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Watermelon is an amazing berry of enormous size. Its healing properties have been known since ancient times. Cooks prepare various delicacies from it: watermelon honey (nardek), delicious jams, pickles. But few people know that this berry makes good intoxicating drinks.
Not everyone likes watermelon wine at home. But lovers of watermelon drink prefer it even to exquisite grape wines. At the beginning of preparation, the wine is pink, but during the infusion process it turns orange or even reddish-brown.
Little secrets of winemaking
As we have already noted, watermelon wine is not prepared very often. But it’s worth preparing it for testing, in case you, too, become a fan of this drink. The main thing is to choose the right recipe and spend a little time.
In addition, you need to know some secrets of making watermelon wine, especially since the technology has been developed for centuries.
Let's talk about this now:
- First, you need to choose the right berry. Most often, sweet varieties are used for wine, for example, Astrakhan. Preference should be given to smooth berries, without signs of rot or damage.Select watermelons for the drink that are ripe, juicy, with bright flesh and black seeds. Such fruits contain the most dry matter. You can also determine the technical ripeness of a watermelon by external signs: yellow barrels and a dry tail.
The fruit contains 94% water, but only 8% sugar. This is why watermelon wine, as well as an intoxicating drink made from melon, turns out watery. Therefore, before preparing wine, experienced winemakers evaporate the juice. - Secondly, containers and instruments are prepared in advance: they are thoroughly sterilized and wiped dry. Experienced winemakers wipe their knives and hands with vodka or alcohol before work, since microbes have a detrimental effect on the finished product.
- Thirdly, when peeling watermelons, you need to remove the light and unsweetened parts and seeds. Otherwise, the watermelon drink will turn out bitter. Such wine can be considered spoiled.
- Fourthly, having selected the pulp from the watermelon, you need to quickly squeeze out the juice so that it does not become windy.
- Fifthly, when filling fermentation tanks, they are not filled to the top, but only 75%, so that there is room for fermentation of the pulp and carbon dioxide.
- Sixthly, many of our readers are interested in whether to use sugar to make watermelon wine at home or make a drink without it. We answer that this ingredient is required. We shouldn’t rely on the fact that we feel sweetness when eating watermelon. In winemaking, there is not enough natural sugar in the berry. Each recipe indicates the required amount of granulated sugar. As a rule, winemakers add from 0.4 to 0.5 kg of sugar for every liter of nardek (watermelon juice).
- Seventh, raisins or fresh grapes are added to watermelon wine at home. It is necessary for successful fermentation.It is prohibited to wash these ingredients before adding them to the wort, since the surface contains special bacteria, which winemakers call wild yeast. You will need 100 or 150 grams of this yeast supplement. If fermentation is poor, add a little lemon juice.
- Eighth, most often fortified watermelon wine is made at home by adding vodka or another intoxicating drink. But not everyone will like the taste and aroma of such wine. Therefore, experienced winemakers prefer to use tartaric or tannic acid to produce fortified wine from watermelons.
Homemade Watermelon Wine Recipes
As a rule, homemade wine from watermelons is made at the height of the harvest. It should be noted that these fruits contain the least amount of harmful substances. Watermelons bought in a store in winter are not suitable for winemaking.
We bring to your attention different options for making watermelon wine at home. If you follow our advice, watch the video provided, then everything will work out great for you.
Simple recipe step by step
To make homemade watermelon wine according to a simple recipe, you will need the following components:
- ripe watermelons with sugar pulp – 10 kg;
- granulated sugar – 4 kg 500 grams;
- raisins – 200 grams.
Features of the technology
Now we’ll tell you how to prepare watermelon wine at home step by step:
- First, wash the watermelon thoroughly and wipe dry. Cut into pieces and select the red, sugary pulp.
Grind it using a blender until a homogeneous mass is obtained. The resulting juice must be measured, since sugar will be added for every liter.
- Then add unwashed raisins containing wild yeast and lemon juice on the surface.
- We tie gauze on top of the fermentation container, folded in several rows, so that insects do not get into the future watermelon wine. Place the container in a warm place to ferment for two days. Direct sunlight should not fall on the pan. The pulp will rise; it needs to be “steeped” at least twice a day.
- When the mass begins to bubble, add 150 grams of granulated sugar for each liter of watermelon juice. Stir the resulting mass until the sugar is completely dissolved and pour into bottles. We install a water seal on top or pull on a medical glove, after first piercing one of the fingers with a needle.
- After three days, remove the pulp and pour the liquid into a new bottle. Pour some of the wine into a small container, dissolve sugar (150 g) and pour the syrup into the total mass. We place a glove under the water seal or pull it over the neck. And then after another four, we will again add the remaining sugar, still per liter of water. Fill the bottle 75-80% to leave room for fermentation.
- As a rule, future wine will ferment for about a month. We determine the end of fermentation by the deflated glove. If a water seal has been installed, then gas bubbles will no longer be released in it. Yeast sediment will appear at the bottom of the bottle, and the wine itself will become light.
- Now the drink needs to be drained from the sediment. It is best to do this with a straw so as not to affect the sediment, followed by filtration. We will definitely try the new wine. If it seems to you that there is not enough sweetness in it, add granulated sugar again, close tightly and leave for 2 or 2.5 months to ripen. The place where we put the bottle should be dark and the temperature should be from 5 to 10 degrees Celsius.
- The wine will have to be removed from the sediment several times and filtered. The finished watermelon drink should not have any suspension at the bottom of the bottle.
- Watermelon wine can be stored at home for no more than 12 months. Although experienced winemakers advise using it within ten months.
Watermelon wine student style
Fortified wine can be made using the simplest recipe. For this we need:
- ripe fruit - 1 piece.
- vodka or other strong alcoholic drink – 400 ml;
- knitting needle and large syringe.
How to act
The drink obtained according to this simple recipe tastes like fortified wine. And now about the manufacturing rules:
- We wash the watermelon so that no dirt remains on the surface, and wipe it dry.
- We pierce the fruit in the tail area with a thin knitting needle and use a large syringe to pump in an alcoholic drink. After introducing the first portion, set the watermelon aside to allow the air to escape. We continue this way until we have pumped in all the alcohol.
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Vodka or other drink must be pumped exactly into the center of the watermelon, where the voids are located. - The hole from the knitting needle needs to be covered. You can use plasticine or wax for these purposes.
- Our fermentation “chamber” is stored in a cool place for about a day. During this time, the watermelon will soften.
- We make an incision in it and express the resulting liquid into a convenient container, then filter it. That's it, watermelon wine is ready.
If you don’t like highly fortified wines, then you can use martini or cognac instead of vodka or alcohol to make watermelon wine at home. They even pour champagne into a watermelon!
You can prepare watermelon wine of various strengths for testing. And then decide what drink you will make next time.
A little history
Watermelon wine in watermelon is also called student wine. Young people, in order to go to the hostel, bought a watermelon and pumped a liter of vodka into it. For a long time, the guards had no idea how alcoholic drinks got to the students, because they did not carry vodka or wine past them. Most likely, it was the students who became the “authors” of the simplest recipe for watermelon wine at home.
How to make a delicious watermelon liqueur, tips from a winemaker:
Let's sum it up
You won’t find watermelon wine in stores, because it is not produced on an industrial scale. This is purely home production. Using any recipe, you can independently prepare several bottles of dessert wine of varying strengths.
The only drawback of the drink is that it does not taste great. But despite this, there are not so few lovers of the intoxicating drink made from watermelons. Try cooking, maybe you will join their ranks.
