Pumpkin wine is one of the more or less successful varieties of home-made vegetable wine drinks. It is remembered for its persistent aroma of fruits and slightly tart taste. Lovers of new, incomparable tastes will like it.
Any variety of pumpkin is suitable for winemaking, the shade of wine depends on the color of the pulp. Try to take ripe fruits of medium size, after removing spoiled, rotten and moldy parts.
All tools and containers used must be sterilized with boiling water or in any other way so that mold and other wine diseases do not appear. You can work with the wort only with clean hands.
Ingredients:
- pumpkin – 3 kg;
- water – 3 liters (approximately);
- sugar – 300 grams per liter of water;
- citric acid – 5 grams per liter of water;
- unwashed raisins (for sourdough) – 50 grams or wine yeast per 5 liters of must.
Unwashed raisins are used as a source of wild wine yeast. It is impossible to add ordinary baking (dry, pressed) or alcoholic yeast, otherwise, instead of wine, you will get mash with a characteristic taste and smell.
Citric acid is needed to stabilize the acidity of the must, thanks to which the wine ferments better, is less susceptible to infection by pathogenic microorganisms, lasts longer and tastes better. To maintain normal sugar content (should not exceed 20%), we will add sugar in equal parts.
pumpkin wine recipe
1. If there is no cultural wine yeast, then 3-4 days before working with pumpkin, prepare a starter: put raisins in a jar, add 15-20 grams of sugar and 150 ml of water. Stir, cover with gauze, transfer the jar to a dark place with room temperature.
After 2-3 days, the sourdough will be ready: foam will appear on the surface, hiss and a slight smell of fermentation. If this does not happen, then the raisins are too heavily processed with preservatives, you will have to buy another one and start over. Raisins can also be replaced with unwashed fresh raspberries, currants or cherries.
2. Wash the pumpkin, peel, remove the core and bones.
3. Rub the peeled pulp on a fine grater, pass through a meat grinder or chop in any other way to a puree state.
4. In a container with a wide neck, for example, in an enameled bucket or saucepan, dilute the puree by half with water (proportion 1:1), add sourdough (along with raisins) or wine yeast to the wort. Add citric acid and sugar, 5 and 100 grams, respectively, for each liter of water. Mix until smooth.
5. Cover the container with gauze, transfer to a dark room at room temperature. Leave for 4 days. On the first day, foam should appear, indicating the beginning of fermentation. Once every 8-12 hours, stir with your hand or a wooden stick, destroying and drowning in the juice a layer of pulp (floating pulp).
6. Strain the wort through 3-4 layers of gauze, squeeze the cake well (no longer needed). Add the second portion of sugar to the resulting juice – 100 grams per liter of water added at the 4th stage. Mix.
7. Pour the juice into a fermentation tank, fill to a maximum of 75% of the volume, leaving free space for foam and carbon dioxide. Install a water seal of any design on the neck, you can use a medical glove with a hole pierced by a needle in the finger.
8. Transfer the wort to a dark place (or cover) with a stable temperature of 18-27°C.
9. After 5 days from the date of installation of the water seal, add the remaining sugar – 100 grams per 1 liter of water. To do this, open the container, drain separately 250-300 ml of fermenting juice, dilute the sugar, then pour the resulting syrup back into the fermentation container and close it with a water seal without stirring.
Depending on the temperature and yeast, the fermentation period for homemade pumpkin wine is 25-55 days. Signs of the end of the process: the water seal stopped emitting gas (the glove deflated), the drink brightened, a layer of sediment appeared at the bottom.
If fermentation does not stop after 45 days from the start of preparation, in order to prevent the appearance of bitterness, you need to drain the pumpkin wine from the sediment through a straw, then leave to ferment at the same temperature.
10. After fermentation is complete, drain the young wine through a straw into another container. To taste. Sweeten with sugar if desired. It can also be fixed with alcohol (vodka) in an amount of 2-15% of the volume.
11. Pour the wine into storage containers, seal tightly. Put to ripen in a refrigerator or cellar with a temperature of 5-16 ° C for at least 5 months (preferably 6-9). Aging improves the taste of the wine.
It is better to fill the vessels to the top so that there is no contact with oxygen. If sweetening was done at the previous stage, keep the container under a water seal for the first 7-10 days of ripening in case of repeated fermentation.
12. When sediment appears in a layer of 4-5 cm (at first once every 10-15 days, then less often), filter the wine by pouring it into another container. When the sediment no longer appears, the pumpkin wine is ready. You can fill the bottles with a drink and seal hermetically. Shelf life – up to 3 years, fortress -10-12%. Approximate output – 60-65% of the initial volume of the wort (7th stage).
