Watermelon With Pulp August 2021

 When I was making my 5 gallon batch of watermelon wine Mary B asked why I didn't keep the pulp in the wine.  I said that I got enough juice out so I didn't need to.  But it gave me an idea for a small batch test.  When I added extra juice to the 5 gallon batch I had a melon left over so I followed all of the same prep steps.  But instead of squeezing the juice I did something different.

In my stock pot I added sugar.  I know this brings the juice out of things.  I also added pectin enzyme.  I think adding the sugar drew more of the juice right away because as I was mashing etc it seemed there was more juice to be had.  I put the whole creation into 2 gallon jars.  It was really pretty.  The red color comes from lycopene which is the same ingredient which makes tomatoes red.  I added the approximate amount of sugar needed to get me to 22%, all estimation since it's hard to test the sugar with the pulp floating around.

Once everything quieted down a little I racked it all to a single gallon jug.  It's still bubbling slowly.  Now just to wait until it clears so I can try some and compare it to the other batch.

Mid August Watermelon 2021

 A couple of years ago I made some watermelon wine, my first batch ever.  It turned out really tasty and everyone liked it.  Now I have only a couple bottles left.  In that batch I added potassium sorbate and back sweetened a little.  

So this time I wanted to go bigger.  I found that you get about 1 gallon of juice from a single watermelon.  So my ingredient list is very simple.

• 5 watermelons
• yeast KV1116
• sugar
• nutrient

The prep is actually a lot of work.  You have to slice and scoop the watermelons to get all of the juice from them.  I used a potato masher to mash them up, a hand mixer to further pulverize them, and then poured the juice into my ferment plastic bucket.  I only started with four gallons at first.  I tested the juice and it was about 7% sugar.  I added sugar to get to around 22% since I like my wine strong.  I put the lid on it and let it go.  It was almost dry in a week.  Some online friends said that this is not unusual with KV1116 and it has been hot which will speed things up too.  

On September 22 I decided to move everything to the glass jugs.  Only problem was I only had 3 gallon glass but I do have a 2 gallon plastic bottle that I bought and have used once or twice.  So I swapped it out.  I only had a tiny sip and it tastes good.  It's still fermenting very slowly.