Chokeberry wine: recipes

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

Chokeberry is a very specific berry, the taste of which is bitter and astringent. This is a delicacy for an amateur, but it contains a lot of useful substances, including vitamin B, minerals, ascorbic acid and metals necessary for the human body.

They would make jam and compotes from it, but they turn out tasteless. But the wine is excellent! Therefore, now it is worth telling his recipe. Chokeberry is an unusual berry, so there are some nuances in the process.

Ingredients and prep

Here's what you need:

• Ripe chokeberry, 5 kg.
• Unwashed raisins, 50g
• Water, 1 l.
• Sugar, 1 kg.
• Patience.

The last "ingredient" can even be called the main one. patienceit will take a lot.

First you have to carefully sort through all the berries. Spoiled, unripe, moldy and rotten must be disposed of. How high-quality berries are used determines the taste of the wine.

You will also need to sterilize the containers that will be used in the process with boiling water, and also dry them. Otherwise, there is a risk of infection and further deterioration of the wine.

Working with berries

So, according to the most popular recipe, chokeberry must be thoroughly kneaded with hands, which must first be washed and dried. The process is approached responsibly - not a single whole berry should remain.

By the way, you can't wash the mountain ash. This is because its peel contains wild yeast - the component due to which the juice will ferment. There is no need to worry about the presence of dirt. It will settle to the bottom and then be removed by filtration.

Mixing ingredients

This is the next item in the recipe. Chokeberry, carefully crushed, should be poured into a large container. It is important that it is not made of metal. Suitable enameled, glass, plastic container. As for volume, 10 liters will suffice.

To the berries then you will need to add a pound of sugar. It is mandatory, even if you want to make dry wine. It will turn out, you don’t have to worry about it, these berries just have a very low sugar content, not even reaching 9%. Therefore, wine without the addition of sugar turns out to be extremely weak (up to 5.4% of the fortress) and, as a result, not very good.stored.

For the same reason, a handful of raisins are added to the container. It will enhance the quality of chokeberry. The recipe says that this is optional, but it is recommended to heed the advice strongly. The addition of raisins will not affect the taste of the drink.

After all the ingredients are in the container, they must be thoroughly mixed. You should get a homogeneous mass.

Tie the container on top with gauze so that insects do not get inside, and put it away for 7 days in a place with a temperature of 18-25 ° C. Every day, mix the mass 4 times, dipping the pulp (floating pulp and peel) into the juice.

Juice extraction

It will need to be started after 7 days, when the berry-sugar mixture is infused - as the recipe says. The chokeberry will swell and rise up by then. And if you immerse your hand in a container, you can see how foam forms. If so, then it's time to squeeze the juice.

Collect the pulp with your hands and try to squeeze everything out of it that is possible. Press is allowed. The main thing is not to resort to a juicer. It will clog almost immediately and cause more problems.

Once you squeeze the juice, you don't have to throw away the pulp. She'll come in handy.

The resulting juice must be filtered. For this, gauze or a colander is suitable. If some small particles got into the juice during filtration, you do not need to focus on this. They will be removed later.

The filtered juice is poured into a clean fermentation container. It is necessary to choose the right vessel in order toover 40% full. You will still need free space for another portion of juice, as well as foam and carbon dioxide (released during fermentation).

Installation of a water seal and work with pulp

This is the next thing to start. According to the recipe for chokeberry wine, a water seal must be installed on the jar. Any design is allowed. The most common choice is a sterile medical glove with a needle hole in one finger.

After installing this simple design, the container must be removed to a place where it is dark and the temperature varies from 18 to 27 °C.

And then you need to continue working with the pulp. That's what the homemade recipe says. A chokeberry that has already been pressed will still make some juice.

Pour the remaining sugar (0.5 kg) into the pulp and pour in a liter of warm water, which should not be hotter than 25-30 ° C. Mix everything - the resulting "nectar" should rise above the berry mass.

Then the container is covered with a lid and sent to a dark place for 5 days. The temperature there should be room temperature.

The mass must be stirred daily, each time drowning the berries in the liquid.

Juice mixing

This stage is available only in the case of making wine from chokeberry. At home, the recipe recommends infusing berry nectar from previously squeezed pulp for a week. Then the container must be taken out and filtered. A colander will help here.

No need to press the mass. After all, you need to get clean, transparent, high-quality juice. If you press it, you will get a cloudy liquid. And yes, after completing the process, the pulp can be thrown away. She won't be needed anymore.

After that, remove the glove from the vessel with the first portion of highly concentrated juice and carefully remove the foam. Then you can add new juice. Mix lightly and replace the water seal.

Fermentation

The penultimate stage in making homemade chokeberry wine. The recipe says that fermentation takes 25 to 50 days. However, there is no need to guess how much is left. You can determine that the process is completed by a deflated glove. By the way, sediment will form at the bottom, and the almost finished drink will become much lighter.

So, at the end of fermentation, the young wine will need to be drained through a straw into another clean vessel, without touching the sediment.

By the way, you can slightly sweeten the drink if desired. This action is not prohibited by this not very simple recipe. Chokeberry, as mentioned earlier, is very bitter. And the drink obtained at this stage has a sharp taste. So it doesn't hurt to improve the organoleptic properties.

Sugar is added to taste. Its level can be adjusted in the process. It is better to pour it in portions, mix, taste, and then decide whether you have achieved the desired level of sweetness.

By the way, some pour in 2 to 15% vodka to fix the wine. This will help keep it longer.term, however, will make the taste tough. We need to consider whether it is worth adding strong alcohol, is it not superfluous, given the astringency of the wine.

Ripening

The final touch to a not-so-simple recipe. Chokeberry is unique, and the wine from it is inimitable, but its taste can only be appreciated after maturation.

Clean containers should be filled with filtered young wine and sealed. You can hold it under a glove for another ten days if sugar was added.

Store in a cool dark place with a temperature regime of 8-16 °C. It is not recommended to drink wine for the next six months. And here it is necessary to filter it additionally. Once a month will be enough. With each re-filtration, there will be a noticeable reduction in sediment.

After six months, the drink can be consumed. It is bottled and sealed. It can be stored for three to five years in suitable conditions (in the refrigerator, for example, or in the cellar). If there was no artificial fixation with vodka, then the strength of the wine will be approximately 10-12%.

You can hardly say that this is an easy recipe. You can actually make excellent wine from chokeberry at home. And not everything is as complicated as it seems at first glance. It's just that there are a lot of nuances in this process that must be observed in a mandatory order if you want to make a good, high-quality drink. They say that this tart, sour taste with a slight sweetness is impossible to forget.

Serving it is recommended for somethingspecial. Light sweet desserts or cheese are ideal.