How to make Strawberry wine


Homemade Wild Strawberry Wine Recipe

How to make Strawberry wine ? For amateur winemakers of the northern regions of Russia wild strawberry is an irreplaceable berry from which you can make sweet fragrant wine with a beautiful light-red tone. Having studied the experience of creating such beverages and having tested the technique in practice, I’m ready to tell you how to make homemade wine from wild strawberries. This recipe is easy enough even for beginners, because it doesn’t contain any complicated ingredients.

Any garden or wild (woodland) varieties of wild strawberries will do fine. Woodland strawberry wine is very fragrant but not as sweet or strong as the cultivar strawberry one. Adding sugar is a must, because wild strawberries are very acidic and it has to be neutralized.

First, you should thoroughly sort strawberries, getting rid of tainted or moldy berries. Then clean berries are washed in warm water. If you skip this step, chances are that your wine will have an earthy flavor. You should also keep in mind that all of the instruments and containers should be sterile, otherwise wild yeast and pathogenic bacteria will turn your wine into home brew really fast, thus irreversibly spoiling the beverage.

Ingredients:

  • Wild Strawberries – 9 lb / 4 kg
  • Water- 0.8 gal / 3 liters
  • Sugar – 5.5 lb / 2.5 kg
  • Wine Yeast or Unwashed Raisins – 3.5 oz / 100 gr

How to Make Wild Strawberry Wine

  1. Mash cleaned and washed ripe strawberries with a wooden rolling pin or with your own hands. You should get a homogeneous mass.
  1. Mix water and sugar in a cooking pot. Boil it on low heat for 3-5 minutes and remove any appearing foam. The syrup is ready if there’s no more foam.
  1. Cool down the syrup to (75-85°F / 25-30°C).
  1. Mix wild strawberry pulp and sugar syrup in a fermentation container (a bottle or a jar). Add  Wine Yeast or unwashed raisins as an alternative to wine yeast. Fill the container up to 80% and leave enough room for carbon dioxide and foam.
  1. Install Airlock into your fermentation container and place the bottle in a dark warm place (60-75°F / 16-25°C) for 3-5 days. Stir the mash with a wooden straw or shake the contents every day.
  1. If you see the signs of fermentation (foam, hissing sound, and light sour smell) pour the liquid part through the straw. Squeeze the pulp/mash through the cheesecloth.
  1.  Remove the sediment and squeezed pulp and pour the juices into a fermentation container and install an airlock.
  1. Place fermentation container into a dark place with a temperature of 65-75°F / 18-23°C for 30-50 days.
  1. After the fermentation is finished (the wine gets lighter, there’s a sediment at the bottom, the airlock is not bobbling anymore), pour the new wild strawberry wine through a straw while not touching the sediment.
  1. Taste the wine. Add sugar or sweeteners if you wish. Since the fermentation has already stopped, adding sugar won’t turn it into alcohol but will make the beverage sweeter.
  1. Bottle the wine for storing (preferably, in dark glass bottles) and tightly seal the corks.
  1. Leave bottles in a cellar or a fridge for 50-70 days for aging. It is important to keep temperature at 45-55°F / 8-12°C. After that you can start the testing.
    homemade strawberry wine recipe

Homemade wild strawberry wine has ABV of 13-16%.  It can be stored in a cool dark place for 9-12 months.

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