enough, and then you would need the thermometer again when you measure the first bubbling temperature for the pasteurization process at the end.

Then use a ladle or siphon to transfer into clean new bottles.  Ultimately you would also need a clear plastic hose/tubing to siphon the cleared wine into new bottles.

A ladle is easier for filling bottles from the mash vat.  But tubing is needed to siphon the settled wine to new bottles.

Jesus said, "No one puts new wine into old skins ..."  I am guessing that Jesus was a pretty good wine maker, even when he was not changing water into wine -- his own shortcut method.

http://biblehub.com/ylt/matthew/9.htm

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## sandhurstdelta

Well today is Day #2 and already my strawberry/cherry Summer Wine has exploded in its vat.

So those little yeasts must have been sooooo happy to get poured into the strawberry/cherry mash that they starting singing and dancing out of control!

Lucky thing I put the 2 gallon vat bucket into a big plastic garbage bag.  That at least contained the explosion.

So today when I looked at it, I had to take the bucket out of the plastic bag and reclose the lid, clean out and reset the air lock, rinse off the bucket, put it into a new plastic garbage bag, throw away the old garbage bag with the overblown mash in it, and then set the bucket in the new plastic bag back in the bathroom.

It smells like beer made out of strawberries now -- a rather pleasant fragrance.

I am hoping that I did everything right this time so that I get up to 15% alcoholic content (30 proof) for this batch of mash.

Looks like the yeasts are singing and dancing like crazy !!  They are happy, happy yeasts !!

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## sandhurstdelta

The strawberry/cherry mash is bubbling volcanically now.

And it smells like strawberry beer in my bathroom and bedroom.

The ceiling fan vents it well, which is why I put the mash in the bathroom.

I am going to start up another gallon mash this weekend, when the first mash is 1 week old and half way finished.

It smells so good that I know I am going to drink it down very fast when it is done and I have bottled it.

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## sandhurstdelta

Starting my second batch of strawberry/cherry Summer Wine now.

Making the yeast starter solution first.

1 cup of sugar/water has boiled and is cooling now.  Then I will add the dry wine yeast, yeast vitamins, and yeast nutrients to it when it has cooled to room temp (which is about 75F today).

The yeasts wake up in sugar water around 75 to 80F just like on a cool day in Florida or Sacramento and then they start to sing and dance.

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## michaelr

I used to make wine. I've been thinking about bringing up my recipe, and running through a still. Make us some Brandy.

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sandhurstdelta (04-22-2016)

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## sandhurstdelta

> I used to make wine. I've been thinking about bringing up my recipe, and running through a still. Make us some Brandy.


Brandy is the most toxic of all the distillations because of the grape skins in the wine.

You need to distill it several times or else you will get a splitting headache from the methanol and the and the fusil oils mixed in with the ethanol.

It's not worth the trouble of distilling wine.  Wine tastes better just pasteurized after straining and filtering the mash.  Then you need to let the wine settle and siphon it out into new bottles.  Like Jesus said, nobody pours/racks new wine into old bottles/skins.

Jesus must have been a really good winemaker.

My first batch of strawberry/cherry Summer Wine mash exploded.  It's lucky I put the 2 gal vat into a large garbage bag.  Less mess.

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## sandhurstdelta

An early morning pre-dawn check of the yeast starter bottle (my cat woke me up) shows that the yeasts are bubbling like alka selser now and there is a thick layer of foam on top of the liquid in the bottle.

So the yeasts are up and about, dancing and singing and will be ready in the morning light with Dawn's rosy read fingers to be mixed in the 2 gallon mash bucket with the fruit mash from the spaghetti pot cooling on top of the stove.

They are singing "bring on the strawberries, cherries, and an angel's kissing spring!!!".

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## sandhurstdelta

My second batch of strawberry/cherry summer wine is now mixed and brewing.  The temp in the spaghetti pot was perfect this morning -- high 70's -- when I woke up. 
So I sterilized my other 2 gal fermentation vat (I bought 2 of them) and it's lid and a stirring spoon, rinsed them good with hot tap water, put the fruit mash into it first, then shook up the yeast starter bottle and poured that in too and then stirred. Then I capped the vat with its lid but did not plug-in the air lock.

Now it has a dime sized hole on top to vent CO2 from and it should not explode.  The air lock hole is only pea sized and it clogs easily when fruit and foam are pushed up into it.  That's why my last batch exploded.  I then put the closed vat into a big trash bag again in case the foam overflows again.  I'm sure it will.

I then set this vat next to my other vat in the bathroom and checked the  other batch and I can see that it is still "breathing" -- the air lock cap is going up and down at a slow rate but fast enough so that you can see it move.  So it is still fermenting at day #5.

I have been saving up and washing/sterilizing all my old half gallon wine bottles and I bought a bunch of plastic corks for them too, for the strawberry/cherry summer wine when it is ready.  My guess is that sometime next week I will be siphoning, pasteurizing and bottling the last batch while this new batch keeps brewing.

So the cooking process for the mash is the same for beer, wine, honey mead, and sugar water.  You need to boil the mash liquid first to kill everything in it.  They you add your special wine yeast and cover it.  The yeasts then eat the sugar, produce CO2 blocking off the air supply, then they produce their own oxygen from the sugar and that leaves alcohol behind.

But if the yeasts are breathing air then you won't get alcohol.  That's why the air lock is needed.

But early on for the first few days while it is still foaming big time, I need to leave the air lock off or else it will explode.

I had a friend in high school -- super bright kid especially in biology and chemistry -- who started to make his own rice wine and it exploded too.  I am guessing about every home brewer explodes his own first batch.

In the meantime for the first few days the plastic garbage bag will keep the air out and will collect the CO2 in it as a barrier to air.

That's how home fermentation works.  The author of the book "Alaskan Bootleggers Bible" explains it all very nicely.  I googled him and it shows he died back in 2013.  His son gets the royalties now from his book.  I left a thank you note on their web page.

100 gallons per year is a great hobby !!

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## sandhurstdelta

After a mere 12 hours of fermentation the 2nd batch has now gone volcanic and is bubbling and spewing out of the dime sized hole in the lid which closes the 2 gallon vat.  There is foam and fruit all over the lid now in a volcano cone formation.  And it is puffing just like a volcano too.

It goes "puff ... puff ... puff ... ."

So the yeasts are happy as clams and singing and dancing like Wiccans around a bonfire.

The fermentation has taken hold.

I should have 3 gallons of strawberry/cherry summer wine soon.

Meanwhile my home smells like strawberry beer.

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## sandhurstdelta

Here is a current photo.  The vat on the left is 12 hours old.  The vat on the right is 5 days old.

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## sandhurstdelta

Sampled my first glass of strawberry/cherry summer wine today.

After 7 days of fermentation, it was time to transfer it into a new fermentation vat, skimming off all the fruit pulp that has floated to the top of the original vat, and then siphoning the liquid into the new vat leaving behind the dregs at the bottom of the old vat.

After doing so, I took out a pint sample of the wine and tested it for alcohol content -- turns out that it is 5% and will therefore need another 2 weeks of fermentation to get to 15%.

Then I pasteurized the sample, heating it slowly to 160F and noting any bubbling.  There was none, so the wine is quite pure without impurities from the fruit pulp.  Then I put it into the freezer to quickly cool it to room temp.

After this is decanted it back and forth to aerate it, and then I tasted it.

Wow !!!

It has a berry flavor, and a strawberry aroma, and a stout beer texture, with a strong hint of alcohol like stout beers have.

This is good wine and with sufficient strawberries and cherries I know I can make this if SHTF and have a very happy community of self sufficient survivors !!!

At the full fermentation strength one tall pint can make you very happy !!!  AND it tastes very good too.  Better than beers or than grape wines.  Softer and smoother and slightly sweet.

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