Grapefruit wine

[Arwel]

Greetings once again!

"A friend" of mine recently ninjad over a 10ft fence covered with barbed wire into the bin area of a certain souless, multinational supermarket behemoth. In one bin he found lots and lots of grapefruit (60 or so!). He is not one of those strange people who actually eat the things so he's thinking of making grapefruit wine. Does anyone have any experience of this? ?? ?? ?? Any recipes? A neighbour suggested grapefruit and lemon wine but surely this would be too bitter??

Thanks for any tips

[MKG]

I made grapefruit wine once. It was OK - not my kind of thing, but absolutely nothing wrong with it. I'll look up the recipe and report back.

Mike

[julie_lanteri]

not sure I can help in any way... I've had vin d'orange (orange wine) before, no idea how it's made but a lot of people make their own in France. It's quite popular as an apéritif type drink (another one I remember is walnut wine). Is grapefruit wine the same kind of thing Mike?

[MKG]

@Julie - yep, exactly the same kind of thing.

The recipe ...

Squeeze enough grapefruit to give you a half-litre of juice. Roughly chop 250 gms of sultanas, put them in a pan with a pint of water and boil for ten minutes. Allow to cool and then strain off the liquid (that is, keep the liquid, throw the remaining mush away). Dissolve a kilo of sugar in a pint or so of water (heating the water helps) and allow to cool. Put the grapefruit juice, sultana liquid and sugar solution into a fermentation vessel, add a cupful of strong cold tea, a level teaspoon of yeast nutrient and a level teaspoon of pectic enzyme. Also, if you have it, add a Vit B1 tablet (crushed) - if you don't have it, add about an eighth of a level teaspoon of Marmite. This B1 addition is quite important as yeast doesn't really like a totally citrus environment. Top up with cold water to about the seven-pint level, stir and then add a level teaspoon of general purpose wine yeast. Ferment to a finish, topping up to a gallon when any initial frothing has died down, Rack, top up again if necessary, and leave for at least a month before tasting. It might be drinkable at that point, but you can keep this one for a few years (although it should certainly be drinkable at three months).

This recipe also works for oranges.

I found my taste notes ... this gives you a very pale, very dry, very light result - as Julie said, an aperitif-style wine. The kind of thing to have a glass of just before a meal to perk up the appetite, but not the kind of thing to sit and quaff after the meal.

Mike

[frozenthunderbolt]

It is one that I make each year if i can get the GF.

I use about a carrier bag full per 2 gallons. about 3 l of juice, the zest of all the gf, 2.5 kg sugar, 250gms of raisins/sultanas is i can get them, some nutrients, some pectic enzyme and water to 9 L - ferment on zest in primary for a week or so, then strain and rack to demi-johns. rack etc as per normal. needs 2 years maturation at which point it tastes like a delicious citrus mead.
This is a fairly loose recipe - this year for example I am trying to give it a more pronounced mead taste so have put in 500gms honey and it was 3.3 l juice .

[Arwel]

Thanks for the replies. It's 1am and I haven't been able to sleep so i thought I'd get on to some brewing. Mike suggested half a litre of grapefruit juice per gallon whereas Frozen suggested 1.5litres per gallon so I ended up sticking about 1.5ish litres into what will be 2 gallons of wine. Unfortunately, I didn't have any sultanas in the cupboard so (pls dont have tooo much of a go at me for this) I added a couple of boxes of frozen blackberries I picked last year. My reasoning was they're almost the same size as sultanas and a similar colour to raisins so surely they'll be a perfect substitute.... No pectic enzyme I'm afraid...will this cause problems down the line?? Added the tea which I've never done before (why did I do this??) and also the marmite. Unfortunately, I added almost a teaspoon of marmite and the whole brew smells quite heavily of this...please tell me the smell will disappear !!

Thanks for the recipes, people. Feel free to pop in for some marmite wine if you're passing

[frozenthunderbolt]

No idea how the blackberries will go - sultanas not absolutly necessary - just give the wine more 'body' Should be ok without pectic enzyme but it may take longer to fall clear. Added tea to get some tannin into the wine - improoves the mouth feel, and helps with clearing and storing the wine successfully.
I suspect too much marmite 1/4 tsp per gallon max i believe, I have never used it - a B multi vit will do much the same thing with less flavour. Perhaps someone else can comment on this aspect.
All the best :-)

[MKG]

Oh dear, Arwel - that's an awful lot of Marmite. Will the smell (and taste) dissipate? I honestly haven't the foggiest. However, the blackberries may mask it a bit . I'd just let things run their course and then see what you think - you never know, you might like the flavour of Marmite wine.

The differing amounts of juice will give you different wine styles. Mine is a light aperitif, FTBs is a full-blown, in your face version. You can do that with any juice (except maybe apple) - a half-litre for light, up to two litres for heavy flavour.

Your reasoning for the blackberries, by the way, was way out but the effect may be good. It's part of the fun when you're designing recipes - working out how much of one flavour will go well with another, or even if they'll go together at all. As a general guide, adding sultanas or raisins (raisins for reds) is always a good idea as it adds to the wine character - it's much the same (but not quite as good) as adding grape concentrate. However, at least half of the weight of any added sultanas/raisins is sugar, so you have to take that into account.

Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your grapefruit/Marmite, but I can't say I'm optimistic.

Mike