Last fall I bought a steam juicer based on you mentioning it a few times in your site. I finally pulled it out yesterday and WOW is it ever easy to use and so clean compared to running fruit through a traditional electric juicer. Easily the best investment I've made since getting a pressure canner. I had about 30-40 pounds of tart cherries in my freezer and in just a few short hours I had a little over three gallons of juice and absolutely no mess in the kitchen -- most of the juice I've used to start batches of cherry wine.
That brings me to my questions, which are about sugar in wine!
When I made gallon-size batches of dandelion wine and rhubarb wine, using recipes on your site, they were great but kinda sweet. When I remade them as five gallon batches -- and carefully multiplying everything by five -- the wines were much dryer. Theoretically it should be the same sweetness, right? Do you maybe know why this might be the case?
On a semi related topic, this summer I also made corn cob wine using a recipe from another site. It's good but overwhelmingly sweet. If I do another gallon of it this summer... do you think it's fine to scale back the sugar that the recipe calls for? I'm assuming so -- if the end product is super sweet, then the yeast isn't consuming all the sugar. Any tips for scaling back the sugar?
So I actually tend to like my wines semi-dry personally, but I find the vast majority of people like their wines quite sweet and I got a lot of complaints when I put the semi-dry recipes online originally. I ended up adjusting them to be sweet.
So to get less sweet, you have two options, either less sugar (usually 1/4 to 1/2 pound less is a good place to start, and then scale back more from there if you want) or use a yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance. I have a yeast guide here, and it covers good options for getting a dryer result: https://practicalselfreliance.com/wine-yeast/
If you get to the point of bottling, and a wine is too sweet, you can actually just pitch it with a high alcohol tolerance yeast (good choice here is Lavin K1-V1116). It'll create another 2 to 4 % ABV and burn down some of the excess sugar.
As to why your bigger batches came out dryer, that's a darn good question...there are a lot of things that could come into play here....and they're all finicky and technical...but I in truth I don't have a great answer there. It could be the yeast was a bit more robust, or the initial oxygenation was better, or it maintained a higher temperature during fermentation, or it was slightly more acidic thus the end result tasted dryer...but as to what actually did it I couldn't say.
When making wine, you can scale back the sugar as much as you want, that's fine. It may ferment to dryness with no residual sugar, and then you can add a bit of simple syrup, let it ferment again, try it again and repeat. In a wine like a corn wine, the main thing is you want to make sure you've acidified it to start, as corn doesn't have natural acidity, and there are safety issues fermenting without acidity. Don't scale back the lemon/acid/etc, but you can change the sugar as much as you want.
I save my wine recipes, then adjust sugar content and taste for next batch. Every year is different, sugar content of fruit varies with growing and weather conditions. The type of yeast used can also determine taste, is it dry wine yeast or yeast to enhance fruity flavor. A good adjustment is to omit one to two cups of sugar and go from there. If too dry you can add sugar and ferment a little longer.
I don't actually, but I should write one! Here's a quick video that shows the basics. I don't add vinegar to my steaming water, or sugar to my fruit in the juicer, I just steam with water and plain fruit, but otherwise the basic process is the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXh-6BUFN3A
I enjoyed your article on pickled eggs. Since I make lots of fire cider, I'm thinking of making pickled eggs with fire cider being the liquid. Have you ever done that?
I haven't tried that, but wow, that's such a great idea!
Some fire ciders these days have a lot of fruit juice in the mix, rather than vinegar, so the only thing you'd need to be sure of is that at least half of the liquid is vinegar so that they pickle properly. Other than that, that sounds amazing!
Enjoyed my first newsletter from you. I love lemons and am fortunate to be able to get bergamot ones , along with blood oranges now. I peel and roast the skins in a little olive oil, then cut them to top yogurt , include in salads and have as crunchy snacks.
Yes, definitely! For some reason people get freaked out when you call it "fermenting lemons" and it seems like it always goes by "salt cured lemons" or "preserved lemons" or "lemon confit"....but they're all the same, fermented lemons, and the results are pretty out of this world. They work well in both savory and sweet, and I particularly love them with lamb: https://practicalselfreliance.com/preserved-lemons/
I hear you on the "freaked out" part...building confidence in our bodies' immune system is more a mental rather than physical process I believe. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and share the recipe Ashley!
Last fall I bought a steam juicer based on you mentioning it a few times in your site. I finally pulled it out yesterday and WOW is it ever easy to use and so clean compared to running fruit through a traditional electric juicer. Easily the best investment I've made since getting a pressure canner. I had about 30-40 pounds of tart cherries in my freezer and in just a few short hours I had a little over three gallons of juice and absolutely no mess in the kitchen -- most of the juice I've used to start batches of cherry wine.
That brings me to my questions, which are about sugar in wine!
When I made gallon-size batches of dandelion wine and rhubarb wine, using recipes on your site, they were great but kinda sweet. When I remade them as five gallon batches -- and carefully multiplying everything by five -- the wines were much dryer. Theoretically it should be the same sweetness, right? Do you maybe know why this might be the case?
On a semi related topic, this summer I also made corn cob wine using a recipe from another site. It's good but overwhelmingly sweet. If I do another gallon of it this summer... do you think it's fine to scale back the sugar that the recipe calls for? I'm assuming so -- if the end product is super sweet, then the yeast isn't consuming all the sugar. Any tips for scaling back the sugar?
I LOVE my steam juicer! So worth it.
So I actually tend to like my wines semi-dry personally, but I find the vast majority of people like their wines quite sweet and I got a lot of complaints when I put the semi-dry recipes online originally. I ended up adjusting them to be sweet.
So to get less sweet, you have two options, either less sugar (usually 1/4 to 1/2 pound less is a good place to start, and then scale back more from there if you want) or use a yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance. I have a yeast guide here, and it covers good options for getting a dryer result: https://practicalselfreliance.com/wine-yeast/
If you get to the point of bottling, and a wine is too sweet, you can actually just pitch it with a high alcohol tolerance yeast (good choice here is Lavin K1-V1116). It'll create another 2 to 4 % ABV and burn down some of the excess sugar.
As to why your bigger batches came out dryer, that's a darn good question...there are a lot of things that could come into play here....and they're all finicky and technical...but I in truth I don't have a great answer there. It could be the yeast was a bit more robust, or the initial oxygenation was better, or it maintained a higher temperature during fermentation, or it was slightly more acidic thus the end result tasted dryer...but as to what actually did it I couldn't say.
When making wine, you can scale back the sugar as much as you want, that's fine. It may ferment to dryness with no residual sugar, and then you can add a bit of simple syrup, let it ferment again, try it again and repeat. In a wine like a corn wine, the main thing is you want to make sure you've acidified it to start, as corn doesn't have natural acidity, and there are safety issues fermenting without acidity. Don't scale back the lemon/acid/etc, but you can change the sugar as much as you want.
Hope this helps!
This helps tons! Thanks!
I save my wine recipes, then adjust sugar content and taste for next batch. Every year is different, sugar content of fruit varies with growing and weather conditions. The type of yeast used can also determine taste, is it dry wine yeast or yeast to enhance fruity flavor. A good adjustment is to omit one to two cups of sugar and go from there. If too dry you can add sugar and ferment a little longer.
Hi Ashley,
I love the substack you have and all the great articles. Have you ever done an article on using a steam juicer? My husband and I very interested!
Ruth
I don't actually, but I should write one! Here's a quick video that shows the basics. I don't add vinegar to my steaming water, or sugar to my fruit in the juicer, I just steam with water and plain fruit, but otherwise the basic process is the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXh-6BUFN3A
Thanks for the link, her video was helpful.
Would love to see a write-up from you sometime in the future, all your articles are so informative and helpful.
Thanks, Ashley!
Hi Ashley,
I enjoyed your article on pickled eggs. Since I make lots of fire cider, I'm thinking of making pickled eggs with fire cider being the liquid. Have you ever done that?
I haven't tried that, but wow, that's such a great idea!
Some fire ciders these days have a lot of fruit juice in the mix, rather than vinegar, so the only thing you'd need to be sure of is that at least half of the liquid is vinegar so that they pickle properly. Other than that, that sounds amazing!
i want to get a steam canner that will work on my glass stove
this looks amazing. i am going to try a few of them i have people who are allergic to pectin so i try to cook down the jam without thanks again
Enjoyed my first newsletter from you. I love lemons and am fortunate to be able to get bergamot ones , along with blood oranges now. I peel and roast the skins in a little olive oil, then cut them to top yogurt , include in salads and have as crunchy snacks.
How about fermenting lemons? That's one I'd like to try. Have you tried that Ashley?
Love the concept of preserving citrus...I feel like many don't do this, focus on sauerkraut, pickles etc...or maybe that's just me (:
Yes, definitely! For some reason people get freaked out when you call it "fermenting lemons" and it seems like it always goes by "salt cured lemons" or "preserved lemons" or "lemon confit"....but they're all the same, fermented lemons, and the results are pretty out of this world. They work well in both savory and sweet, and I particularly love them with lamb: https://practicalselfreliance.com/preserved-lemons/
I hear you on the "freaked out" part...building confidence in our bodies' immune system is more a mental rather than physical process I believe. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and share the recipe Ashley!
Love your suggestions how to extract pectin from citrus!! Thank you
thank you for all the good info.