Home winemaking is an exciting experience.
Wine can be made literally from any berries and fruits. For example, wine from watermelon is original in taste and pleasant in color.
The flesh of the striped berry does not have a pronounced aroma or taste, so the drink is not as bright as, for example, wine made from cherries, grapes or raspberries. However, many people like its pleasant reddish-pink color and fresh, pleasant taste. In addition, you can make such a wine, if only because you can’t buy it in the store.
In a watermelon there are a lot of useful substances, thanks to which wine drinks from a giant berry are not only tasty, but also healthy. Thanks to the juiciness of watermelon flesh, wine can be made from pure juice. Winemakers learned how to make a drink of varying degrees of strength. There are recipes for light dining rooms, fortified dessert or liquor wines from watermelon. It will be easy to choose your own version of an unusual alcoholic drink.
Watermelon wine - general principles of preparation
In order for the wine from watermelon to have the most saturated taste and color, it is necessary to take only fully ripened fruits. In the last week of August and September, the concentration of beneficial and flavoring substances in the striped berry reaches a peak. If you hurry and take unripe specimens, the wine will be too watery, completely tasteless, devoid of even a hint of a fresh watermelon aroma.
Preparing a watermelon for the winemaking process is very simple: thoroughly wash, cut off the crust, completely removing the white part, take out the bones, cut the red pulp into small cubes.
The process of making a light alcoholic drink based on the pulp of watermelon berries is similar to the process of making wine from other berries and fruits. You need to squeeze the juice or get the pulp, then let the wort ferment, brew and fully ripen. If you want to get a drink with a more pronounced taste, you need to give the wine time to fully ripen in the cold.
Of the required ingredients, only white sugar can be mentioned. Despite the fact that watermelons are sweet, their own sugars are not enough for fermentation. In addition, citric, tannic and tartaric acids, grapes or raisins, juice of other berries or fruits, as well as spices, can be added to homemade watermelon wines.
Wort is prepared in glass or enamel containers. They must be doused with boiling water and dried, otherwise the wort can simply become moldy. You need to store the finished product in the cold, otherwise the wine will turn sour.
Wine from watermelon on raisins
A simple and tasty version of homemade wine, which has a beautiful color and a light refreshing taste. Instead of citric acid, you can take an equal amount of fresh lemon juice. The strength of the finished drink is from 10 to 12 degrees.
Ingredients:
• ten kilograms of ripe watermelons;
• granulated sugar, depending on the volume of watermelon juice (approximately four kilograms);
• ten grams of citric acid for every liter of the resulting watermelon juice;
• 150 grams of unwashed raisins.
Cooking method:
Grind the prepared slices of watermelon with a blender or just mash with your hands. A homogeneous liquid mass should be obtained.
It must be put in a container for fermentation, pour in the norm of raisins and citric acid, bandage the neck of the container with a gauze napkin.
Put the prepared pulp in a dark warm pantry or a large closed cabinet for three days.
Stir the wort at least twice daily.
As soon as the first signs of fermentation appear (the mass begins to hiss and froth), pour one hundred grams of sugar per liter of mass, mix.
Pour the wort into a fermentation tank, leaving the top of the bottle a quarter free. This is necessary so that the watermelon juice does not overflow over the edge of the container during fermentation.
Pull a rubber medical glove over the neck of the bottle, piercing one finger with a needle. Attach carefully to the neck so that the gas does not tear off the glove.
The bottle should stand at a temperature not lower than 18 and not higher than 25 degrees for three days.
After the specified time, the glove must be removed, add another hundred grams for each liter of wort. After removing the water seal, drain two liters of fermented juice, pour in the norm of sugar, mix until dissolved and drain the syrup back into the container. To return a glove into place.
After four days, repeat the process of adding sugar. Leave the container alone to finish fermentation. The process will take from two to four weeks. A signal of completion will be a dipped glove, precipitated sediment and light color of the liquid.
Drain the juice into another container, try. Add sugar if desired.
You can fix wine with vodka by adding from five to fifteen percent of a strong drink to the entire volume of the resulting wine.
Bottles should be completely filled to prevent contact of the drink with oxygen.
Send the wine for ripening for one and a half to three months. The room should be dark and cold (temperature - air from five to twelve degrees).
Every two to three weeks, wine from watermelons must be filtered, getting rid of sediment. When it stops falling out, ripening is ready.
Pour wine into clean bottles and store.
Wine from the watermelon "Table"
An excellent table wine will turn out if tannic and tartaric acids are added to the watermelon juice. You can buy from specialized stores. About eight liters of a light, pleasant watermelon wine are obtained from the indicated amount of ingredients. Young wine will be light pink, ripe - orange-brown.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of juice from September watermelons;
• 2.5 grams of tartaric acid;
• ten grams of tannic acid;
• seven hundred grams of sugar.
Cooking method:
Squeeze juice out of watermelons.
In a large saucepan, mix all the ingredients so that the sugar is completely dissolved.
Pour sweet juice into a glass or plastic bottle with a narrow neck, cork and put in a cool place (but not in the refrigerator).
After two days, the juice will begin to ferment. You can not open it, so as not to delay the process for a long time.
When the hiss inside the tank stops, fermentation can be considered over.
Pour transparent wine into clean bottles, pre-filtered through a gauze filter.
Young watermelon wine needs to be sent to a cool dark place for ripening. The longer the wine costs, the tastier it becomes, the more saturated the color acquires.
Wine from watermelon "Sweet dessert"
Tasty and fairly strong dessert wine can be prepared with the addition of special wine yeast. The cooking process is similar to the previous recipe.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of ready watermelon juice;
• three kilograms of granulated sugar (plus another half a kilo after making wine);
• fifteen grams of wine yeast.
Cooking method:
Mix juice with yeast and sugar (the first norm is three kilograms).
Close in bottles and place for fermentation in a dark, cool room.
When the wine stops fermenting and brightens, strain and add a second rate of sugar.
Pour into bottles and send to ripen for three to five months.
Wine from watermelon "Liqueur"
The original wine with a mild taste is very sweet. The drink is perfect with cheese and fruit.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of juice from fresh watermelons;
• twelve kilograms of sugar;
• six liters of water;
• twenty grams of wine yeast (or forty grams of tartaric acid plus fifteen grams of tannin).
Cooking method:
Prepare sugar syrup from half of sugar and half of normal water (just dissolve granulated sugar in the indicated amount of hot drinking water).
Pour sugar solution into the prepared watermelon juice, add wine yeast, mix.
Close the lid for fermentation, keep the fermented juice in a dark, cool room.
When the juice almost ferments, add a second rate of sugar solution.
After completion of the fermentation process, strain the wine, bottle and insist for three to four months.
Student Recipe Watermelon Wine Vodka
An elementary way to make an alcoholic drink from watermelon juice. You can argue about the taste, but the cooking speed is impressive. It turns out rather a tincture of wine than real wine. But for a change, you can try it.
Ingredients:
• ten liters of water;
• a large watermelon weighing about seven kilograms;
• liter of quality vodka.
Cooking method:
Using a medical syringe, pump watermelon with vodka, chopping it from all sides through the peel.
Submerge the pumped berry completely in cold water.
Three days later, when the watermelon is completely softened, remove it from the water.
Make a hole in the watermelon rind and drain the pink juice through it.
Bottle juice and try.
Wine from watermelon and grapes "Pikatnoe"
Delicate honey-watermelon wine has a piquant taste with a touch of grapes.
Ingredients:
• ten kilograms of watermelon pulp;
• five kilograms of sugar;
• two hundred grams of grapes.
Cooking method:
Puree the pulp in any way.
Drain the mass into a fermentation tank, drop the grapes, cover with gauze and leave in the room for three days.
After the start of fermentation, when the foam appears, add sugar at the rate of two hundred grams for each liter of wort.
Enter the remains of granulated sugar in the same portions on the fifth and eighth days from the beginning of fermentation.
To put on a rubber glove or to put a water lock.
Keep future wine from watermelons in a dark room. It must ferment before precipitation.
Strain, bottle, let mature for a month.
Wine from watermelon - tricks and tips
If you leave the white parts adjacent to the crusts on the watermelon pulp, the wine will be bitter.
To prepare watermelon juice, crushed flesh must immediately be filtered through folded gauze 2-3 times. It is impossible to pull, since the pulp is rapidly oxidized. It will ruin the taste.
If the fermentation process does not start at all, the wort can be helped: drip a drop of ammonia into 50 liters of juice.
Pure fermented juice will produce a weak wine. Adding tannic and tartaric acid will produce a stronger drink.
The maturity of wine from watermelons after filtration should be at least a month. But the most delicious drink is obtained after ripening for a year.
