Fermenters Forum

DAY ONE
Added 3.5# of frozen raspberries to a sterilized pail. Boiled 1 gallon purified water. Poured into pail.

Placed a top on the primary and put into refrigerator so juices have time to extract into the water. Will come back in five days to add pectic enzyme.

DAY 5
Removed from refrigerator. Mixed 1 tsp pectic enzyme with 1/2 cup warm water to dissolve. Poured into must.

Pectic enzyme helps reduce haze from hot water (beginning of how jelly is made).

DAY 6
Dissolved 1/8 tsp potassium metabisulfate (campden) in 1/2 cup warm water. Poured into must.

This is used to kill wild yeasts 24 hours before adding the wine yeast.

DAY 7
Sanitized everything. Used a strainer to strain juice off of chopped berries, then ran through nylon bag strainer again.

DID NOT add tannin or citric acid as you do with strawberry wine. Already pretty acidic.

Optimal pH is 3.4-3.6. Came in at 3.2.

SG was 1.00. Slowly added sugar to reach 1.085. Stirred vigorously to dissolve and introduce O2 which will help the yeast. Took about 2 1/2# or 5 1/2 c + 2 T. Potential alcohol is around 11.5% then.

ORIGINAL SG - ENDING SG x 135.87 = ABV %

My hope is that because the fruit sat in water longer before starting fermentation that there will be more fruit flavor - hopefully keeping the alcohol a hair lower helps also.

Added 1 tsp yeast nutrient and 1/4 tsp Pasteur Red yeast. Covered to sit in 75 degree house.

FOUR DAYS AFTER ADDING YEAST
SG 1.030

SIX DAYS AFTER ADDING YEAST
Vigorous foam on top.

Moved to secondary. 1.014 SG

TWO MONTHS AFTER MOVING TO SECONDARY
I wanted it off the lees earlier, but didn't get to it. Racked yesterday.

FYI There is also a 50/50 strawberry raspberry wine from leftovers that didn't fit into the carboy. After racking, added about 1/2 bottle of grape kids wine to top it off.

June 10, 2022
About seven months after starting, bottled.

Raspberry has a good raspberry flavor, but the raspberry strawberry mix is slightly bitter. We'll see!

Tastes pretty good after three months in the bottle. I'll tweak it a little next time by following BrewBitz Homebrew Recipe next time.

It was a good idea to let the raspberries sit in water for a week to extract the flavor and then ferment the juice instead of the berries. Less alcohol flavor and more fruit taste.

6 MONTHS AFTER BOTTLING
Tried adding some raspberry juice to a bottle this time. 2 cups. Added good flavor for less overpowering alcohol taste.

Was a bit flat.

Added 1/4 tsp acid blend, which was just enough to bring back the acidity of raspberries.