1986 Apple
October 2018 – I had no idea what I was doing when I made this. Of course, there was no internet in which to look things up, and the books I had at the time provided no guidance, so I proceeded as I would with any other fruit. In hindsight, I should have used apple juice.
Ingredients
| Fruit | 20# Macintosh apples |
| Water | 6 gallons |
| Sugar | 16# |
| Citric Acid | 3 tsp |
| nutrient | 5 tsp nutrient + 3 tsp energizer |
| Sulfite | 7 Campden tablets |
| Yeast | Red Star Epernay II |
Method
| Started | 11/15/1986 SG 1.105 |
| Yeast added | 11/16/1986 SG 1.105 |
| Strained | 11/29/1986 SG 1.009 |
| Racked | 12/02/1986 SG 1.002 |
| Racked | 12/17/1986 SG 0.990 |
| 1 gallon reserved for sparkling | 01/15/1987 SG 0.990 |
| Main bottled | 12/15/1987 SG 0.990 |
| Sparkling bottled | 07/27/1987 SG 0.990 |
Notes
| Yield | 25 bottles + 5 bottles sparkling wine |
| Alcohol | 15.6% |
| Afterthoughts | I tried making sparkling wine twice — neither attempt was what I’d call a thundering success. I may try again … or I may not …
Apple wine should be sweetened slightly. It tends to be astringent if it’s not. This is often true to non-grape wines. |
| October 2018 | It just occurred to me that I used Campden tablets, and I was wondering why. I think I had purchased a large bag a year or two before and was using them up. Campden work … but they are a PITA for anything other than gallon batches. |