A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.
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Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
Girlfriend wanted wine so I brought up a spare fermenter from my other house, giving lemon wine a shot. This will be my first proper wine (that I won’t be immediately turning into brandy) Glad to be back at it after the hectic holidays. I want to make an orange brandy next, but after slicing 50 lemons by hand (I don’t own a mandolin) I think I need a short break from slicing citrus.
This looks really cool. I'll be following this post to see how it turns out.
It’ll be a month or two till it’s ready but I’m sure I’ll make a post to this community once it’s done lol
If you're making brandy frequently, a $50 mandoline and a $45 chain mail glove (not just anti-cut, they make some out of actual metal. You want one of those) sounds like an investment that you'll get a lot of use out of.
Do not get a handheld mandoline. They are useless and you will cut yourself with that thing.
I was a chef for over 20 years, and have been cooking for almost 40. I love both my mandoline and my glove. I've never cut myself with a mandoline yet.
Nice! Appreciate the tip! I’ll definitely keep it in mind depending on how this wine turns out and how the eventual orange brandy goes. most of my brandies I use much easier fruit to work with, but I love the idea of citrus brandies so $100 seems like a fair investment
Is there a non handheld mandoline?
Yeah, they just cost around $50 rather than the cheap $10 handheld ones. They have legs or a stand and sit on the counter above a cutting board or bowl
Just letting you know I bought one with stands and a chain mail glove. Should be in tomorrow. Appreciate the recommendation!
No worries! Once you're comfortable with a mandolin, making the thinnest of slices is a breeze, so working in the kitchen becomes even more fun. :)
I’m looking forward to trying it out! Already bought the 16 pounds of mandarins to do the test run for my next batch!
Oh ok, I thought maybe there were electric ones or something like that. Thanks for the clarification.
There are attachments for kitchen robots. We have one but it gets dull pretty fast.
According to some relatives my ciders are too dry and too sour. I always tell them that I like dry and sour ciders so why would I made them differently?
This may be the next level of sourness, I think that citric acid is pretty heat stable.
I ended up boiling it for an hour and tasted it once it cooled, some bitterness came through and lots of sourness, I’m liking the flavor so far. I definitely want to re make this (assuming this batch ferments with how acidic it is) while using far less water so I don’t have to boil any off, maybe I’m just weird but I find over pitching yeast and not heating the must produces wonderful results, so we’ll see how this boiled batch goes lol. And absolutely agree, sour and dry are delicious ciders!
When I looked at the thumbnail I thought they were condoms
Hmm now you’ve got me wondering if there’s an enzyme to turn latex into sugar
Thought you had a shandy going. Let us know how it turns out!
For sure! I ended up boiling it for an hour, which goes against all my thoughts with making wine for distilling, but I massively overestimated the water I would need for 5 gallons and had to boil lots off. So far it’s a really meh brownish color, but the flavors about what I would want. I imagine lots of the esters and essential oils I wanted have boiled off though but only time will tell how it tastes
Not a drinker, but I am pretty curious how a lemon wine would actually taste. I'm imagining it could be better than a hard lemonade but alcohol never tastes the way I imagine it will (one of many reasons why I don't really drink lol).
We shall find out! I had to deviate from my plan (had too much water) and had to boil it (for my distillations I never boil my fruit) so we’ll see how it goes!
Good luck! Did a batch of that once and don’t think I’ll ever do it again. Keep an eye on your PH, most yeast has a hard time going in something that acidic.
Second this. Also, what did you do for fermentables? I may be wrong, but I don’t think lemons alone would have enough. I’m curious how it works for you. If it doesn’t then you may try fermenting separately and doing a reduction with the lemon slices to add after fermentation. That would make it easier to dial in your flavor as well.
16 pounds of sugar and an asinine amount of fermentation nutrients lol
Indeed, I had a stall once in a melomel with just a few lemons in secondary. Not a big deal since it was secondary, and residual sweetness counterbalanced the tartness nicely. Got really quickly really clean though.
I would say using just the skins for flavor is much more feasible. Also I quarter citrus, slicing them like this is just asking for lots of mush at cost of laborous slicing.
Can confirm. Especially after boiling there is a stupid amount of mush. Last I looked at the fermenter it seems to be starting up alright! Guess we’ll find out in a few days though lol
I have a really nice ph meter but since I’ve already deviated from my no boil process, I’m just gonna send it. Worst case scenario I learn some tips for next time (mainly I don’t feel like busting out the ph meter and calibrating it)
lol I did the same thing when I made it, totally get it. If your fermentation is super slow or stalls, check it then.
That’s the plan lol. I’m going to over pitch the yeast out the ass but if it stalls then maybe I’ll stop being lazy and bring out the baking soda lol