On my allotment grow several gooseberry bushes. They are tenacious things and spread well, producing copious fruit at the beginning of July. As a reward for braving the vicious spines that they bear on their spindly stems, I have found myself with a surprising amount of fruit.
A few years ago, after gathering this bountiful harvest, and exhausting the immediate possibilities (jam, compote, or stewed fruit), I froze the excess and thought nothing more of it. Come the following spring, the thought occurred that I should try to use the frozen fruit for something more interesting, and I wondered if they could be used for winemaking.
Having no experience of making wine, and only a little experience of brewing homebrew from kits, I had little expectation that the result would be drinkable, but I went ahead and, using a recipe from the internet, had a crack at it.
Fully expecting that initial experimental batch to be an abject failure, I was a little surprised to discover that it was drinkable, if very dry, so when the gooseberry harvest came in that year, I decided to make a larger quantity, 20 litres as it turns out. This time, I allowed it to rack for several months, and back-sweetened it, and by December, had produced 24 bottles, many of which were given away as presents to friends and family.
This year, the harvest has again been good, and I have been busy planting additional bushes along the edges of my allotment, so future years should yield even more. To bulk it out a little, and to add a slightly more complex flavour, I have mixed in a few other berries and a couple of punnets of grapes. This year's batch is currently undergoing its final racking awaiting bottling. For those who want to try their hand, my method is below. This is adapted from this recipe here.
Ingredients
(You can mix up the fruit a bit, I find the black grapes and redcurrants add a bit of extra colour).
Gooseberries - 4.25kg
Grapes (red and black) - 1.25 kg
Redcurrants - 587g
Sugar - 5.5kg
Yeast nutrient - 5 tsp
Pectolytic enzyme - 2.5 tsp
Citric acid - 1 tsp
Yeast - 1 sachet, I use Lalvin EC-1118
Campden tablets - 14 in total, at various stages
16L water
5 tsp stabiliser (potassium sorbate)
2 tsp bentonite
Steriliser
Equipment
A large pan
1 large (25L) fermentation bin
1 large (25L) plastic carboy
5 demijohns
Airlocks and bungs
Hygrometer and cylinder for measuring SG
Syphon
Mashing bag
A large plastic stirrer
Fruit press (optional)
Bottles, corks, and corker
Picking the Gooseberries
The gooseberries I grow, which are a pink variety, ripen around the end of June or the beginning of July. However, if you let them ripen fully, you'll find that the birds will get them before you do, so the best time to pick them is just as they start to change colour. They will continue to ripen after picking, and will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator without going bad, as long as they are kept dry. If there is a knack to picking gooseberries that avoids getting scratches all up your amrs, I am yet to find it. Wearing gloves helps, as does pruning your gooseberry bushes so that the lower branches are a little way off the ground.
Preparing the Fruit
The first part is the most labour intensive, but important. Wash the gooseberries and gather them in a large bowl and work through them, topping and tailing each one individually into a second bowl. At this stage, you also have the opportunity to pick out and discard any bad fruit. This can take several hours, so it's a good idea to sit down in front of the TV and catch up on that series everyone is watching...
Starting the Fermentation
This is done in stages, over three days. Before you start, sterilise the equipment you are going to be using: the fermentation bin, mashing bag, hygrometer, measuring cylinder, and stirrer
Stage 1 - Making the Mash
The first step is to put all the fruit together into a mashing bag, put this into the sterilised fermentation bin, and then crush the berries. This year, this was done by hand, but this is a tedious process, so I bought myself a present of a fruit press to make it easier next time.
While you are crushing the fruit, dissolve the sugar in batches in boiling water, about 1kg of sugar to each 1.5L water. When the sugar has dissolved, pour each batch over the top of the crushed fruit in the fermentation bin. Keep track of how much water you have used, because you will make this up with cold water at the end.
At this stage, you also want to add yeast nutrient, 1 tsp per 5L (for this batch, I used 5 tsp)
When you have made this up to the total volume, in this case, 16L, give everything a good stir, put the lid loosely onto the fermentation bin and leave it to cool for an hour or two. The total volume in the fermentation bin, including the bag full of fruit, was around 24.5L
After the mash has cooled a bit, add the first batch of crushed campden tablets, 1 per 5L (so in this case, five). Campden tablets contain sodium metabisulphite, which kills bacteria, and stops your wine going bad. Typically, you'd use one per 5L or so of wine when transferring from one vessel to another, especially before fermentation has started in earnest. At this stage, the idea is to kill any bacteria on the surface of the fruit.
The amount of sugar and water I have used works out to an ABV of around 14%, which is pretty strong for wine. The yeast I use (Lalvin EC-1118) will apparently tolerate an ABV of up to 18%, however high strengths are likely to stress the yeast and lead to off flavours. You can reduce the amount of sugar in your mash if you want a weaker wine.
Stage 2 - Breaking Down the Fruit.
After the mash has cooled completely, around 12 hours later, it's time to add the pectolytic enzyme. As the name suggests, this breaks down pectin in the fruit. This has two purposes, firstly to release more juice and flavour, and secondly, to prevent pectin from making the wine hazy. Add 1/2 tsp per 5L (so in this case, 2.5 tsp).
At this point, you also want to take a sample of the cooled must to check the SG ("Specific Gravity", a measure of density) with a hygrometer. This is also known as the OG ("Original Gravity") At the end of fermentation, you can work out the ABV by subtracting the SG at that point from the OG, and multiplying this number by 131.25. In this instance, the OG was 1.094.
Stage 3 - Adding the Yeast
You should find that the must has now gained some colour from the fruit starting to break down. To aid with flavour, and help stabilise the wine, you can add a little citric acid at this point (I used 1 tsp in around 25L) and stir it in.
Now is the time to add the yeast. Sprinkle 1 sachet of the wine yeast over the top of the mash and put the lid back on. It will take a day or so before you see any activity, but then it should soon start bubbling away. There may actually be some wild yeasts on the surface of the fruit, which the campden tablet won't have killed. However, commercial yeast strains are much more vigorous, and will outcompete these.
Becuase fermentation produces lots of carbon dioxide, it's important that the lid is not on tightly, or it will pop off!
Transferring the Wine
After a few days, you should have found that fermentation has really taken off, and the fermentation bin is bubbling merrily. After a couple of weeks this will slow noticeably, and it's then time to transfer the wine to a carboy to finish fermentation. The carboy is essentially just a large vessel with an airlock bubbler in the top. Because fermentation is now slowing, this is used to prevent oxygen getting into the wine and spoiling it.
After washing your hands and removing any jewellery, to avoid contaminating the wine, carefully lift the mashing bag out of the fermentation bucket, and wring as much liquid as you can from it back into the must. Using a syphon, transfer the must from the bucket into the carboy, leaving as much yeast residue as you can in the bucket.
At this point, I'd got hold of a fruit press, so I used this to squeeze the rest of the juice from the fruit pulp, and added this back to the carboy. I also measured the SG of the must to see how fermentation was getting on, at this point it was 1.046, which works out to an ABV of about 6.3%. I then added a couple of crushed capden tablets, to stave off any bacterial contamination, sealed up the carboy, and put the bubbler in place.
Racking
The bubbler on the carboy gives you a nice little indication of how fast the wine is fermenting, and eventually, after a couple of weeks, this will slow to a stop, and the yeast will start to settle out from the must. This is the time to start the wine racking, which is the process of clearing and settling. The idea here is to separate the wine from the sediment of dead yeast and bits of fruit pulp, so it doesn't develop any "off" flavours.
using a siphon, transfer the wine to demijohns, each with their own bubbler airlock, and leave these to settle for at least a month. When you do this, add a crushed campden tablet to each demijohn to prevent contamination, and then put the demijohns somewhere cool and dark to settle.
At this point, you can measure the SG and work out the final ABV. In my case, the SG was between 0.985 and 0.986, which works out at an ABV of around 14.175%
Stabilising, Back-sweetening and Fining
The last steps before bottling, this is when we make sure fermentation has stopped, adjust the sweetness of the wine, and add bentonite to clarify it.
Because all the sugar will now have been converted to alcohol (and carbon dioxide), the resulting wine will be very "dry". To balance this, make it more palatable, and to bring out the fruit flavours, we can add sugar to "back-sweeten" it. However, if we just add sugar by itself, there is every chance that this will restart fermentation by traces of yeast left in the must. To prevent this, we also add a "fermentaion stopper", also called a "stabiliser"; potassium sorbate. To make sure the wine is nice and clear, and we don't end up with sediment in the bottle, we also using a "fining" agent. There are several you can use, I have opted for bentonite, which is a mineral clay which binds to any particles in suspension and causes them to settle.
After about a month racking in demijohns, I transferred the wine back to the now cleaned, and sterilised, carboy. In a pan, I added 500g sugar, 2 campden tablets, 5 tsp stabiliser, and 2 tsp bentonite to 500ml water, and heated this until the sugar dissolved. I then added this to the wine, and re-sealed with the bubbler and left to settle and clear completely.
Bottling (and Drinking)
When the wine has cleared completely, after another couple of weeks, it can be siphoned into bottles. It will taste a bit "fresh" at first, and will take a few months for flavour to develop fully as the alcohol and acids in the wine combine to produce more subtle flavours. If all has gone well, you should end up with a "blush" wine with a delicate gooseberry flavour, and which packs an unexpected punch.
Vinegar Production
The residue at the bottom of the carboy, which contains any sediment, and any wine left after bottling, can be used to make vinegar, and I keep a separate demijohn aside for this which contains a vinegar "mother". Gooseberry wine vinegar also makes an excellent salad dressing.
Making vinegar is an art in itself, and it's important to keep the bacteria that produce this secondary fermentation away from your other brewing equipment. A vinegar mother is a biofilm composed of bacteria that convert alcohol to acetic acid, and if this gets into your winemaking, you run the very real risk of making vinegar, and not wine. These bacteria prefer an alcohol concentration of around 6% ABV, so the lees should be either diluted down, or added to the same volume of vinegar. A vinegar mother also needs oxygen to convert alcohol into vinegar, so the vessel this is in needs to be open to the air. This will, however, attract fruit flies, so it needs to be covered with cheesecloth or gauze to protect it from these intruders. Vinegar making is also much slower than winemaking, and it can take several months to fully convert the alcohol to vinegar.
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