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Winemaking is a fascinating activity. It dates back more than one millennium. Initially, wine was made from grapes. The vast majority of wine sold is still made from it.
Grapes cannot grow everywhere. To make good quality wine, you need technical varieties with high sugar accumulation. Not everyone has the opportunity to plant and grow them. But the berries and fruits we are accustomed to grow in almost every garden.
Criteria for the suitability of raw materials for winemaking
For wine to ferment well, the correct percentage of sugar and acid in the wort is important. In practice, almost all berries and fruits can be made into wine at home. But its quality will differ. Most delicious wine is made from gooseberries, dark and light plums, white and red currants, dark-colored cherries. Sea buckthorn is also quite suitable for this.
Unripe berries, as well as overripe ones, will not produce high quality wine.
Wines are divided into foaming or sparkling wines, which contain a lot of carbon dioxide, and still wines: dry, semi-dry and semi-sweet. The amount of sugar in such wine ranges from 0.3 g/l to 8 g/l.
You can make any still wine from sea buckthorn.
Characteristics of sea buckthorn wine
- Bright yellow or fiery orange.
- Rich taste, slight astringency present.
- It has a delicate aroma in which honey and pineapple notes are clearly felt.
It is best to make dessert-type wines from sea buckthorn with sufficient sugar content, but other types of wine can also be made quite decent from this healthy berry.
To make sea buckthorn wine at home, you need to choose and prepare the berries correctly.
Preparation of raw materials
- We collect the berries when they are completely ripe. Over-ripening should not be allowed. In overripe berries, the oil content increases. This is good for medicinal use, but has a negative effect on the taste of wine. Fatty components coat the yeast and slow down fermentation.
- Since the fermentation process occurs due to the yeast contained on the surface of the berries, they cannot be washed. Therefore it's better collect sea buckthorn early morning. Berries washed with dew will be clean. Contaminated berries can be wiped well with a dry cloth.
- We sort through the collected berries to free them from debris. We throw away all rotten and damaged items mercilessly. Even one low-quality berry can ruin the entire batch of wine. Sea buckthorn can be stored for no more than a day, but it is better to use it immediately after collection.
- Mash the berries in a wide bowl or saucepan. You can do this with a blender or use a wooden pestle.
There are different options for making sea buckthorn wine. They differ in the amount of added sugar and preparation technology.For beginning winemakers, the simplest recipe for sea buckthorn wine is suitable; it is easy to prepare even at home.
Sea buckthorn wine - a simple recipe
It can be prepared from 15 kg of berries, 5 kg of sugar and a liter of water.
The pulp obtained after crushing the berries is filtered. Simple gauze will do for this. Add water. After half an hour, the process is repeated to get rid of the remaining grounds. Now you need to dissolve the sugar in it and put the resulting wort into a glass container with a wide neck.
During the oxidation process, salts are formed that can not only spoil the wine, but also harm your health.
In the first days, the fermentation process proceeds rapidly with the formation of a foamy cap. It must be removed. The wort is stirred several times a day.
If you put the collected foam in the freezer, it will make an excellent nougat.
After 3-4 days, you need to put a special seal on the bottle, which will not allow oxygen to enter the future wine, but will allow the released gases to escape.
If there is no such device, a regular rubber glove placed over the neck will do.
She will have to have holes pierced in her fingers to allow gases to escape. For successful fermentation, the room temperature must be constant and range from 17 to 25 degrees. Future wine cannot be kept in the light. Once a day, remove the glove for a couple of minutes to allow gases to escape faster. After a month, the wine is removed to a cooler room, in which it is necessary to maintain about 15 degrees, but not less than 10.After another month, it is carefully drained from the sediment and bottled. This young wine can already be drunk. But it will become tastier after ripening for about 4 months. The temperature for this should be from 6 to 10 degrees Celsius.
Homemade sea buckthorn wine, prepared according to the following recipe, has a different ratio of juice, water and sugar. It turns out to be dessert-type and similar to pineapple liqueur.
Sea buckthorn dessert wine
For 10 kg of berries you need 4 kg of sugar and 7 liters of water.
The initial stage is no different from that given in the previous recipe. Mix the strained juice with water and, after secondary straining, dissolve the sugar in it. After a day of vigorous fermentation, we put gloves on the bottles or install a water seal.
The wine needs to ferment in a warm room for 1 to 2 months. To determine the timing of fermentation, we more accurately observe the glove. When the amount of gases decreases, it no longer stands above the bottle, but falls. If we use a water seal, the signal for the end of fermentation is a decrease in the number of bubbles. There should be no more than 30 of them per minute. In this case, the wort becomes clearer, and sediment appears at the bottom of the vessel. We don't need him. Therefore, we carefully express the wine into bottles using a rubber or plastic straw. Dessert wine matures for about 6 months. After this, the prepared drink can be served.
This simple sea buckthorn wine recipe is for those who don’t want to wait a long time for it to ripen. It's ready in two months.
Instant sea buckthorn wine
For every kilogram of berries you will need 1/2 kg of sugar and the same amount of water.
Mix the crushed berries with water, strain and dissolve the sugar in the wort.After 24 hours of fermentation, close the neck of the bottle with a glove or water seal. After fermentation is complete, the wine drained from the lees should ripen a little in a dark and cool place. After this you can taste it.
Wines made from sea buckthorn not only taste great, but also retain all the healing properties of this unique berry, since they are not subjected to heat treatment.
