Homemade raspberry wine according to all canons – 3 recipes

The raspberry harvest is in full swing – it’s time to make delicious and very simple wine from this berry. In this article, I will tell you a few recipes for raspberry wine and share my little, but my experience of making it.

The raspberry harvest is in full swing. Raspberry jam is, of course, super: it is tasty and will help with a cold in winter. But homemade raspberry wine also heals, I tell you, no worse – and not only cough and snot, but also the bitterness of tears, and the early pain of loss. If you do not miss the time and make raspberry wine now, it will be ready just in time for the first cold weather. In this article, I will tell you a few recipes for raspberry wine and share my little, but my experience of making it.

Raspberries are a popular and widespread product; during the peak season, they can be bought relatively inexpensively. For wine, even not quite beautiful berries are suitable for us, including slightly crushed and discounted ones. The main thing is that the raspberries should not be washed, treated with chemicals, do not contain traces of mold (if a moldy berry comes across, it must be thrown out) and other diseases. The variety does not matter, both yellow and red varieties will fit. They say that the most fragrant drink is obtained from wild raspberries. But can you save her?

Raspberry wine is a fertile topic, it is not difficult to make it, it is easier than other fruit wines – for example, cherry or plum. The fruits contain a lot of wild yeast, which, in fact, will create an exquisite drink for us. Raspberries ferment so well that they even make sourdough for other fruit wines – in the end I will tell you exactly how to prepare them.

In general, proceed.

Homemade Raspberry Wine Recipe #1

This recipe was the first time I made wine. The result exceeded all my expectations.

From equipment: a 10-liter bottle or other container in which the raspberry mass would fit in such a way that at least 1/5 of the empty space remains.

1. We sort out raspberries, remove rotten or moldy berries, leaves and debris. We put it in a saucepan and begin to mercilessly crush with a rolling pin, pusher or bare hands – this is the most pleasant thing.
2. Add to the mass of 70% water and sugar. In my case, this is, respectively, 3,5 liters and 1750 grams. We mix everything well and fall asleep in a container for fermentation, which we put in a warm dark place.

According to various recipes for raspberry wine, a water seal is hung either now, or in a day or two, when signs of fermentation appear. I would advise you to do it right away – raspberries ferment quickly, the beginning of this process is easy to miss. At the stage of rapid fermentation (with pulp), instead of a shutter, a rubber glove with a hole will do (during Prohibition it was wittily called “Hello Gorbachev!”, but in our case it will be “Hello Nikolaev!”).

3. My first experiments with raspberry wine.

   Every day, a couple of times a day, we mix the fermenting mass so that the pulp cap does not turn sour. Primary fermentation lasts from 6 to 10 or more days. We wait until the glove drops or the water seal stops gurgling. We are waiting another day.

4. Drain the resulting wine material, pour out the thick and squeeze it well with gauze, after which we throw it away. Pour the liquid back into the bottle.
5. The remaining sugar is divided into 3 parts (250 grams each). Pour one part into a container, add the remaining water (1,5 liters) there. We mix everything well and send under the water seal.

At this stage, it is still desirable to make a water seal, and not a glove. I have a non-standard bottle, ordinary caps don’t fit it, and I couldn’t get a cork, so I used the method that my grandfather used: I took a tube a little thicker than a drip tube, wrapped it in several layers of newspaper, drove it tightly into the neck, sealed it with plasticine. The tube, of course, is led into a suspended bottle of water, which gurgles itself, releasing gases from the wine, but not letting air into the container.

6. After 4 days, add 250 grams of sugar to the bottle. After another 3 days, we send the remaining portion of top dressing to the wine. Everyone, it won’t be long to wait! After 3-4 days, the water seal will stop gurgling.
7. Almost ready homemade raspberry wine is drained from the sediment using a flexible tube. After that, it can be immediately bottled, but it is better to let it stand for another day or two and repeat the procedure to finally get rid of the sediment.
8. And the hardest part! The wine must be corked and put to ripen for 3-6 months in a cool dark place. Well, or at least 2. In general, how long you stand – from time to time it only gets better.

Recipe for homemade raspberry wine No. 2

This recipe is simpler, but less economical. To make homemade raspberry wine, we need not crushed berries, but only juice. The result should be about 10 liters of product.

1. Pour all the water and half (1,2 kg) of sugar into the juice. Stir well and pour into a fermentation container so that the liquid takes up ¾ of the volume. We install a water seal, put the bottle in a dark place at room temperature.
2. After about a week, we send the remaining sugar to the container, shake it up and set it to ferment for 3-4 weeks, until the water seal stops bubbling.
3. The resulting wine must be removed from the sediment with a straw and poured into an airtight container, pouring it over. Here the drink is stored for another 20 days at room temperature.
4. At the end of the specified period, the wine is again removed from the sediment and poured into bottles.

Everything, our homemade raspberry wine is ready to drink! Although, again, if you let it stand for a month or two in a sealed container, the drink will taste better.

Recipe #3: Fortified Raspberry Wine

This homemade raspberry wine will be strong and sweet, since the fermentation process in it is artificially interrupted by alcohol – this is how they do, for example, Madeira or sherry. In addition, this recipe is the fastest and least laborious, so it can be advised to novice winemakers.

Making fortified raspberry wine:

1. Unwashed berries are squeezed through gauze or with a juicer.
2. 1 liter of water is added to the squeezed mass, it is infused for about 5-6 hours – the water will pull out everything that remains in it, including wild yeast, from the cake. After that, the raspberries are pressed again.
3. Juice and raspberry water are mixed, another liter of pure water and 300 grams of sugar are added to them. The liquid is placed on the floor of the water seal and sent to wander in a warm, dark place.
4. After a week – ten days, 150 grams of sugar is added to the must for each liter of the resulting wine, a water seal is again put on the bottle.
5. At the end of fermentation, the wine must be drained from the sediment, after which – add 50 ml of alcohol (or, even more preferably, raspberry brandy, recalculating the amount according to the strength of the drink) for each liter of drink, mix thoroughly and taste. If you want to make the wine sweeter, feel free to add sugar, the added alcohol will prevent the liquid from fermenting again.
6. Fortified raspberry wine should be put for a month or two in a cool dark place, after which you can start tasting!

Easy raspberry sourdough recipe

As I said, raspberries ferment very actively, so they can be used to activate the fermentation process of wines from less “turbulent” fruits and berries. For sourdough, we need 2 cups of unwashed raspberries, 2 tablespoons of sugar, half a liter of cold water. All this is placed in a jar and covered with gauze. In 2-3 days our “wine catalyst” is ready!

According to the same recipe, you can make a sourdough starter from strawberries, fresh rose hips, juniper berries, blueberries, figs and, of course, grapes.