How To Make STRAWBERRY WINE

Hey everybody, welcome back to Kenfolks Farm. How you guys doing? I'm down here in the my little hobby room and Let's check in on my My muscadine wine. I just started yesterday got four gallons two, four, six, eight gallons of Scumford on wine I just started yesterday Didn't do a video on that. I've done a lot of muscadine videos and I'd like to do another one But I was digging through the freezer yesterday, and I forgot that we have two gallons of strawberries Frozen strawberries never done. I've done a pineapple video pineapple wine video. You can read you can search that It's awesome. One of our all-time favorites I've never done a strawberry wine making video. So I think we're gonna do a strawberry wine making video. It's gonna be pretty simple Probably a long video because it takes about two months to make this stuff and I'll tell you up front I've made two batches of strawberry wine before two different times and both Batches of strawberry wine blew the corks both. That's the only thing the only fruit I've ever I've ever fermented That came back and blew the corks at the very end when we back sweetened So we're gonna do it a little different this time and pray that we don't blow our corks At the end and if I do I will make sure to be honest and show you guys that we did But it actually it blew a few and we pulled the corks on the wrist Before we lost them all I think we end up losing three or four bottles On the first batch and maybe three or four on the second batch But but the corks would be about half blown out So we just took them outside on the back of my truck pulled the corks They spewed everywhere just like shaking up champagne we'd hold as much as we could import them in mason jars and basically had strawberry champagne, which was Phenomenal it was so good and we put it in the refrigerator and everybody with everybody Was telling us we should have refrigerated it We did use Camden tablets at the end to try to kill all the yeast and we let it sit for a long long time To try to make sure all the yeast was dead. But apparently when we back sweetened it, it just crunk that yeast right back up So hopefully this time we're not going to do that. I'm gonna think what I'm gonna do is refrigerate it at the end Just to make sure we kill off all the yeast when I back sweeten it We're going to set it in the refrigerator for maybe another month or two. Hopefully it'll all be settled down It's gonna be a long video for me to make if I can keep up with making it but stick around Gonna make some more attempt to make some more strawberry wine. All right, I'm gonna really keep this simple for everybody Everything you see me use in this video came from Amazon Whatever I tell you that I'm using order it on Amazon. I'm not I don't put all that stuff in the description I just don't do all that It's all on Amazon everything but the fruit the water and the sugar all the chemicals the buckets the airlocks Even the little you well not all the utensils I can get at the grocery store to smashers and all that stuff But for the most part the carboys the buckets the airlocks all the siphons the corks the bottles Everything you need is on Amazon and making wine. It's so easy. All you're doing is fermenting fruit and Make it dry or back sweeten it towards the end We go back and back sweeten it and make it a sweet like a dessert wine, which we like So Amazon has everything except for the fruit water sugar All right Now you do have to sanitize everything that touches your wine with the utensils the spoons anything the buckets have to be sanitized so we use a product called Star sand you can get it on Amazon. This bottle will last you for a long time You barely use any and a little spray bottle. We've got the spray bottle you can get them on Amazon, but we got ours at Home Depot But star sand you sanitize your buckets. We sanitize the lids anything that's going to touch our wine You want to sanitize it? So we're gonna take If I can get them out of here, they're frozen solid We're just gonna take our strawberries That's all I'm gonna do, let them thaw overnight Okay, make sure when you order your buckets that you order the buckets that come with the air locks If they don't come with air locks You'll have to order air locks separate But I always like to get the buckets that come with the air locks And what the air locks does is you fill them full of water They have little air holes on the top and let air escape But won't let anything bad into your buckets any germs or bad air into your buckets or bugs But anything in here that needs to burp it'll burp it out All right. It's just an overload of strawberries right now We got them thawed out as you can see and it's just strawberry and strawberry juice So what we're going to do is we're going to fill the buckets to the top of the strawberries with water We're on a well, I've heard not to use city water. I'm not sure about that. I know we've always used well water I've heard you could use distilled water or something like that This is what I've heard that the chemicals in your city water may hurt the yeast When it comes to making you wine, not sure never had tried to figure that prove that but we're on a well, so We use well water, but we're gonna fill the top of the strawberries full of water So it'll be about a half a bucket of water and strawberries that we're going to start squishing. So let's go fill these up with water Okay, so you can see we just put water just to the top of the strawberries which gives us about one gallon These are two gallon buckets. I meant to say that earlier. These are two gallon buckets So you basically got a gallon of strawberries and water? And then tomorrow, you know, we're gonna squish now, but come tomorrow. We'll add about Another gallon of sugar water right to about this line right here and I'll tell you more about that later But right now we're gonna squish these Strawberries with the water we just added Okay, we got them topped off with water to the top of the strawberries. Next. We're gonna crush a Camden tablet which you get on Amazon we're gonna put a Camden tablet in each one of these buckets. That'll help kill. Whatever yuckiness is in there. We don't want Wild yeast or any bacteria anything that's in in our wine It will help kill that off before we can add the yeast and all Camden tablets what you need Alright, they come in this little peel form What I do is just take a I take a spoon Put it in a spoon with another spoon and just crush them, you know break into it nice Excuse me. Nice fine powder. You can break them down into a nice little fine powder and just shake it around in there Then we'll start our squishing We want to squish these strawberries up really really really really really well break all this stuff up Well, it's been 24 hours We're gonna add our chemicals to our crushed fruit the Camden tablet should have done its job and Killed whatever wild junk we have in there growing that we don't want. We're gonna add some pectin enzyme some acid blend and some yeast nutrient We're gonna do for our yeast nutrient we're gonna Put in two teaspoons per bucket I just sort of sprinkle it around and I don't even fool in it with it whatsoever until after I add my sugar water and my yeast Next we'll add a half a teaspoon of pectin enzyme And I basically just guess with a teaspoon. I just put a half And last We'll add a teaspoon of acid blend All right, we'll take this upstairs. I don't stir it or anything right yet. We'll take it upstairs make our sugar water up fill these up with our sugar water and add our yeast and that sugar water is what's gonna With the fruit that's what's going to make our alcohol or our wine We'll do that upstairs All right to make up our sugar water We're going to use one-to-one ratio. It'll be two quarts of sugar two quarts of water We'll mix that up. We don't boil it or anything like that. We just run Hottest water we can get from the tap stir it till all that sugar breaks down and we'll add it to our fruit Two quarts of sugar two quarts of water All right, this is the yeast we use we ordered off Amazon it's the Lauvin K1 V 1116 One of my subscribers suggested this wine Yeast to us and we love it. It works great I think I was using the 1118 last time and they told me to try the 1116 We have it went back. We love it. It works great. It does awesome Fermentation process it really really gets this fruit kicking What we're gonna do is we're just gonna take one pack Can do up to five gallons. Well, these are two gallon buckets. So it's four gallons So what I basically do is just do a half a pack per bucket Okay, so one of these does five gallons to four gallons. I just split it between the four And one thing about this yeast it smells so good. I love it I just take a scoop per Let's mix it around take another scoop. That way I feel like I'm doing it even steeping. You know what I mean? Make back and forth now. We'll add our sugar water now that all our sugar water broke down It doesn't take long to break down. You don't have to boil your water I think if you get this too hot with that yeast in there, you'll kill your yeast So we just use scalding Hottest water we can get from the tap and what we do is we put our sugar water in with our fruit We try not to get it to the top which I've hardly ever do You basically want it right about here You can see where it's right about about an inch below the top because as this stuff starts as this stuff starts fermenting it's going to push that fruit up and It will actually go to the top and it'll start pushing up through this Through your airlock and it'll be a huge mess and it could squish out around the sides. It'll be so much pressure It just pushes all the fruit out and makes a huge mess and you don't want that So you want to leave some headspace That's gonna make a lot of good wine now what we'll do is we'll just stir all that in all the chemicals the yeast the sugar water the fruit will give it a good stir and Starting tomorrow. We will open these caps open these lids up and it should be a cap what they call a cap It'll be all that fruit pushed to the top and it'll make a nice thick cake looking substance on top All that fruit will be pushed to the top. We'll break that cap and stir it every day Till the yeast quits working or the yeast dies out and you'll see a difference. I'll show you in the video You'll see a huge difference when the yeast is working and alive and the fruits being fermented in the sugar water Then when it's dead once that fruit that yeast dies You'll see a huge difference And then you can start tasting it It'll be real good All right, we're making wine I'm gonna clean some of this yucky stuff off around the rim that I left them last night We'll put the tops back on them and take them downstairs All right. Well, that's the next day what we're gonna do Now is open the lids and I'll show you the cap on the inside We're gonna break that cap give it a good stir and we'll be doing this I always say every day, but it never ends up being every day every other day more than likely But it's good to do it every day break that cap stir that wine up get it all stirred up and Until the fermentation stops, you'll see a difference when that yeast starts to die off You'll see that the cap won't be there for one thing It'll be everything will be down on the bottom and you'll just have a little bit of stuff floating on top So you'll see a huge difference when the wine or the fermentation is is over now, you can see that nice thick cap It's like a it's kind of like a cake on there And what we're gonna do is just gonna break that and look at all that foam that foam is the the yeast Working it is making our wine And what we're gonna do is just break that cap. Look at that. That's working great I'm just gonna give it a little stir off the bottom and that's it. We'll do this every day or so Until the fermentation is done All right. Well, it's been Well over a month since I've looked in these buckets. I actually almost forgot about them. We went on a long vacation and Totally forgot about them. We have stirred them. We stirred them for the first few weeks and everything sort of died down I showed you guys what it looks like during the fermenting process But it's actually wine now once it gets done fermenting everything settles to the bottom it's wine, let me show you what it looks like see everything sort of Settled where everything actually settled to the bottom. So we got to get all that out And get ready to start clearing this up and you can actually taste it now. It's like I say again, it's wine It's just really really dry Yeah, it's not too bad Really really dry if you like a dry wine it's ready to go and now what I use to clear these To get this fruit out. I just use some little strainers a couple little strainers I'll scoop with one mash with the other a lot of people are going to comment and say why didn't I use a Fermenting bag or one of those bags that you put in here so you could just pull the whole bag out squeeze the juice out I've never used those. I Never got around to buying any But this is the way I've always done it with all our muscadines our plum or apple any type of wine I make I do it just like this I would like to start using the fruit bags But just never got around to using them you can if you like they sell them on Amazon as well All right again, we're just trying to get out all this old strawberry And we'll put it in our glass cardboard a three gallon cardboard and it'll settle out. We're not going to get all of it We're going to try to get the majority All right guys next that we got the majority out. This is just the way I do it and remember I'm not a professional winemaker. I'm just a Homesteading guy that likes to try to make my own stuff This is the way I do it to try to clear it up to you right now It's a real milky looking color because we've stirred it all up I just like to funnel it into my cardboard and we'll let this settle out for another Few weeks and Then we will siphon it off Into another cardboard and we'll just keep repeating that until it gets really really really clear. Usually we only have to do it about twice Because I've got it down to just about a science You'll see I don't know if y'all can see that or not, but y'all see all that Thick stuff in the bottom. I stopped pouring just before that last little bit of thick stuff gets in there That way there's not so much sediment, you can see that going in I stopped right there Then we'll do the other and not sure if this will top off a full three gallons The last batch of muscadine I just made Didn't quite Fill the entire jar up. You can top it off with water if you like, but to me it just weakens The alcohol content it just weakens your wine So I don't top it off. There's no need to actually Because it will not go all the way to the top and again, I'm not a I'm not a professional winemaker This is basically a home-brewed wine That's it We'll put a little stopper on there put an airlock And we'll let that sit for a few weeks until it clears up and I'll show you all that here in just a second All right, well it's been a while we've had this down here settling for a long time actually It's sort of out of sight out of mind. It's down here in our little my little hobby type room I keep all my hobby stuff and I almost forgot about it My wife was wanting to give some to a friend of hers at work So she's like are you gonna do that wine? I almost forgot about it. It's been down here for a long time So we're gonna go ahead and clean this up rack it one time See what it looks like Usually it looks pretty clean if it doesn't Usually I have to rack it twice. I'll rack it into our cardboard down here on the floor we'll rack it from there to here using a siphon and Probably do it one more time make it really nice and clear, but I'll show you what it looks like right now you can see it is Really really clear. It just looks beautiful. You can see all the sediment on the bottom So we're gonna we're gonna rack it all the way to here We'll end up throwing a lot of swill I get a lot of comments about people telling me not to throw this way, but we make so much wine this little bit I'm not worried about everybody tells me how I can clean that up. I don't care about that. We want the goodie That's what my daddy always said. We want the goodie. That's what we're after You see we got it siphoning. I don't got it I don't have it all the way on the bottom yet once it gets a little closer, but you can see it's coming out Really really clear It's gonna take a few minutes That's such a that's that little thin hose. We got such a small hose but uh, hey Patience patience patience when it comes to making wine. That's gonna be some good wine All right. Well, there it is. We had a little left in here. I'm not worried about that. This turned out really pretty I'm not sure if we only even rack it again. It's so clear. We'll just get ready to back sweeten it and And we'll bottle this because I'm ready to jump on this it looks so good All right. Well, it's been another week and you could see just a little film right there on the edge Well, we have to rack this thing one more time Try to leave that in here and we'll have a nice nice beautiful clear Strawberry red wine. I'm gonna siphon it back into these two buckets get ready to add some Camden tablets To make sure we kill our yeast So we'll do that and then tomorrow we'll be back sweetening this wine and it's good to go. We'll start putting it in bottles I'll show you how we bottle them cork them show you what tools you need to cork them the little plastic shrink-wrap show you how to use those Big things are coming. We're about to start drinking our wine. You can drink it now, but it's really dry If you like a dry wine, it's good to go. We like ours really really sweet. You'll see Next we're going to add our Camden tablet. We're just going to crush it with a spoon and Spread it around inside here and give it a little stir and that will kill the yeast And you want that used to be guilt before we add our sugar water If not, you're just going to feed that yeast and it'll re-ferment and blow the tops out of your bottles I say that because we've had that happen and actually I've made this strawberry wine twice and it's blown I've had some blown the tops twice the only fruit that I've had blow the tops So what we've learned is to refrigerate it as soon as you get done bottling We'll put it in our little wine refrigerator when we're done and keep it nice and cold in there and see what happens Okay, you can back sweeten your wine. However, you like We have a certain way that we do ours every single time after a lot of different batches of wine We found the sweetness that we like. It's one quart of sugar one quart of water one-to-one Break it down into a simple syrup and and we dibby that Half of this per bucket. So this is not going in one bucket It'll be divided into half. So our wine is really really sweet. I'll show you We'll just stir this With hot water from the tap not boiling water, we don't use boiling water We use hot water from the tap as hot as we can get it and it'll break that sugar down And it'll be just perfect for our wine. Like I say This is our wine now. This is I'm gonna have a lot of comments. I always get a lot of comments I get a lot of comments. You should have done this. You should have done that. You didn't do this, right? You didn't I have made so many I don't even know how many batches of wine we've made so far And it always turns out great every time it's nice and clear Very high alcohol content and Which I never measure and really really sweet. We like our wine wine really sweet and we give it a lot away a lot to our neighbors co-workers at work and They absolutely love it and they beg for more so Like I say if you have a comment about the way I do this Send it that's great, but I'm not gonna change a thing. It's always works out great for me Now basically all I do is I just Split it up half and half and you can you can taste it as you are adding your sugar water You can taste it to see If it's whatever sweetness you prefer if you want it super sweet if you want to semi sweet You can taste it as you go and that's always fun Let me show you guys how it's turned out you see how clear that is so clear Really really nice smells great Smells great, and I never check the alcohol percentage in here, but it's always Super super high. It's always really really high my gosh That is so good you can feel that little Little heat going down. It's so good. All right. We got our bottles set up on the floor. We got our wine ready We're gonna take the tops off now what you're gonna need with your siphon is you're gonna need what's called a bottling wand It's got a little plunger. Let's see if I turn it this way a little plunger Right there comes out and you will put it in the bottom of the bottle It'll fill it as soon as you lift it up. It cuts the flow of wine off So you don't spill a bunch when you're going from bottle to bottle. It's called a bottling wand. You're gonna want one of those Now we'll just fill our bottles and you'll see as it Reaches higher to the top once I get about that curve. It'll drop down when I pull the wand out But I try to fill them to about the neck Once you pull it up it stops that little plunger stops the wine flow Okay, next thing you need after we got our wine bottle is a corking tool You're gonna want one of these to put our corks in our bottles And the size corks you can get a bag of a hundred for I don't know It's really really cheap, but you can get a bag of a hundred on Amazon for really cheap I use the number eight. I think there's two or three different sizes. I've always used number eight They're super tight never had any leak problems or anything like that number eight corks and a corking tool Okay, the way you do this Take your corking tool and we sanitize our corks too. We spray them With the sanitizer as well. Everything's sanitized put your cork right in that little hole there push it and just Hear that seal it locks it right down. It looks great next we'll cork all these and Then we'll put our plastic shrink-wrap caps on there you can order these on Amazon all Kinds of different colors to choose from I think we'll go with green since the bottle of wine will be red We'll have a nice green top kind of look like a strawberry. I think that'll be cute All right. Well, there's the final The final product this is all the strawberry and this is a batch of scumpernong Muscadine grapes I was doing on the side at the same time. I just thought I'd show you guys I had two batches of scumpernong going in one batch of strawberry come up with 11 jars Crystal-clear just and taste Absolutely, amazing I've been over here while I'm bottling it takes a little time so I sit and mmm It is so good. That's on the sweet side. Now. We like it sweet. I say again as You're back sweetening if you do as you back sweeten taste it as you go And see how how you like it We like ours Pretty sweet. So it's really really good. Absolutely. Love it. Next clip. I'll show you How I forgot one on my cats. I gotta go back and get one I'll show you how we shrink wrap these little plastic shrink wrap caps on here to make them look really nice The way I do it is the cheapest way. It's a there's a lot of different ways to do it They sell these little heat guns and all this junk. You don't need all that. I'll show you how I do it Okay, the easiest way that I've found to Shrink wrap these little shrink wrap caps on here. It's just using hot water. Bring your water to a boil and Just take it off the eye. You don't want to play with what it's for. Just take it off the eye and What we do is we take And just hold it right at the right at the edge And just slowly dip it in And there you go comes out. Perfect Super super easy And you can do the whole batch Like that, you don't have to buy a heat gun any of that other jump. They try to sell you. This is super easy All right, guys. Thanks again for checking out my video if you made it this far, please hit that subscribe button I really appreciate it and Get out there and make you some wine. You can make fruit wine out of just about any fruit. We've made it out of pineapple apples plums Strawberries muscadines because we're in Muscadine tomorrow. We've made it out of just about every fruit. It's so so easy Just takes a little time So get out there and make you some wine. Thanks for checking out my video. We'll see you on the next one