Currant is an affordable berry, unpretentious to care for. It is tasty and healthy, fruitful - in a good year you can not only eat up sweet and sour fruits, but also make preparations for the winter. If you learn how to make currant wine, you can surprise your loved ones with a thick noble drink with a tart rich taste.
Blackcurrant wine recipe
To prepare a currant wine with a rich flavor bouquet, without defects, it is important to carefully select the raw materials. Sort the berries and remove the unripe, spoiled ones. The fruits should be clean, but in no case should they be washed - wild yeast on the skin is necessary for the fermentation of wine!
Crush each currant by hand or with a wooden pestle. Make a mixture of two parts fruit with three parts filtered water and one part granulated sugar. Fill a glass dish 2/3 full with the resulting pulp and cover the neck with several layers of cheesecloth. Place in a place without direct sunlight for a couple of weeks. For better fermentation, add a handful of raisins, raspberries.
Stir the pulp daily with a wooden spoon to knock off the cap that appears and prevent mold on the currant wine. When the contents of the fermentor become lighter, filter it through a colander and manually squeeze the pulp. Taste the remaining juice (wort): if a little sour, add granulated sugar to taste. For example, take half a glass of sugar per liter of juice.
To ferment currant wine at home, fill the container 4/5 of the volume, then pull a rubber glove over the neck, not forgetting to pierce your finger. You can make a water seal: cover the dishes with a lid, pass a hose through it, the end of which is lowered into a bowl of water to release carbon dioxide. Place the container in a warm and dark place where the temperature will not be below 16 ° C or above 25 ° C.
Do not throw out the pulp: add a little water so that the crushed berries are not dry, sugar to taste and mix well. Keep the dishes in the dark for 7-12 days, covered with several gauze layers. Knead the hat regularly. Filter the separated juice and add to the fermentation vessel to the wort. By this time, currant seeds will rise upward, which must be removed with a strainer, squeezed, and the juice poured out for fermentation.
The wort will ferment actively for about 3 weeks. The turbidity will settle to the bottom, the bubbles of carbon dioxide will disappear - which means it's time to pour the wine. Carefully, trying not to shake the sediment, use a hose to pour the young currant wine into another glass container. Do this in a thin stream to ventilate the drink and taste better.
For quiet fermentation, leave the wine with a water seal or plug the bottles with cotton stoppers. Keep cool until the final aroma of the alcoholic beverage is formed. To avoid the defects of currant wine, it is recommended to remove the drink from the sediment on a monthly basis and pour it into another container for airing.
If necessary, you can adjust the sweetness of the currant wine. When the haze stops settling, seal the dishes and store the alcohol in a cool place, such as a dry cellar.
Red currant wine recipe
You can make currant wine from any kind of berries. An alcoholic drink made from red currants is made according to the above-described pattern, with slight differences in the proportions of ingredients and the fermentation time of the wort.
For 5 kg of red currants, five liters of filtered water and a couple of kilograms of granulated sugar are enough. Mix the sorted and mashed fruits with water and sugar, add a little raisins (raspberries). Keep the mixed pulp in a glass container under gauze for 4 days in a dark place at room temperature, stir daily.
When the contents of the dishes are fermented, filter the juice, squeeze the pulp and fill the fermentation container with liquid to 75% of its volume. Keep with a water seal or glove at 16-25 ° C for about 30-45 days. After a week, adjust the sweetness of the redcurrant wine.
At the end of fermentation, remove the drink from the sediment using a hose, adjust the sugar content again and place a container with a water seal or cotton plugs for 60 days to ripen cool. Remove the currant wine from the lees monthly. When there is no cloudiness left, seal the dishes tightly.
Currant wine at home: useful tips
- You have done everything to make sweet and sour currant wine, but the must is sore? This may be due to the premature harvest and the quality of raw materials. After a month of fermentation, add the juice of a pear or other non-acidic fruit to a future alcoholic drink.
- Homemade blackcurrant wine can be prepared with the addition of red berries - this will make the taste of the drink less tart. In contrast, add some black fruit to the redcurrant wort for flavor.
- To flavor currant wine, pour strawberry or raspberry juice into the wort.
- Fortified alcohol can be made by adding 250-350 ml of 70-80 ° alcohol per liter of young wine. After that, the liquid will become cloudy, it must be kept under a lid for about 20 days, separated from the turbidity with a hose and poured into glass jars or bottles for permanent storage.
- Dessert fortified wine of balanced taste is obtained by mixing 1 part of apple juice and 2 parts of blackcurrant juice.
- You can use a white flannel or calico bag to filter the wort. It is sewn in the form of a cone from two triangular cut pieces.
