A case Study, My Passionfruit Wine.

Here we go, this is how I made my passionfruit wine. The recipe is as follows and is in the recipe section. ACTIONS are in BOLD, Comments are in Itallic

Should fill a 5 litre Demijohn, or a 1 Gal Demijohn.

2.5kg passionfruit pulp

1kg sugar

3.5 liters water

2 campden tablet

1 teaspoon pectic enzyme (14grams)

1 teaspoon yeast neturient

1 packet wine yeast, my yeast comes in small packets about 5 grams per packet

1 teaspoon Stablilzer (about 14 grams)

Pulp the fruit and place pulp in a sanatised stocking. Take the stuff you normally eat out of the fruit and place in a bag.

Tie off Stocking and place stocking into primary fermenter.

If your wondering what my fermenter looks like, here it is.

Add sugar,

Add campden tablet, crushed, these little suckers are real hard to crush, I have my own mortice and pesitile that I use for wine making to crush the campden tablet and mix other small ingredients.

Also add the yeast neturient, this is optional just gives the yeast a head start. If you do not add it it might only take a few days longer before you able to do the first racking.

Add water, I use hot or boiling water.

Stir very well to dissolve all the sugar.

Cover and leave it to rest, I left mine overnight, but if you were doing this in the morning then you could do the next step in the afternoon.

Measure the Specific Gravity to make sure it is at about 1.095, if a little low, add some more sugar, if a little high you can do one of two things.

Add water to bring it down (which will make more wine, but will also dilute the fruit juice) Or what I prefer to do

Just leave it to ferment it may not ferment to dryness (all the sugar used up) as the yeast might get drunk and die before it is able to use all the sugar. This is no big deal it will just mean the wine will still have sugar in it and be a bit sweet.

I prefer to ferment all my wines to dry then add sugar prior to bottling. Rather than have ti sweet to start with and have the yeast die, or kill it before all the sugar is used up. Either way is fine and people will no doubt have their preferred method.

Add pectic enzyme, I had run out when I made this recipe, so I left it out.

However it would be added at this stage if you were to include it.

Add yeast, by just sprinkling it on top. You can activate the yeast if you like, which means getting some luke warm water, 20degrees. Adding some sugar, and sprinkling the yeast on top. One it starts to bubble (after half an hour or so) just tip into the fermenter. This is not necessary it just gives the yeast a head start.

Cover the fermenter, you can use a sterilized cloth if you like, I usually use the lid of the fermenter placed on lightly. Not screwed on tight.

Stir and squeeze daily, I use a potato masher (sterilized of course). I use this to squeeze down on the bag in the water, just like mashing spuds.

It could look diciededly yuck at this stage, but that is OK. However if you wish not to share your wine with anyone now is the time to show them it brewing.

A photo of what I use for stirring and squeezing the bag. Real high tech.

Leave until vigorous fermentation is finished. Usually when the wine is not bubbling away madly. Best if your not sure to check the specific gravity with a hydrometer.

Check for specific gravity is between 1.01 and 1.015. Usually after 4-5 days, but depends on lots of other different things like temperature etc. Just check with hydrometer.

When Specific Gravity is between 1.01 and 1.015 drain fruit bag. Also before you rack you need to drain the fruit bag in the fermenter. It is usually best not to squeeze the bag out as this can often lead to problems with the wine cleating later on. I usually just hang the bag over the wine for a hour or two.

Rack into secondary. Just a fancy way of saying syphon the must (juice) into your demijohn. Leave most of the sediment behind.

Top up so level is about 3-4 centermeters (1 inch) from bottom of airlock, Fit air lock to demijohn or secondary and leave (usually for a month).

Secondary, you can see the airlock fitted at the top, the will most likely bubbles coming out of the airlock slowly. This is the wine fermenting in the second stage. You will leave in the secondary for about 1 month. Which you will then rack again and either leave, or kill and bottle.

Lees, Ever wanted to see what lees are? Here is a photo of the lees from the passionfruit wine.

You can see the sediment at the bottom of the demijohn, that is lees.

From here I'm going to leave the passionfruit wine, as it is still brewing and I want to show you the next steps.

For this exercise we will kill the yeast and use finnings to settle the wine clear for bottling.

Do not bottle until the specific gravity has reached below 1.000, or perferably to 0.095. This means all the sugar is used and the alcahol content should be about 10% (which we need for preserving). You may need to rack once or twice before this is reached.

Add crushed Campden tablet, stablisier (Potassuim Sorbate) stir very well for 2 mins. Kills the yeast if there is any still alive, as we do not want the yeast to start fermenting again in the bottle as this can lead to exploding bottles. Stablizer helps preserve the wine.

You can see my stirrer, make sure you sterilise everything, this I found to be one of the effortless ways of stirring. I would prefer to use a plastic stirrer, but that is all I could get hold of, stainless steel rod with a bent bit at the end.

We did cheat a bit in this photo. That is not passionfruit wine, mine is not ready to bottle yet. Passionfruit wine will be yellow in colour.

Add finnings, dissolve into a cup of the wine, then pour back into the demijohn and stir again for a good 2 minutes. The finnings I used came in little packets, 1 packet was just right for doing 1 demijohn. If yours are in a larger packet, you should be using a couple of teaspoons.

Wait for about another week to 10 days, and the wine should clear.

DO NOT BOTTLE A WINE THAT IS NOT CLEAR IT WILL NOT CLEAR IN THE BOTTLE.

Rack into Sterilised Bottles. Below is what I used, it is a simple piece of silicon tube with a cheap garden hand held hose gun on the end. I found this the cheapest and easiest way to be able to turn the flow on and off when bottling. There are other methods of course, but this is the one I used. There are dedicated syphons for this job. You can also rack the wine into another vessel and pour the wine into bottles or rack into a vessel with a tap(like a fermenter) and use the tap on the bottom to bottle the wine. I found the least handling of the wine the better. But the aim is to get the wine into the bottle without any of the lees (sediment).

Corking, sterilise the Corks. One thing a lot of people forget is to sterilise the corks. Also Corking can be a real pain. One thing I bought early on is a corker. The first batch I did borrow a corker from my local home brew supplies. They were very helpful. There are small hand corkers, and big expensive corkers. I found this one to be the best value for money. It is reasonably cheap and easy to use. The small hand ones were too much hassle and the big ones were too expensive for me.

Stand the Bottles for 2-3 Days, then lie flat in storage for 2-6 months.

Also label now as if you do a lot of variety you will have no idea in 12 months time what is what. Unless every time you enjoy a lucky dip as to what wine you will drink tonight.

Some notes, I usually do as big a batch as the fruit will allow, usually I do a 27 litre brew as if it is good I want as many as I can get. And if it is bad, I'll give it to my mates at the end of a long night, no one ever notices after the first few bottles.

Of course the problem is you have to store it and you also have to have the bottles. Best to ask around for bottles as most people are quite happy to give them to you provided you give them a bottle or two in return. You can also ask you local pub, as they might be willing to give you their empties.

Why do I enjoy brewing wine? It really doesn't take up a lot of time unless you want it to. You can happily leave it for several days a week even a month or so and there is no problems. It is simple, quite cheap and fun to see how it all turns out. Also if you brew lots you will end up with one huge cellar and that looks impressive.

So enjoy it is not that hard to make a wine, it is even quite easy to make a nice, and occasionally you'll make a beauty. But more often then not it is the fun of trying it out, sharing it with your friends and family.

Share your recipes with everyone else, and also share you stories in our forum. We would love to hear from you.

The Cheat Sheet.

Here is my cheat sheet, rough rules of thumb.

Add fruit, about half weight per volume.

eg. 5Liters = 2.5 kg fruit, 30 liters = 15kg fruit

Add sugar, about 1Kg per 5 litres

Add Campden tablet crushed

Add Yeast neturient

Add Boiling water

Stir to disolve

WAIT for it to cool.

Add disolved sugar to bring SG to 1.095

Add Peptic Enzyme

Add Yeast

STIR every day, squish the bag with the fruit in it to release the flavour

When SG = 1.01 to 1.015, rack. Drain bag and syphon to a secondary

Fit air lock and leave for about 1 month

After about 1 month, Rack again off lees.

Rack every month until no more sediment. Every second racking add 1 crushed campden tablet

After no more sediment, add stabliser (Potassuim Sorbate) stir very very well

OR

To speed up clearing, if SG is less than 1.000 prefer 0.995 kill yeast and clear using finning, and add stabiliser

To kill yeast add crushed campden tablet.

To clear use finnings

To stabilise add stablisier (Potassuim Sorbate)

Stir very very well.

Leave sit for a 5 days or so until clear.

Bottle.

Cork.

Wait

More Waiting

Drink and enjoy.