Homemade wine making is an exciting experience.
Wine can be made literally from any berries and fruits. For example, the original taste and pleasant color is obtained from the watermelon wine.
The pulp of the striped berry does not have a pronounced aroma or taste, so the drink is not as bright as, for example, a wine made from cherry, grape or raspberry. However, many people like its pleasant reddish-pink color and fresh, pleasant taste. Moreover, such a wine can be prepared, if only because it is impossible to buy it in a store.
In watermelon, a lot of nutrients, so that wine drinks from a giant berry are not only tasty, but also useful. Thanks to the juiciness of watermelon flesh, wine can be made from pure juice. Winemakers have learned to prepare a drink of varying degrees of strength. There are recipes for light table, fortified dessert or liqueur wines from watermelon. Choose your version of an unusual alcoholic beverage will be easy.
Watermelon wine - general principles of preparation
In order for a watermelon wine to have the most intense taste and color, it is necessary to take only fully ripe fruits. In the last week of August and in September, the concentration of healthy and flavoring substances in the striped berry reaches a peak. If you hurry and take the immature specimens, the wine will be too watery, completely tasteless, devoid of even a hint of fresh watermelon aroma.
Watermelon is prepared for the winemaking process is very simple: thoroughly washed, cut off the crust, completely removing the white part, remove the bones, cut the red flesh into small cubes.
The process of making a light alcoholic drink based on the pulp of watermelon berries is similar to the process of making wine from other berries and fruits. It is necessary to squeeze out the juice or get pulp, then wort ferment, brew and fully mature. If you want to get a drink with a more pronounced taste, the wine must be given time to fully mature in the cold.
Of the required ingredients can be called only white sugar. Despite the fact that watermelons are sweet, their own sugars are not enough to ferment. In addition, homemade wines from watermelons can add citric, tannic and tartaric acids, grapes or raisins, juice of other berries or fruits, as well as spices. The wort is prepared in glass or enamelled containers. They must be poured with boiling water and dried, otherwise the wort may simply become moldy. Keep the finished product to be in the cold, otherwise the wine will turn sour.
Watermelon wine in raisins
A simple and tasty version of homemade wine, which has a beautiful color and light refreshing taste. Instead of citric acid, you can take an equal amount of fresh lemon juice. The strength of the finished drink is from 10 to 12 degrees.
Ingredients:
• ten kilograms of ripe watermelons;
• granulated sugar depending on the volume of watermelon juice (approximately four kilograms);
• ten grams of citric acid for each liter of watermelon juice;
• 150 grams of unwashed raisins.
Preparation:
Grind the prepared slices of watermelon with a blender or just wrinkle with your hands. It should be a homogeneous liquid mass.
It should be put in a container for fermentation, pour in the norm of raisins and citric acid, tie the neck of the container with a gauze napkin.
Remove the prepared pulp in a dark warm pantry or a large closed closet for three days.
Every day at least two times to mix the wort.
As soon as the first signs of digestion appear (the mass starts to sizzle and foam), pour in one hundred grams of sugar per liter of mass, mix.
Pour the wort into the fermentation tank, leaving the top of the bottle free for a quarter. It is necessary that the watermelon juice in the fermentation process does not overflow the edge of the container.
Tighten the rubber medical glove on the neck of the bottle, puncturing one “finger” with a needle. Carefully tie to the neck so that the gas does not rip off the glove.
The bottle should stand at a temperature not lower than 18 and not higher than 25 degrees for three days.
After a specified time, the glove must be removed, add another hundred grams per liter of wort. After removing the water seal, drain two liters of fermented juice, pour in the sugar rate, mix until dissolved, and drain the syrup back into the container. Glove, too, back into place.
After four days, the process of adding sugar is repeated. Leave the tank alone to end fermentation. The process will take from two to four weeks. The completion signal will be a lowered glove, precipitation and light color of the liquid. Drain juice in another container, try. Optionally add more sugar.
You can fix the wine with vodka, adding from five to fifteen percent of the hot drink for the entire volume of the resulting wine.
Bottles must be completely filled to prevent contact of the drink with oxygen.
Send wine for ripening for a half to three months. The room should be dark and cold (temperature - air from five to twelve degrees).
Every two to three weeks, the water from the watermelons must be filtered, getting rid of the sediment. When it stops falling out, maturation is ready.
Pour the wine into clean bottles and store.
Watermelon Wine “Table”
Excellent table wine will turn out if you add tannic and tartaric acid to watermelon juice. You can buy from specialized stores. From the specified amount of ingredients, approximately eight liters of light, pleasant wine from watermelons are obtained. The young wine will be light pink, matured - orange-brown.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of juice from September watermelons;
• 2.5 grams of tartaric acid;
• ten grams of tannic acid;
• seven hundred grams of sugar.
Preparation:
Squeeze juice out of watermelons.
In a large saucepan, mix all the ingredients so that the sugar is completely dissolved.
Pour the sweet juice into a glass or plastic bottle with a narrow neck, cork and store in a cool place (but not in the refrigerator).
After two days, the juice will begin to ferment. It can not be opened, so as not to delay the process for a long time.
When the hiss inside the tank stops, the digestion can be considered complete.
Clear wine poured into clean bottles, pre-filtered through a gauze filter.
Young wine from watermelons should be sent to a dark cool place to ripen. The longer the wine costs, the tastier it becomes, the richer the color gets.
Watermelon Wine “Sweet Dessert”
Tasty and quite strong dessert wine can be prepared with the addition of special wine yeast. The cooking process is similar to the previous recipe.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of ready watermelon juice; • three kilograms of granulated sugar (plus another pound after making the wine);
• Fifteen grams of wine yeast.
Preparation:
Juice mixed with yeast and sugar (first rate - three kilograms).
Close in the bottle and put for fermentation in a dark cool room.
When the wine ceases to ferment and brighten, strain and add the second rate of sugar.
Bottle and send to ripen for three to five months.
Wine from watermelon “Liquor”
The original wine with a mild flavor is very sweet. The drink is perfect for cheeses and fruits.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of juice from fresh watermelons;
• twelve kilograms of sugar;
• six liters of water;
• twenty grams of wine yeast (or forty grams of tartaric acid plus fifteen grams of tannic).
Preparation:
Prepare a sugar syrup from half the sugar and half the norm of water (just dissolve the granulated sugar in the specified amount of hot drinking water).
Pour the sugar solution into the ready watermelon juice, add the wine yeast, mix.
Close the fermentation tank with a lid, keep the fermented juice in a dark, cool room.
When the juice is almost fermenting, add the second rate of sugar solution.
After the fermentation process is completed, strain the wine, pour it into bottles and insist for three to four months.
Watermelon wine with vodka according to student recipe
An elementary way to make an alcoholic drink from watermelon juice. As for taste, you can argue, but the cooking speed is impressive. It turns out more wine liqueur than real wine. But for a change, you can try it.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of water;
• a large watermelon weighing about seven kilograms;
• liter of high-quality vodka.
Preparation:
Using a medical syringe, pump up the watermelon with vodka, whipping it around from all sides through the peel.
Fully immerse the pumped berry in cold water.
After three days, when the watermelon softens completely, remove it from the water.
Make a hole in the watermelon rind and drain the pink juice through it.
Bottled juice and try.
Wine from watermelon and Picatnoe grapes
Gentle wine from watermelons honey-pink color has a spicy taste with a hint of grapes.
Ingredients:
• ten kilograms of watermelon pulp;
• five kilograms of sugar;
• two hundred grams of grapes.
Preparation:
Pureen pulp in any way.
Drain the mass in the fermentation tank, throw the grapes, cover with gauze and leave in the room for three days.
After the start of fermentation, when foam appears, add sugar at the rate of two hundred grams per liter of wort.
To introduce the remains of sugar in the same portions on the fifth and eighth day from the beginning of fermentation.
Tighten the rubber glove or put a water seal.
Keep future wine from watermelons in a dark room. It should ferment before precipitation.
Strain, pour into bottles, let mature for a month.
Watermelon Wine - Tricks and Tips
- If the white parts adjacent to the crusts are left on the watermelon pulp, the wine will taste bitter.
- To make watermelon juice, the crushed flesh must be filtered immediately through folded gauze 2-3 times. Pull can not, as the pulp is rapidly oxidized. It will ruin the taste.
- If the fermentation process does not start at all, the wort can be helped: drop a drop of ammonia per 50 liters of juice.
- Pure fermented juice will give weak wine. Adding tannic acid and tartaric acid will result in a stronger drink.
- Maturation of wine from watermelons after filtration must be at least a month. But the most delicious drink is obtained after ripening for a year.
