I try to keep things simple when making wine. I try to imagine the old days and not having fancy ingredients. I did look up online (a treat they didn't have back then) to see if there is anything different about peaches. Didn't learn much.
Ingredients:
- Half a bushel of peaches
- 9 cups of sugar
- Morning Thunder Tea
- Lemon juice
- Yeast
- Yeast Food
We cut the peaches into halves and removed the pits and put them in a big 12qt stock pot. They were already pretty soft so I mashed them with a potato masher. I poured in about 4 - 8 cups of hot but not boiling water. I let this sit for a day to leach out the juice.
The next day I poured off the juice into my 3 gal jug. I got over 1 1/2 gallons. Then I mashed and squeezed the remaining peach meat with a cheese cloth and got out about another half gallon or so eyeballing it at 2.5 gallons. I measured the sugar using a hydrometer and it was about 5%. I like sweet and high octane wine so I did a little math to try to get the mixture to 20%. The math went like this:
2.5 gallons of wine at 5% sugar (8 lbs liquid per gallon) makes 20 lbs of product. At 5% that makes one pound of sugar. I want to end up with 3 gallons at 20% which is 24 lbs of product which means I want 4.8 lbs of total sugar. Sugar is about .44 lbs per cup. 9 cups is about 4 lbs of sugar plus the pound that was already in there. Like I said, not an exact science. Plus, I never check the gravity after I add the sugar because the mixture is warmer and at that point, with the jug full, if I'm off there's nothing I can do about it anyway.
So I heat about 6-7 cups of water to almost boiling and add the sugar a little at a time so it can dissolve. Once dissolved take it off the heat and let it sit. If it's too hot it will kill the yeast. I poured a little of the mixture into a mug and put my morning thunder tea in it to steep. I also poured some into a bowl and added some warm water to get the temp down to 110ยบ. I put my yeast and yeast food into this bowl and mixed it up. You have to wait about 15 minutes for the yeast to re-hydrate. You can tell they're happy when it starts bubbling. This was a good time to do some dishes.
I poured the yeast, tea, and a few tablespoons of lemon into the jug, mixed, covered, and put away. I read that the tea adds tannins which are good in fruit wines, they add a little pucker feel to the wine. The lemon was to add a little acid to the mix. This is supposed to enhance the flavor. You're supposed to use wine-makers acid blend but I didn't have any.
By morning it was bubbling away. Lots of juice, little pulp. This should make a lot of wine. I still have enough peaches to make another 3 gallons at least.
I can't believe it but the ferment finished after only a week! I think this is the first time that has ever happened. I took the wine off of the pulp for the second ferment and put an airlock on but it didn't budge for days. I checked the gravity and it is at zero.
I got concerned that it would turn funky without any fermentation happening so I hurried out and got some corks and some bottles that a friend gave me. Tuesday 9/5 I had the house to myself so I could spread out in the kitchen and bottle it. I got 11 bottles! Sweet! I also tasted (of course) and it is delicious! I can't wait for it to age a little. Should be great with some mid-winter meals. I'm thinking it would go well with pork.
March 2018 - Had a bottle of this with TV. The flavor is changing. Very tasty and very peachy. Brought a bottle to T's for Easter. Big hit.
First Ferment
Finished Product
