Apricot wine at home – 3 proven recipes

After a successful experiment with raspberry wine, I believed in myself and decided to try my luck in making wine from the cheapest, most common and affordable fruit in my region – apricots.

The topic of alcoholic drinks from apricots has interested me for a long time. The fact is that I was born and raised in such places where these fruits are simply in bulk – at the end of the season, sweet, fragrant apricots turn into a rotting, stinking mass that carpets the ground, and everyone only thinks how not to enter into them. And I think about what kind of wastefulness and stupidity it is – after all, recipes for apricot wine at home still exist, and it is quite possible to make at least this simple drink.

After a successful (so far) experiment with raspberry wine, I believed in myself and decided to try my luck in making wine from the cheapest, most common and affordable fruit in my region – apricots, and at the same time share with the readers of the Rum Diary a few interesting and reasonable, in my opinion, recipes. Later I will also add recipes for liqueurs and tinctures, including the legendary French apricot liqueur.

Homemade apricot wine. What’s the catch?

For starters, as usual, a little theory. Indeed, if it were so easy to make apricot wine at home, there would be a hell of a lot of recipes, and the basement of every private house would be littered with drink bottles. But an apricot is still a fruit. There are three main problems with it:

EXTRACTION OF JUICE

The simplest recipes for homemade wines are based on the use of only juice. And whoever tried to extract juice from apricots knows that this fruit is very fibrous, it is very difficult to squeeze it out by hand, and juicers do not produce transparent nectar, but some squeezes, more like a tomato. We will try to deal with the problem this way: first, let the crumpled fruits ferment along with the cake, and only then, when they soften, we press the must out of them (fermentation technology – прим. ред.).

BOND

Oh, this hydrocyanic acid! The stone gives a bright almond flavor that really enriches the aroma of the wine. But not everyone dares to burst cyanide, even in insignificant doses. Output options: remove the bones; pull out the nucleoli from the bones; replace them with ordinary almonds or – do not be afraid of harmful organic matter and pour a couple of handfuls into the bottle. The site has a recipe for homemade Amaretto – but it is made just on apricot kernels and almonds, and nothing – they drink it!

Shutter speed

If you want to get the result quickly – better make an apricot tincture. Apricot wine at home is patience and only patience! Due to the high fiber content of the fruit, this drink is difficult to clarify, it often has to be removed from the sediment, it takes a long time to acquire the desired flavor and aroma properties. Such wines settle for at least 6 months, and sometimes – 2-3 years! But as a result, a patient winemaker will receive a high-quality, very tasty, and most importantly, an original product.

Apricot wine recipe without yeast

For this recipe (as well as for all the others), we need mature, picked from the branches (or torn off) and never washed apricots. Washing the fruit kills the wild yeast that will actually turn the sugar into alcohol for us. And fruits lying on the ground can rot and give an unpleasant damp smell. Keep in mind that cultivars tend to be sweeter but less aromatic, while wild apricots are the opposite, so more sugar may need to be added to wild apricots. Oh yes – and don’t leave the fruit in the cooking process outdoors – it darkens them like potatoes.

How to cook:

1. Wiped with a cloth, freed from spoiled or rotten parts and seeds, the fruits are thoroughly kneaded and sent to a saucepan covered with gauze for 4-5 days. Slightly warm (up to 30 degrees) water goes there. In the process, the mass must be mixed several times a day. On the first or second day, the wort should ferment.
2. On the fifth day, the juice from the actively fermenting slurry is carefully drained, and the pulp is squeezed out with gauze. Sugar is introduced into the liquid, everything is thoroughly mixed and sent to a warm, dark place under a water seal. Remember that future wine should occupy no more than 2/3 of the volume of the fermentation tank (bottles, etc.)
3. Fermentation lasts from 10 days to three weeks, depending on the ambient temperature (not less than 18, but not more than 30 °), the sugar content of fruits and other factors. The readiness of the wine is determined by the water seal: if it has stopped gurgling (or the “Hello Gorbachev” glove has come down), everything is ready.
4. You have received a young homemade apricot wine. Now it should be ennobled – drained from the sediment through a tube (it can be 2-3 times every couple of days), corked and sent to a cool place for quiet fermentation. On quiet fermentation, the container should be almost full. The wine will ferment for up to 4 months.
5. After this period, the liquid can already be called wine. It must once again be drained from the sediment and bottled, and then sent to infuse for as long as possible. Connoisseurs say that the correct recipe for apricot wine at home involves at least a year of aging in bottles, preferably two years.

Apricot wine at ČKD

In this recipe, lemon juice is used, which gives the wine sourness and takes part in the fermentation processes. Since yeast is introduced into the pulp, apricots can be soaked in boiling water – this way it will be easier to squeeze the juice out of them, but wild yeast naturally dies.

How to cook:

1. Apricots are peeled, as in the previous recipe, and freed from the stone. The pulp is poured with boiling water and sent under pressure for 4 days. After that, it will be easy to squeeze the apricot juice.
2. The juice is filtered through gauze, the pulp is squeezed out. Yeast and fresh lemon juice are introduced into the liquid, as well as all the sugar. Everything is thoroughly mixed and sent under a water seal. Do not use baker’s or brewer’s yeast – they will give an unpleasant aftertaste of mash!
3. At the end of rapid fermentation (on average, 2-3 weeks), the wine must be defended for another couple of days, after which it must be drained from the sediment. After that, the drink is filtered and sent to corked bottles (they must be filled almost completely) or an airtight wooden barrel for 4-6 months.
4. At the end, homemade apricot wine is drained from the sediment and migrated to bottles. After 4-5 months it will be possible to try it.

Fortified apricot wine

This recipe seems to me the most interesting and if I had an apparatus, I would try it. In this version, the wine is at a certain moment fortified with brandy (moonshine), expelled from the pressed pulp. The technical process is almost waste-free, and in the finished product, as they say, a strong drink completely merges with wine, which acquires a slightly smoky aroma, rich amber color and a pleasant taste of dried apricots.

How to cook:

1. Apricots, as usual, are pitted and pushed aside. Water (3/4 of the pulp volume) and sugar (one third of the volume) are added to the gruel. The wort is placed under a water seal.
2. When violent fermentation is over – the pulp needs to be filtered and set aside – it will go to brandy mash. Taste the wine – it should not be sweet, maybe even a little bitter.
3. The liquid is well filtered – first through one, then through 2 layers of gauze. Sugar is again introduced into it – 100 grams per liter. After that, the wine is placed under a water seal for re-fermentation.
4. Making brandy. For one liter of pulp, a kilogram of sugar and 4 liters of water are taken – mash will be prepared from this. Moonshine can be made not very clean, some advise not to even cut off the tails. We need brandy with a strength of about 35%. A little is used for wine, the rest can then be distilled again for consumption in its pure form.
5. Mount. 25-30 ml is introduced into the wine fermented for the second time. moonshine per liter. Thus, we will stop further fermentation – now you can safely add sugar to your taste if it seems not sweet enough to you. In addition, apricot moonshine will give the drink a pleasant astringency and enhance the apricot flavor.
6. The drink is passed through a dense filter (cotton or coffee), hermetically sealed and settled for a month, after which it will need to be drained from the sediment with a tube.
7. For final maturation, the product is poured into a bottle or regular bottles for six months. The drink can be tasted when it is clear enough.

That’s all the sane recipes for apricot wine that we managed to find. Personally, I used the first one and I was very pleased with the result. What do you wish!