I've never made watermelon wine before so this is my first attempt. Like most of my wines I wanted to try to stick as close to the "old way" as possible, even though I don't know what that means :-). So, we'll start as always with the ingredients:
3 seeded watermelons
That's it. I chose seeded because I thought they would be closest to what farmers had a couple hundred years ago. No extra ingredients other than the yeast. I used 116 which has been my go-to. I should really experiment with others.
I halved the melons and scooped out the good stuff into a pot. Then I used a potato masher to extract the juice. I need to buy a big colander/funnel to improve this process because getting the juice into the jug was difficult. Live and keep learning. I hoped to put some pulp in there but I actually had too much juice so I just went with the juice.
When the jug was full I tested it and it was at 7% sugar which will yield around 3.5% alcohol. Not very good so I will be adding sugar. I also tasted a cup of the juice. Nice and sweet and tastes like summer. I hope the wine does the same. The taste was light and... common. I think I'll be adding acid blend when it finishes. I want to taste it first though. I put the yeast in and gave it a swirl and put it under the table.
The next day it was bubbling as expected. I bought 8 lbs of white sugar. I've been using the evaporated cane juice that we have at the house but I wanted to do an experiment. All of my wines are tasty but I've noticed a similar taste in all of them. I wondered if it's from the cane juice adding a flavor. Maybe that's a good thing. Who knows. But, I used white sugar. When I poured it in the whole concoction bubbled up like crazy. I poured some into a gallon jug and added some leftover pulp. I put sugar in both containers. It's not an exact science but I think I've added about 6 lbs overall which should be about 20% sugar. So I'm hoping for 13% alcohol when all is said and done.
One interesting fact is that the bubbling mixture stained my plastic stirring spoon. I was surprised that the watermelon had that much color. So, note to self, I may want to be careful when bottling.
As of a couple of days everything is bubbling away as expected with cloth on the tops. I'll stir it a few more times and then pop an airlock on. Then, on to the next project.
October 1 2019 - The brew stopped bubbling about a month ago. I took it off of the lees and I've been letting it sit. It hasn't really cleared but smells very nice. I wanted to try my hand at back sweetening so Mary B made up some simple sugar water by mixing 4 cups of sugar to 2 cups of water. Heated until the sugar dissolved and then I let it cool. I siphoned out a half gallon and added a few tablespoons of the sugar until the taste was right. Everyone had a sip and said they liked it. I tried adding some acid but no one said it made it better. In fact they said it made it worse. I will say that I liked it but I like acidy things. Based on my tests I added about 5 cups of sugar-water to the 3 gallons of wine. I poured some out of the final product and Mary B said it was very tasty.
The watermelon is not at the front of the taste but has a nice linger after the sip. There is an odd "brown" taste. Mary B said that was an accurate description. It's not a bad taste, maybe it's from the rind or the lees. It will be interesting to see how this ages.
I added potassium sorbate to prevent a re-start. If everything looks good I'll bottle it this weekend or sooner.
October 8, 2019 - I bottled the wine last night while shuffling songs from Joe Cocker. He did a version of many rivers to cross which made me remember when Deb Dollar played at Mary Pat Hughs' memorial. Turns out it was 20 years ago this year on June 8 (a date I should remember). I sent a note to deb to let her know I'm thinking of her. As for the wine it is delicious! I of course had a glass left over that didn't fit in a bottle. It looks very nice. I bottled it dirty because I wanted to free up some jugs and I'm just impatient. I don't care if there is sediment in my wine. It's mine and I like it that way. I can't wait to see how this mellows. It's already more mellow than when I last racked it.
August 10, 2020 - Had a bottle of this recently. It aged very well, absolutely delicious and like most of my wines, a tad on the potent side. Good!
