Easy Strawberry Wine Recipe - Perfect for Beginners (2024)

FAQs

How to make wine at home for beginners? ›

Thoroughly mash fruit, add four crushed Campden tablets, cover with cheesecloth and allow container to stand four hours at room temperature. Add 10 cups sugar syrup, lemon juice, tea and yeast and allow seven days to ferment at a temperature between 60-70º F, stirring thoroughly twice daily.

I like to use Champagne yeast because it is a more neutral flavor, versus using a beer or wine yeast. Fermentation will now take place over the next 2-3 weeks. I always like to give my wine this amount of time just to make sure the fermentation process is complete.

The fermentation process for alcohol from strawberries typically takes around 2-4 weeks. However, the exact time may vary depending on factors such as the room temperature and the specific yeast strain used.

The most general guidelines the Wine Wiz can give you for aging wines from fruits, vegetables and herbs are these: Always cellar any wine at least six months before opening the first bottle and try to consume within three or four years.

About 30 pounds of strawberries are required for every 5-gallon batch of wine. Berries do not have to be capped prior to fermentation. Strawberries are very fruity and acidic, so water and sugar are added to the berry pulp prior to fermentation to reduce the acidity to about 0.8% and increase the sweetness.

The most common yeast associated with winemaking is Saccharomyces cerevisiae which has been favored due to its predictable and vigorous fermentation capabilities, tolerance of relatively high levels of alcohol and sulfur dioxide as well as its ability to thrive in normal wine pH between 2.8 and 4.

Normal red wine with good ripen but still healthy grapes. Making red wine with just such grapes is very easy. If you have a clean space, good temperature, and not vinegar around, you cannot fail.

Most commonly, granulated sugar is used when wines need added sugar since it doesn't need to be broken down first like complex sugars. Virtually any type of sugar can be used by winemakers who want to experiment with different textures and sweetness levels. This includes brown sugar, molasses, honey, syrups, and more!

You can of course still use bread yeast as all yeast performs the same function – converting sugar to alcohol – but your wine will likely have a much lower alcohol content than normal. The yeast best suited for baking has a lower alcohol tolerance, so it will stop fermenting after alcohol levels reach about 8%.

Strawberries, plums, watermelons, peaches, blackberries, gooseberries, boysenberries, grapefruits, pears, pineapples, persimmons are all very suitable for fruit home wine making, but this list is far from complete. You can see a full list of recipes by visiting our wine making recipe page.

Can you make wine without yeast? ›

Because the reality is that some people may be wondering if you can make wine without adding in your own commercially purchased yeast. And the answer to this question is a resounding yes. In fact, that is how wine has been made historically for millennia.

As we did earlier, we can calculate that we want the must to have 21.1% by weight — or 1.85 pounds of sugar per gallon. The deficiency in sugar is thus 1.85 minus 1.14 or 0.71 pounds. It is this amount (0.71 pounds) which would be recommended by many tables as the quantity of sugar to be added.

The yeast can only consume the sugars that are available, so increasing the amount of time the yeast is in the fermentor also has little affect on final ABV.

Most fruit wines should contain anywhere from 3 to 6 pounds of fruit per gallon of wine. A smaller amount of fruit will produce a lighter, more delicate wine, while a larger amount will make a heavier, more intense wine. It's nice to have both types of wine in your cellar.

Any other added ingredients can inhibit fermentation. There is no exact amount for how many pounds of fruit is needed to make 5 gallons of fruit wine (5 gallons is the common yield from most home winemaking recipes). The general guide is a range of 10-25 pounds of fruit per 5 gallons of wine.

Any number of different fruits may be used for making wine including peaches, watermelons, plums, strawberries, blackberries, boysenberries, gooseberries, pears, grapefruits, persimmons, pineapples, and much more. The first step in making wine using other types of fruit is the same as making wine using grapes.

As a general rule of thumb, you will need about 20-25 pounds of grapes to make a gallon of wine. However, it is worth noting that the amount of grapes you will need can also depend on the grape variety, the ripeness of the grapes, and the specific winemaking techniques you are using.