Raspberry Wine

I have over 60 lbs of raspberry left from my 2018 harvest.  I plan to use 15-20 lbs of that on a Raspberry Lambic which leaves a good 40 lbs to experiment with.  I've decided to try to make a Raspberry Wine with it.

Raspberry wine are typically back sweetened to make a dessert style wine.  They have a really lovely and intense raspberry flavor along with a pleasing tartness.  They go great on ice cream.

Raspberries aren't as rich in sugar as grapes so some sugar needs to be added in order to get to the target alcohol level (10-15%).  I found this nice article which give some tips from pro raspberry wine makers.  For a 5-6 gal batch (scaled down) the recommendation is 40 lbs of fruit, 10 lbs of sugar, and 1 gal of water (to dissolve the sugar).  This should get you a starting gravity of around 22 brix.  This is a lot of fruit (if you don't happen to have a large raspberry bed) but they warn that less than this will lead to a watered down final product.

Per the procedure, I'll start out with Frozen raspberries.  This will help with juice extraction.  I'll add the dissolved sugar mixture along with campden tablets to sanitize, pectic enzyme (for clarity) and yeast nutrient.  I'll leave this over night the thaw and get up to around 60 F.  I'll pitch a red wine yeast for the fermentation.

Over the first week I'll mix the fruit solids and liquid - I plan to do an open fermentation to make this easier.  After the first week I'll scoop off the fruit solids which are floating on the top.  After another week to let the fermentation complete I'll filter off any remaining fruit solids and then rack to a new container.  I'll then rack several more times and cold crash to separate out more solids.

I then plan to age this wine for several months on oak.  I may use some red wine soaked oak for this.

This should be a fun project.

Recipe Details:

• 40 lbs Red Raspberry
• 10 lb sugar
• 1 gal Spring Water
• 3 tsp Pectic Enzyme
• 1.5 tsp Yeast Nutrient
• 1 packet of Red Star Premier Rouge
• Extras:
• 8 campden tablets at start to sanitize fruit
• Added a second packet of Premier Rouge yeast
• 5 campden tablets on transfer to glass carboy for aging
• 1 oz of Cabernet soaked oak

Results:

• OG:
• 1.096 (23 brix)
• Volume:
• 5 gal
• Post Fermentation FG:
• 0.992
• Back sweetened FG:
• 1.022
• ABV:
• 13.65%

Brewing Notes:

• 4/27/19:
• Put 40 lbs of frozen raspberries into a 6 gal brew bucket.  They just barely fit
• Crushed 8 campden tablets and stirred them into the frozen raspberries

• Brought 1 gal of spring water up to a simmer
• Gradually added 10 lbs of sugar to the simmering water and stirred as a I went to dissolved

• Added 1.5 tsp of yeast nutrient and 3 tsp of Pectic enzyme to the water/sugar mixture
• Transferred this into the frozen raspberries
• Let this thaw over night
• 4/28/19:
• Decided to transfer half of the mixture to a second 6 gal brew bucket
• Measured the gravity as 23 brix via my refractometer (1.096 in SG)
• Rehydrated a packet of dry Red Star Red Wine Yeast in Spring Water and then pitched half of it in each bucket fermenter
• 4/29/19:
• Stirred the mixture in the morning
• Stirred the mixture in the afternoon.  No sign of fermentation starting yet
• 4/30/19
• Stirred the mixture again in the morning. Still no sign of fermentation
• Decided to add another pack of yeast
• It was bubbling pretty vigorously this afternoon when I stirred again
• 5/1/19 - Fruit solids have formed a cap.  I pushed this down in the morning and the afternoon.  Fermentation is still progressing vigorously

• 5/2/19 - Pushed down the cap again.  A lot of C02 is released on doing this
• 5/8/19 - After a week I scooped as much of the fruit solids floating on top of the wine as I could with a slotted spoon.  This was pretty dry at first with very little liquid runoff.  I stopped when I got down to more of a liquidy pulp.

• 5/10/10 - Today I drained the liquid from the remaining solids:

• I first combined all the wine into one bucket
• I then poured a little bit of the wine into a kitchen strainer on top of bowl.  I stirred with spoon to encourage the fruit pulp to separate from the wine
• It required a couple dozen batches like this to separate all of it
• I ended up with about 5 gal of liquid
• I tasted a little dab and found it's fermented out pretty dry.  It has a nice raspberry flavor and is quite tart.
• I moved the bucket to my chest freezer at 37 F to help drop out any remaining solids
• 5/11/19 - Added gelatin to try to fine the wine a bit

• 5/12/19 - Transferred into a glass carboy to age.  Added a 1 oz stick of oak that I soaked in Cabernet.  Also added 5 campden tablets to help deal with any oxygen and to knock out any remaining yeast.  I ended up leaving behind about 3/4 a gal of yeast/semi-solid fruit stuffs
• 3/7/20 - Transferred the Raspberry wine to a bucket fermenter with a couple crushed campden tablets.  I measured the gravity as 0.992.  It is very dry, pretty tart, and has a wine like complexity.  I think it could stand for a bit more sweetness.  The article (mentioned above) suggested backsweetening with between 4 and 6% sugar.  Collected 4 gal - left behind quite a bit of solid (as well as the oak).  Decided to add 2.25 lb of sugar which should get me up to about 5 Brix.  Dissolved this in the raspberry wine sample and then added to the fermenter.  I'll give this another month to settle down before bottling

• 3/29/20 - No signs of fermentation for the last few weeks so decided to bottle today.  Used regular 12 oz capped bottles for this.  Got 42 bottles.  The wine measured 1.022 after the backsweetening.  It tastes slightly sweet with nice raspberry flavor along with a very slight tartness (sugar really balanced things out).  It's a mellow flavor with very little alcohol coming through.