Raspberry Wine (2022 Version)

It is time to make my 4th version of a Raspberry Wine (read about the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd).  I have large Raspberry patch which provides 90-100 lbs of fruit per year.  This is more fruit than I need for my beers so making wine out of it has been a nice, productive, use for them.

I've increased the amount of fruit used each year.  This year I'm up to 58 lbs (used 54 last year).  Raspberries aren't sweet enough to make a wine strength product so sugar is typically added - this year I'm going with 12 lbs of sugar which should get me around 12-13% ABV.  In previous years I had dissolved the sugar in spring water which dilutes the wine slightly - this year I'll add the sugar dry so that pretty much the only liquid will be from the Raspberries themselves - we'll see if that creates a more intensely flavored product.

Like with my previous batches I will let this wine age for about a year in secondary.  This time I'm going to age with Port Soaked Oak.  These wines end up very tart so some back sweetening is beneficial for the flavor profile - I'll do that again this time.  So far, all my batches have been shelf stable which has been nice - I use Campden tables on these wines which likely helps with that as does the fact that they have a high alcohol concentration which would make additional bottle fermentation unlikely

Recipe Details:

• 58 lbs of raspberry
• 12 lbs of table sugar
• 6 tsp Pectic Enzyme
• 2 packets of Red Star Premier Rouge Yeast
• 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
• 10 campden tablet
• Extras:
• 4 sticks of, 375 F toasted, Port Soaked Oak

Results:

• OG:
• 1.10 (25 Brix)
• Post Fermentation FG:
• 1.002
• Back Sweetened FG:
• 1.025
• ABV:
• 13%

Brewing Notes:

• 6/12/22:
• Moved 58 lbs of frozen raspberries to 2 buckets (this was about as much fruit as would fit in the buckets

• Added Pectic Enzyme, campden tablets, and sugar

• 6/13/22 - It was still thawing out the next day

• 6/14/22 - Pitched two packets of rehydrated wine yeast (one for each bucket
• 6/15/22 - Fermentation is underway

• 6/25/22 - Skimmed the solids off the top of the wine.  It seems to still be fermenting a bit so I'm going to give it another week or so before considering a transfer to secondary.

• 8/14/22 - Transferred to a glass carboy with 3 campden tablets.  Added 4 sticks of port soaked oak to this.  Got about 5 gal of wine.  I'm going to let this age for 6-8 months.
• 6/23/23 - Transferred the wine to a bottling bucket with 3 lbs of invert #3 to back-sweeten.  Added 3 campden tablets as well to make sure fermentation doesn't pick back up.  I'm going to let this sit for a few weeks before bottling.  Measured the pre-back sweetened gravity as 1.002 - this is 11.9% Alcohol
• 1/20/24 - Finally bottling this.  Measured the back-sweetened gravity as 1.025.  Have about 5 gal which got me 51 12 oz bottles