Chokeberry wine: homemade recipe

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

In many areas today you can find a plant such as chokeberry. It came to us from North America, where it is called "chokeberry". The fruits of the culture help with many diseases in the form of medicinal syrups and vitamin complexes, but at home it is easy to make homemade wine from chokeberry.

Berries selection

To make a high-quality and tasty drink, you need to know when is the best time to pick berries. It is filled with a dark color already at the end of August, but it is not yet considered ripe by this moment.

Only after the first frost in October, chokeberry gets a sweetish aftertaste and can be used to make wine or tincture. The juice of a ripe berry must be saturated ruby, and it must be smooth, shiny and large.

What do you need?

In order for the wine from chokeberry to turn out without unnecessary aftertastes, you should choose the right dishes for fermentation. Glass or wood is best, but enameled can also be used. For intermediate transfers of winein the process of cooking, plastic containers are also suitable. Aluminum, copper or iron utensils are not suitable for making wine. The drink in it will get an unpleasant aftertaste and sediment from metal impurities.

Traditional container is a wooden container made of oak. It protects the drink from light, sudden changes in temperature and at the same time allows the wine to "breathe". Of course, it is difficult to find an oak barrel today and most people use glass containers.

You can freely observe the fermentation process in them, but the drink is very susceptible to temperature changes, so many additionally wrap the bottles with cloth.

Variety of options

Aronia is very fond of winemakers for its tart special taste and rich ruby color. A drink made from berries picked in September will be an order of magnitude lighter, but will not lose its taste. Dry wine from chokeberry is extremely rare, since such a drink has a heavy taste. Most often, winemakers prefer sweet dessert varieties, and to make the wine soft, they mix berries with other juices or leaves of cultivated plants. Below are the most popular and proven homemade chokeberry wine recipes.

Classic

To get the maximum aroma and bouquet of taste from chokeberries, wine is prepared according to a classic home-made winemaking recipe. Need to cook:

• rowan - 5 kg;
• unwashed raisins - 50g;
• sugar - 2 kg;
• purified water - 1 l.

Uthose who have already prepared grape wine at home, all processes will be established. The berries need to be stretched as much as possible with your hands or with the help of a pusher so that each one bursts and releases the juice. After that, half of the sugar and all the raisins are poured into the resulting mass, the container is covered and left for 7 days in a warm place for fermentation. The pulp will constantly rise, so you need to mix the mixture daily. After a week, you need to carefully pour the wine into a glass bottle so that all the pulp and sediment remain in the first container.

The remains of fermented mountain ash should be covered with the rest of sugar, pour prepared water and leave to ferment for another week. The drained first chokeberry wine is left in a warm place with a rubber glove put on the neck of the bottle.

After a week, it must be removed and the second juice should be added to the container. Every couple of days, the wine needs to be filtered and poured, leaving it under a glove until fermentation stops. The finished drink must be bottled and left in a dark place to ripen for another 8-16 weeks, after which you can try.

Wine from juice

So that the wine from chokeberry does not immediately take up much space during preparation, you can not use berries in the fermentation at all. To do this, they must be twisted through a meat grinder and only the fruit juice should be used in the future. So, you will need:

• chokeberry juice – 1 l;
• water - 0.4 l;
• sugar - faceted glass;
• wine yeast - 30g per litre.

All components must be mixed betweenyourself and leave for fermentation in a bowl under a cotton plug. When the intensity of fermentation subsides a little, you should put on a rubber glove on the container and, when finished, strain the wine into bottles and leave to ripen in the cellar for a couple of months.

With cherry leaves

In order for wine from chokeberry berries to acquire enhanced taste and aroma during cooking, cherry leaves should be added to the recipe. The drink will turn out to be not strong, but, in fact, there will be no natural fermentation in it, therefore it is correct to call such a product a liquor. Need to cook:

• berries - 1 cup;
• cherry leaves - 0.1 kg;
• sugar - glass;
• citric acid - 5-7 g;
• half a liter of vodka.

First, the berries and leaves should be poured with prepared water and boiled over low heat for a quarter of an hour. After that, the leaves are removed from the dishes, citric acid is added, sugar and the liquid is again put on the fire for cooking for another 20 minutes. At the end, the resulting concentrated mixture should be cooled, filtered and mixed with vodka. You can drink the drink the next day.

Recipe in the bank

If a small amount of chokeberry berries is available, wine can be made from them right in the jar. To do this, a liter jar of berries must be poured into a quarter, pour 0.7 kg of sugar and 100 g of raisins on top. After that, the mixture is poured with water, not reaching the edge by a couple of fingers. After that, the jar is filled and placed in a dark place. Shake the container daily so that the liquid inside mixes well. Througha week add another 300 g of sugar to the jar and a week later the same amount. A month after the last addition, add another 0.1 kg of sugar to the wine and leave until all the berries have settled to the bottom.

After this, the product can be drunk.

Classic taste

In order for chokeberry wine at home to acquire a more familiar taste for most people, it must be prepared with the addition of grapes. Such a drink will be less tart and will appeal to many. For its preparation you need:

• rowan berries - 5 kg;
• grapes - 2 kg;
• wine yeast - 30 g per liter of product;
• sugar.

All berries are crushed and left in a fermentation container under the lid for 6 days. After that, the juice is carefully decanted, and the remaining pulp is poured with a small amount of water and also decanted into a common dish. For 1 liter of liquid, add 200 g of sugar and leave for further fermentation. At the end, you can add sugar to taste and, after clarification of the wine, bottle it.

To make any drink from the proposed options more concentrated, you do not need to pour the pomace again, the wine should be prepared only from the first juice.

With apples

You can make wine from chokeberry without yeast and with the addition of apples. Such a product will be sweet and tender, completely balancing the astringency of chokeberry. For the recipe you need:

• rowan berries - 2 kg;
• apples - 2 times less;
• sugar - 3 kg.

Fruits need to be crushed, pour a third of sugar and, placing in a bottle, pour six liters of water. After daily stirring and a week of fermentation in a warm place, another 1 kg of sugar is added to the mixture.

The liquid is also left for a week, after which the last sugar is poured. A week after this, the wine is constantly stirred, and then left for some time to ripen, until the sediment sinks to the bottom completely, and the cake does not rise. Now the wine is carefully drained with a straw and ready to drink.

Honey wine

Quickly and easily allows you to make wine from chokeberry recipe with vodka. For this you will need:

• glass of berries;
• water - 1 l;
• citric acid - 0.5 tsp;
• cherry leaves - 70-90 pieces;
• half a liter of vodka;
• honey - 1 cup or more to taste.

Honey will give the final product an extraordinary aroma and benefits, and making such a drink is very simple. First you need to boil the leaves and berries over low heat, then cool, strain the liquid and add citric acid and honey to it.

Put the resulting mixture back on fire, boil for a quarter of an hour, cool and mix with vodka. After insisting for a couple of weeks, the drink can be drunk.

Strong tincture

How to make homemade wine from chokeberry is now clear, and everyone can choose the option they like, but the berries can be an excellent basis for morestrong drinks. Alcohol tincture of chokeberry can be prepared from the following ingredients:

• rowan berries - 2 kg;
• sugar - 800 g;
• vodka - 1 liter.

To prepare the fruits, pour over boiling water and grind through a meat grinder to make it easier to express the juice. The resulting juice is mixed with sugar and vodka, after which it is stored in a dark, cool place.

The second option involves the addition of plum fruits. For this you need:

• plums - 0.3 kg;
• rowan - 0.7 kg;
• alcohol - 1.5 l.

In this case, the berries are simply washed and filled with alcohol for 2-3 weeks. As a result, the liquid is expressed, diluted to 400 and can be consumed.

The benefits and harms of the product

Absolutely any wine helps with digestive problems, and the properties of chokeberry wine allow you to get an additional positive effect. So the product improves the outflow of bile, normalizes the functioning of the liver, protects against radioactive radiation and helps with thyroid diseases. Its rich vitamin composition helps boost immunity, lower cholesterol and normalize blood pressure. To drink wine for this you need no more than 100 ml per day.

Of course, an alcoholic drink has contraindications. So, drinking it is not recommended for people with high acidity of the stomach, ulcers, gastritis, hypertension and varicose veins. In addition, wine can harm thrombophlebitis.

Common problems

Choosing fromoffered even the simplest recipe for chokeberry wine, any beginner can face the problem of stopping fermentation. Most often this happens due to depressurization of the wine container. At best, carbon dioxide will come out of other holes and fermentation will simply not be visible, although it will go on as usual. At worst, oxygen will enter through the holes in the bottle and provoke vinegar fermentation, which will lead to spoilage of the entire product. For prevention, you should carefully plug all the holes even when setting the wine for fermentation. You can smear the edges of the glove with plasticine or dough.

It should also be remembered that it takes several days for fermentation to start and perhaps the process simply has not started yet.

The biggest challenge in winemaking is maintaining a sufficiently stable temperature. Yeast is activated only at 10-30 degrees, and if they started their activity at 25, then this temperature should be maintained throughout the process. There should be no drops, at low temperatures the bacteria lose their activity, and at high temperatures they generally die. To enhance the process, you can add wine yeast.

Fermentation can stop even if the consistency is too thick. In this case, you need to add water to the wort. Too sweet wort will also slow down fermentation, dilution with water is required, and in an acidic environment, you need to add 50-100 g of sugar per liter.

If mold appears on the surface of the wine, you can try pouring the drink into another container using a tube and addwine yeast or sourdough from crushed grapes or raisins. This usually happens when spoiled berries or poorly washed cooking utensils get into the product.

If the process went well, and then just stopped, then perhaps the wine finished playing ahead of time. The fact is that during natural fermentation, when the drink reaches a strength of 12-14 degrees, the yeast dies. That is why it is impossible to get stronger wine at home. The duration of fermentation is usually 2-4 weeks, after which the drink must settle for clarification and a sediment, also called tartar, will appear at the bottom of the container.

At the end of all processes, you can enjoy the tart taste of the wine, but remember that the longer it is stored, the more intense its aroma becomes.