Raspberry Wine

Classification: raspberry wine

Source: Desmond Power (des@jeeves@engr.mun.ca), r.c.w. 9/19/96

I just tasted a raspberry wine that I have had settling for about 5 weeks now, it is based on a number of recipes that I got from the net and from my homebrew store. I combined all the recipes together to get this...

Ingredients: (23 liters)

18 lb. Red Raspberries (store bought)
2.5 t Yeast Nutrient
2.5 t Yeast energizer
2.0 t Acid Blend
2.5 t Pectic Enzyme
1 t Grape Tannin
3 cans frozen concentrated apple juice
6-8 lb. Sugar (to bring sg up to 1.090)
1 packet Lavelin 1118 Yeast (I think this is the correct number)

Procedure:

I checked the acid on this, and it worked out to roughly 6.7%, assuming it did the acid titration right (I just bought the kit a little while ago)

The problem with raspberry wine is getting rid of the seeds. I read a post some time back explaining how the raspberry seeds can give the wine off flavours if left in the wine for extended periods. I used the following procedure...

Freeze and thaw berries. Mash berries in a bucket and add pectin enzyme. Wait two days then remove juice from pulp (this is the difficult part). To do this, I scooped the pulp into cheese cloth and tied it up in bags. The 18 1bs of berries required about 6 1.5'x1.5' cheeze cloth squares wrapped up. I then squeezed most of the juice from the pulp (don't throw the pulp away yet).

Add the rest of ingredients and bring sg up to 1.090 with sugar. Add yeast AND pulp bags to the must. While the must is fermenting over the next 5 days, squeeze pulp bags daily to remove extra flavour and colour from pulp. Remove pulp bags (squeeze out wine) and rack when gravity has dipped to 1.005 or less.

Then, you can rack every three weeks until clear (or follow whatever procedure you normally follow). I fined with gelatin last week to remove most of the extra yeast and the wine is quite clear now.

The wine is quite nice now, if you like raspberries. The wine has a nice raspberry flavour but it isn't too overwhelming. I'll probably bottle soon so I can start a batch of blueberry wine.

Specifics:

OG: 1.090