Virtually anything can be fermented. I happen to like fruit, other people might ferment their peas, just so they can offer a glass of "my pee wine" to their friends! The following recipes have all been tried and tested over the past 14 years or so - we no longer drink wine and the last wine was made in 2017 as we started to switch towards the simplicity of liqueurs.
Put your cleaned fruit into a bucket, cover in boiling water and add a crushed campden tablet and leave overnight
The following day add sugar until you reach an SG of 1.080
Add other ingredients such as citric acid, pectic enzyme, TronOzymol and
Pitch in the yeast to ferment
After a few days, strain out the fruit pulp and add more sugar until the SG is up back around 1.020 and ferment again for a few days
Strain and funnel the liquid into a demijohn, add more sugar, add airlock and ferment for 3 months until there's little to no activity
Bottling is simply a case of syphoning the liquid off the sediment, filtering through a coffee filter and bottling it ... then waiting for 3 months or more before tasting
Apple Wine
An apple wine recipe can vary a lot in preparation alone, but this recipe gives you the basic ingredients. You can add honey or spices or top up with any other fruit flavours you like.
Careful how much sugar you add. Use a hydrometer and stop when you get to between 1.080 and 1.085. This will be enough to give you a respectable 12% dry white apple wine.
Apricot Wine
This is a nice Apricot Wine recipe, a mix of fresh fruit and any dry apricots produces a wine with a lovely warm amber glow & makes a great change from pale white wines. I have one apricot tree in the Lovington garden so I'll be looking forward to something happening with that in the coming years.
The great thing about winemaking is that once you start experimenting, there's probably a dozen demijohns on the go and if you're clever, you'll always keep a store of fruity top up wines in the fridge for when you make a sludgy one, i.e. anything with banana, peaches or figs! When you rack off, you'll need the bottle of something fruity from the fridge to top up the demijohn!
Blackberry and Apple Wine
So to Autumn in the hedgerows and gardens around Dartmoor. The sun is still warmish when it isn't raining and the first apples, ripe or wind-fallen are being assembled for pipping, coring, peeling crushing or chopping .. It's the right time to write out a blackberry and apple wine recipe.
Because the methods of preparing blackberries and apples for winemaking differ so much, they need to be made in separate buckets. Or at least the apple wine needs to be started a week prior to the blackberry wine so the apple flavour can be extracted before they are mixed for fermentation.
Half Gallon of Blackberry Wine
Half Gallon of Apple Wine
Blackberry & Plum Wine
I wrote this blackberry and plum wine recipe after I'd made them as separate half gallons, but there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it in one fermentation bucket with some late season plums. Or better still some frozen plums so the stones squeeze out easily.
As with any wine making, the easiest way to mess it up is by putting too much sugar in so that the alcohol kills the yeast before it's finished fermenting. So, only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12% when the hydrometer reads dry (0.990 - 0.995).
Blackcurrant & Blackberry Wine
This blackcurrant and blackberry wine recipe isn't seasonally possible without using a freezer.
As with any wine making, the easiest way to mess it up is by putting too much sugar in so that the alcohol kills the yeast before it's finished fermenting. So, only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12% when the hydrometer reads dry (0.990 - 0.995).
Blackcurrant Wine
A blackcurrant wine recipe is not ribena for adults. If you have access to Blackcurrant bush you'll have already made ribena and jam so use this Blackcurrant Wine Recipe to turn these guys into something special.
Again, this blackcurrant wine recipe is more reliable if you don't put as much sugar in as I did the first time. The rule is really to only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Blueberry and Blackberry Wine
Lovely day so we drove over to Luke's Fruit Farm near the southern fringe of Dartmoor National Park. The blueberries were riper on this trip than a few weeks previously, quite sweet, but without netting the birds had fed on enough to make picking the best more time consuming.
The grower mentioned that he was pleased we'd come as for some reason Brits don't seem to know what an excellent fruit they have here. We picked 3 Lb of Blueberries and paid £11.80 for the privilege and experience. We ate handfuls on the way home, and made liberal additions to that week's morning porridge.
It's worth noting that even with your own Blueberry bushes, it's going to be difficult to justify using more than 2 Lbs of Blueberries in one wine recipe. So this blueberry and blackberry wine recipe is for people who have a few blueberry bushes or want to buy frozen beries and have access to a lot of blackberry brambles and hedgerows.
This blueberry and blackberry wine recipe is more reliable if you only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Blueberry Wine
This is my basic blueberry wine recipe. I have limited experience like anyone in the UK, but so far I think every wine with blueberries has been exceptional.
It's worth noting that without your own Blueberry bushes, you're going to need frozen blueberries. Having said that, the number of people growing blueberries is enormous. The UK climate is perfect as long as you water them, feed them ericacoius food and add fresh manure each spring. Don't forget to prune them when they are a few years old to keep the centre open.
As with any wine making, the easiest way to mess it up is by putting too much sugar in so that the alcohol kills the yeast before it's finished fermenting. So, only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12% when the hydrometer reads dry (0.990 - 0.995).
Cherry Wine & Berries
Here's a Cherry Wine Recipe that is flexible, you don't need a ton of cherries and it'll mature faster and taste as nice or nicer than many other single berry wines.
A lot of people don't make cherry wine because they are disappointed that the flavour changes during fermentation, they might have to wait 2 years before tasting and a lot of wild cherry trees grow too high to pick. So I say, use less cherries or pick up frozen ones and add flavours that you already like to make up the bulk to 4.5 Lbs of fruit.
Crab Apple & Cherry Wine
I'd like to blend Crab Apples with Cherries, it feels like it could be a tart or a cweet pie ... anyway, this came about because I was told I had to make space in the freezer, with all the cattery work we needed more freezer space for ready meals because there's no time to cook during the summer!
I guess that a good crab apple and cherry wine recipe would blend the fruits best characteristics together to complement each other, a tart crab apple and a sweet dessert cherry for example might fight to obliterate each other but could end up balanced and distinctly separate on the palette.
At the end of the bucket ferment, if your SG is below 1.080 add sugar until it's around 1.085. My rule is of thumb is really only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Crab Apple Wine
Whichever crab apples you have you can spend hours cutting them open and removing the pips by hand, or you can freeze them, crush them after the boiling water cools and skim the pips from the surface while the campden tablet is working.
Any crab apple wine recipe is straightforward, but if you have yellow or green crab apples use white grape juice and sultanas, but if they are red use raisins and red grape juice.
Damson Wine and Berries
As you can see my damson wine recipe with berries is quite flexible. I used a pound and a half of frozen berries picked in July & August, you may have something else in the freezer. You might take a look in farm shop or supermarket frozen summer fruit sections for something similar. If you don't have enough fruit, double up on the raisins and drop half a pound somewhere else. You can see from the record I made two gallons and added local Lamyatt honey to one so I can compare the flavour in 2013.
My rule is of thumb is as always, only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12% when the hydrometer reads dry (0.990 - 0.995).
Dartmoor Sloe Wine
This sloe wine recipe is a classic full bodied red. I must admit to loving sloes. I love their colour and I love this sloe wine recipe. We waited 12 months to taste it, now we'll leave it a lot longer.
Damsons and Sloes are high in pectin so maybe 1 1/2 tsp of pectic enzyme (pectolase) could be used. Also you can see in the record below while foraging I'd found half a pound of Blackberries, Elderberries & Bullace and they were all pitched in.
As a rule of thumb for adding sugar: Use a hydrometer and add sugar only a few Oz at a time stirring well so you can take another reading. Aim for a starting point around 1.085. 1.080 is a perfectly adequate point to end up with a 90 point drop to dryness and a guaranteed 12% wine.
In January 2012 we tried our first taste of this sloe wine and I can attest that it's better than I imagined while we were waiting for it to mature.
Elderberry and Apple Wine
This is an elderberry and apple wine recipe, but whatever wine recipe you choose, if it contains elderberries, then you don't need tannin - You don't need to add grape juice, raisins or tea ... Elderberries have a strong colour and add a real heavy body to the wine. It will take an Apple wine from a warm amber to a deep red with little effort. You can help the body and colour further by using some red Aldi grape juice. One other thing, while I totally love elderflower, I really dislike a strong elderberry flavour, but when elderberry wine matures, the cough sweet flavour disappears leaving a wonderful wine to eat with red meats.
My rule is of thumb is really only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Elderflower & Crab Apple Wine
This Elderflower and Crab Apple wine recipe can take on a few variations within the recipe depending on the colour of your crab apples. If you had a lot of elderflower heads in your vicinity, you could use 25 elderflower blossoms and drop the crab apples completely.
I would recommend using crab apples in this recipe. Freeze them, then thaw in the bucket. You'll be able to crush them with your fingers once the boiling water has been thrown in. (when cooler) Over the next few days you'll be stirring the must to get the flavours into the water so you can skim off the apple pips as you go.
My rule is of thumb is as always, only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.
Elderflower Wine
This Elderflower wine recipe has an exceptional bouquet. If you had a lot of elderflower heads in your vicinity, use 25 elderflower blossoms per gallon ... I'd call this elderflower wine recipe "elderflower cordial with Sauternes yeast" ;)
My rule is of thumb is as always, only add as much sugar as you need to reach an SG of say 1.080 - 1.085 and that will almost guarantee a dry ferment at 12%.