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Fortified homemade apple wine can become a real highlight of every meal. It not only lifts the mood, but also has very real benefits for a person, having a beneficial effect on the nervous, gastrointestinal and endocrine systems. Self-made wine is natural, which cannot be said about mass-produced alcoholic products. When preparing this drink, the winemaker himself can regulate the amount of sugar, the sharpness of the taste, create unique flavors and blends. There are a lot of recipes for making natural apple wine and sometimes it is not possible to choose the best one. That is why we decided to offer a selection of the most famous recipes that are most often used by experienced winemakers.
The best recipes for fortified wine
Making homemade wine is a long and delicate process, but even a novice winemaker can easily cope with it. To do this, you just need to be patient and some knowledge. A good homemade wine recipe is the key to success.
Fortified wine using classical technology
Apple wine is often made from fruit juice, which is easy to get at home. So, one recipe will require 10 kg of juicy and ripe apples. The variety in this case is of no fundamental importance. You can use sour, sweet or wild apples. Fruit juice can be obtained using a juicer or an ordinary kitchen fine grater. In either case, the applesauce will need to be additionally squeezed through several layers of gauze. Fruit juice for making wine should be as light and pure as possible. As a result of squeezing from the specified number of apples, approximately 6 liters of juice will be obtained.
The resulting purified apple juice must be poured into a glass container (bottle or jar). Do not fill the entire volume, leaving a little space to the edge of the container. Foam will accumulate in it as the wine ferments. You need to add half of the total sugar to the juice: about 150-200 g for every 1 liter of juice. The exact amount of granulated sugar depends on the taste of the fruit and the winemaker's preferences.
The juice with sugar should be left at room temperature in a dark place for 4-5 days. Cover the container with gauze or plug the neck of the bottle with a cotton ball. After a specified period of time, the wine begins to actively ferment: emit carbon dioxide, foam. At this time, it is necessary to close the container with wine with a rubber glove or a special lid with a water seal. You can buy it in the store or make it yourself. An example of making such a device is shown in the video:
A week later, from the start of making the wine, you need to add the second half of the sugar to its composition, mix the ingredients thoroughly and put them for further fermentation. Active emission of carbon dioxide will be observed for 2 weeks. In the future, the process will proceed slowly for another 1-1.5 months.
After about 2 months from the start of cooking, you can see a sediment from the remaining particles of fruit pulp at the bottom of the container.By this time, the fermentation process will be stopped, the sugar will break down into carbon dioxide, which will come out through the water seal, and alcohol, which will give the drink strength. The wine must be carefully poured into a new glass container, without raising the sediment. Add 600 ml of high-quality vodka or 300 ml of alcohol to a pure alcoholic drink. Store hermetically sealed bottles in a cellar or basement, where it is cool and dark. After about 1.5 months of such storage, the wine will be completely ready, it will acquire its original taste and blend.
The taste of classic apple wine can be complemented with light notes of aromatic cinnamon. To do this, add 1 tbsp to fruit juice at the initial stage of making wine. l. ground cinnamon. This ingredient will make the alcoholic drink more aromatic and tasty, and its color will be more noble.
Fortified wine with raisins
Experienced winemakers know that raisins are the same grapes that can give an original taste and color to an alcoholic drink. Making fortified apple wine with raisins is quite simple. This will require the apples themselves in the amount of 10 kg and 100 g of raisins, preferably dark, which will have a good effect on the color of the finished product. The strength of the drink will be given by sugar in the amount of 2-2.2 kg and 200 ml of vodka. This composition will allow you to get wine with a strength of 12-14%. You can additionally increase the degree by adding more vodka or alcohol in equivalent.
According to this recipe, you need to cook wine not from juice, but from applesauce. So, you need to add sugar and raisins to the grated apples. Pour the mixture of products into a fermentation container, close the neck of the filled container with a rubber glove or a water seal.
After 3 weeks of active fermentation, squeeze the applesauce through a multi-layer cheesecloth. If necessary, the juice cleaning process can be repeated many times. The pure product should be mixed with another glass of sugar and poured into clean bottles. The neck of the bottle must be tightly closed with a glove. For another week, the wine will ferment.
Add vodka to the finished apple wine and, after thorough mixing, pour the alcoholic fortified drink into bottles for subsequent storage. A few well-washed grapes or raisins can be added to each bottle of amber apple wine as a decoration. You can store such a drink in a cellar for several years.
Apple-mountain ash wine with berry sourdough
Often, a homemade wine recipe contains wine yeast or sourdough as one of the ingredients. Novice winemakers are intimidated by this feature. But there is nothing difficult in making a berry sourdough. To do this, you can use raspberries, strawberries or, for example, rose hips. The process of making apple and mountain ash wine also begins with the preparation of a sourdough:
- Put 2 cups of unwashed berries in a jar;
- add 2 tbsp. l. sugar and 500 ml of water;
- cover the neck of the container with multilayer gauze and leave for 3 days at room temperature;
- stir the mixture daily;
- 3-4 days after the start of preparation, the sourdough is a fermentation activator for homemade wine.
In addition to the sourdough for apple-mountain ash wine, you will need 10 kg apples and mountain ash directly. The amount of mountain ash should be 10% of the mass of apples, which means that you need to take 1 kg of these berries for one recipe. The amount of sugar per specified volume of ingredients is 2.5 kg. Water should be added to apple-mountain ash wine in the amount of 1.5 liters in order to obtain a more delicate taste and subtle aroma of alcohol. The wine will get its strength from 1 liter of vodka.
The first step in making fortified wine is to get juice from apples and mountain ash. The liquids must be mixed with each other and sugar and water must be added to them. After mixing, add the starter culture prepared in advance to the mixture of ingredients.The resulting wort must be placed in a warm room for further fermentation. After 10-12 days, as a result of fermentation, an alcoholic drink with a strength of 9-10% will be obtained. By adding 1 liter of vodka to the wine, it will be possible to increase the strength to 16%. The fortified drink is kept for 5 days, after which it is filtered and bottled for storage. It is recommended to consume homemade alcohol prepared according to this recipe in 1-2 months.
Apple wine with sourdough can be prepared not only with mountain ash, but also, for example, with an orange. The cooking technology is similar to the above method, but instead of rowan juice, you need to add orange juice. For 10 kg of apples, 6 large citrus fruits are recommended.
An original way of attaching wines
Many winemakers know that alcohol or vodka can be used to increase the strength of a wine. But there is another very original way to increase the fortress. It is based on freezing: water freezes (crystallizes) even at zero temperature, but alcohol does not. You can use this trick in the following way:
- Pour the finished apple wine into plastic bottles and put them in the freezer or snow.
- After a while, ice crystals will be observed in the wine.
- The free liquid in the bottle is a concentrated wine. It must be drained into a separate container.
- The freezing operation can be repeated several times. Each time, the strength of the free liquid in the bottle will increase. As a result of this fastenings 2 liters of light wine will yield about 700 ml of fortified alcoholic beverage.
When freezing apple wine, in fact, you get 2 types of drink at once: fortified wine and light cider, with a strength of 1-2%. This cider can be obtained by thawing ice crystals. A light refreshing drink will have an apple flavor and can quench your thirst on a hot summer day. An example of freezing can be seen on the video:
By freezing it is possible to raise the strength of the wine up to 25%.
Fortified apple wine is a wonderful alcoholic drink that can replace all alcohol-containing products on the festive table. Wine prepared with love is always tasty and healthy. It is easy to drink and does not remind of itself with a headache the next day. You need to take your time to cook apple wine at home. Well-fermented wort and long aging of the finished product always make the wine only better.
