Hedgerow Hawthorn Dessert Wine
This homebrewed hawthorn wine finishes sweet and rosy hued, with the delicate spiced apple-like scent of hawthorn fruit. It's sweet without being overly cloying, and lovely as a dessert wine, in a spritzer, or as a tonic cordial.
Ingredients
- 2 kg hawthorn berries 4 lb 6 oz
- 1 gal water 128 oz
- 2160 grams sugar 4 lb 8 oz
- 720 grams golden raisins 1 lb
- 1 KMS campden tablet crushed
- 1 tsp acid blend
- 1 tsp pectic enzyme
- 1 tsp yeast nutrient
- 1 packet wine yeast
Instructions
Brewing and Primary Fermentation
- Wash and then freeze the hawthorn fruit until you have collected enough to make your wine, or at least 24 hours. This will help break down the fruit so that you get a better extraction and also ensures there aren't any stowaways (like fruit flies, yuck) to spoil your wine.
- Roughly chop your raisins and combine them with the frozen haws in a heat-resistant nylon fine mesh brewing bag. This is optional but makes everything a lot nicer to work with. Tie off the bag so it stays closed.
- Heat a gallon of water to a boil in a stockpot, and dissolve the sugar into it, bringing it back up to a boil for no more than a minute. Turn off the heat, and add the nylon brew bag with the hawthorn and chopped raisins. Dunk the fruit until it sinks, and cover the pot.
- Sanitize your wide-mouth fermentation jar or small bucket and airlocks, using your preferred homebrewing sanitizer (I like Star-san).
- Let the fruit must mixture steep until the pot is cool to the touch. Add the acid blend, and with clean hands, transfer the nylon bag of fruit into the sanitized fermentation vessel.
- Untie the bag, and using a sanitized whisk or sturdy stainless spoon, lightly crush the steeped fruit inside the bag to break open the skins to get a better extraction of the fruit.
- Pour the cooled must (sugar + water + fruit juice) carefully over the bag into the wide-mouth container.
- Crush the campden tablet (or use K-meta powder) into the mixture and stir it in with a sanitized metal or plastic spoon. Wait 12-24 hours for the sulphites to do their work and dissipate.
- If you are using the pectic enzyme, add that now, and stir it in again with a freshly sanitized spoon. Replace the lid and wait another 12-24 hours.
- Add the yeast nutrient and wine yeast, and place it somewhere warm and protected from light (check the preferred temperature range for the yeast you are using).
- Check the initial specific gravity of the must if you have a hydrometer, and write that down in your brewing notebook or on a piece of painter's tape on your brewing vessel.
- Let ferment for 7-14 days on the fruit, pushing the bag down with a clean spoon regularly so the exposed part of the bag doesn't mold. Once the initial vigorous fermentation has settled and the wine has taken on a rosy color from the fruit, you can transfer the wine off of the fruit and into the secondary vessel.
Secondary Fermentation
- Either carefully remove the nylon brew bag from the fermenter, letting it drain completely into the container, or carefully siphon and rack the wine from the primary into your sanitized secondary container (usually a narrow-mouthed glass jug). Use a piece of sanitized tubing and racking cane, or carefully transfer it with a sanitized filter funnel.
- Check the specific gravity and record this again.
- Top with an airlock and stopper, and put in a cool, dark place to age and finish fermenting. If a lot of sediment forms in the jug, after a few weeks you can carefully rack it off the sediment and into another sanitized jug.
- When the wine is completely clear, and completely finished with fermentation, you can bottle it. When the specific gravity is no longer dropping with measurements taken 7-14 days apart, it should be safe to bottle. If you want to make sure that it doesn't restart fermentation (which, in a sweet wine like this, can pop corks, or worse, break the bottle), you can add a small amount of potassium sorbate at bottling.
- Bottle in cleaned and sanitized wine bottles with new corks, or swing-top bottles. You can also use sanitized crown cap bottles and new bottle caps.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
