Apple Wine
As you might have gathered by the peapod, the tomato, and the orange, I will make wine out of anything once. It’s all part of my crusade to make a crisp, tart, non-poisonous summer sipping wine in bulk for free. The fruit transforms so much from start to finish that it’s hard to tell what the end product will be…but generally it is better! (Just look at the peapod. It went from some inedible pods to a drinkable…something.)
Apples are a no brainer… tart crabapple wine might be just what I’m looking for, but I’ll have to wait for our trees to get bigger. The next best thing is a slightly underripe wild apple tree! We picked 5 1/2 lbs of little apples and put them in a cooler for the ride home. They may have stayed in that cooler for a few days…whoops. This wine was started on August 30, 2017.
Apple Wine
5 1/2 lbs apples, stems and seeds removed, rough chopped in the Cuisinart
1 tsp citric acid
1 tsp pectic enzyme
pinch k-meta
1 1/8 lbs raisins (brown), chopped
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Boil 3.5 cups sugar in 1.5 quarts water, add the chopped raisins and bring to a boil. Pour over apple mixture in primary fermenting bucket. I used citric acid instead of an acid blend because it is the acid natural to apples. I’m not sure if it will affect the wine.
Brix tested at 16, acidity 3.8 pH. Added Cote des Blancs dry yeast, sprinkled on top of mixture.
Day 4: Brix tested at 0…whoa! Boiled an additional 0.8125 lbs sugar in 1 cup water, blended back in to bucket to raise brix to 22.5.
Day 7: Racked apple wine out of bucket into 1 gallon glass carboy and 1 32 oz carboy.
Day 34: Bleh. Dry, poor flavor. Added k-meta. Very cloudy.
Day 36: Much cleaner flavor. Needs time.
Day 54: Flavor improving. This is THE most hazy wine out of about 10 going. Not surprising with the amount of pectin in apples, but I thought the pectinase would help!
Day 57: Added 1/5 packet chitosan, stirred vigorously, much air released from solution. Maybe this will help the particles settle out.
Day 58: Added 1/5 packet keilosol, stirred 30 seconds.
Day 73: Racked into new carboy. Still cloudy. I’m going to have to pull out the big guns to clear this apple haze…or just set it in a cold corner for a few months. Good flavor.
Day 93: NO aroma, flavor- not great. Added 1 Tbsp bentonite mixture and a pinch of k-meta, shook. I’m a little worried about the apple wine. It’s still so cloudy and the flavor had been improving for so long and now was suddenly bad. I hope there’s not something in it that is uninvited.
Day 108: No aroma, still cloudy, neutral apply flavor. Tasted tart and effervescent. If it would EVER clear I would drink it in the summer. Racked, added 1 cup of water. I had forgotten about the reserve juice in the fridge. I opened the swing top of the 32 oz bottle…and after a delay it exploded foam all over the kitchen. We forgot to vent this one, oops! Good times. Poured the remains (with no concern for transferring the lees) into a smaller swing top bottle.
Day 215: With my new drill-mounted degasser in hand, I attacked the apple wine, convinced this would clear it at last. We’ll see if it works, but I DID have some bubbles come out. This wine is over 7 months old!
Day 228: Still cloudy, the degasser didn’t make any difference. I brewed up some Sparkaloid and dumped it in.
Day 229: Crystal clear at last!
Day 236: The apple wine has taken on a reddish hue now that it is clear, really a pretty color. It also tastes better. I racked it into a new carboy to take it off the (considerable) goo at the bottom and added a blend of oak chips.
Day 404: I swear…finally bottled this stuff. It was so boring for so long that I just never bothered, and it sat in a gallon carboy with its little carboy sweater just bulk aging away. Finally tasted it after a busy summer, and not only is it still gorgeously clear, it actually tastes like apple again. I can’t believe this wine didn’t go bad while I was ignoring it for nearly a year! Made 4 750 mL bottles and one 375 mL. Hopefully this will be a nice summer sipping wine.