Orange Wine: Recipe

Making orange wine is a labour of love, but it's worth it. This is a delicious drink worth saving for winter. It's sweet, strong, zesty and has a texture like a liquer.  Last time i made it was a couple f years ago. Last time i drank it was about a week ago. That was a glass from one of the few remaining bottles and so, with added pressure from Mrs Chateau Hippo, it was time to make more so we'd have some next winter. And any other time we want a dessert wine cos this is the only one i make. It's that good. One size fits all.

And for you oldskool types out there, who love CJJJ Berry (and who doesn't when it comes to brewing wine) you'll find this recipe very familiar, but tweaked. We all tweak as brewers, cos we all think that either we know better or we know ourselves well enough to adapt a recipe for our tastes or preferences. So i tweaked CJJJJJJJ Berry. Back in his day of course there probably wasn't such a thing as organic fruit, it was likely just called fruit. I'm using organic cos i like it in every way, but in this recipe it's actually important to use organic regardless of your beliefs. You will be using the skins of many fruits and pesticides etc are on those skins, so take no chances. you're not meant to consume pesticides. If you don't believe me then look some up, do some research, and pay attention to COSHH (chemicals and other substances hazardous to health). Washing isn't the whole solution here, the zest will be infusing for days. Get organic, and it'll taste better anyway. Which is a big deal with homebrew right!

I started this on December 31st, alas missing my target for total brews in 1014, 50 gallons, and making a mere low 40's instead. Must do better this year! But the quality of what i made last year is a great consolation prize, and i didn't drink for half of december, which probably adds up to 2 gallons worth ;)

Recipe - 3 gallons

Juice of 30 Organic Juicing Oranges
Juice of 18 Organic Italian Clementines
Juice of 6 Organic Lemons
Juice of 2 Organic Pink Grapefruit
Juice of 1 lime
Zest from Organic 24 oranges and 4 Organic lemons
4.5 kg Sugar
2 Tspoon Citric Acid
2 Tspoon Tartaric Acid
4 Tspoon Pectolase (Pectic enzyme)
6 Tspoon Yeast Nutrient (tronozymol)
Water to 3.5 gallons
Yeast (Gervin 3, GV3)

Original Gravity 1124

Method

This is a labour of love so use your time well. Start with a clean and tidy working area, you'll need the space. put the sugar in a large pan and add about a gallon of water. Bring it to the boil and so  dissolve the sugar, stir occasionally to make sure there isn't a lump of sugar burning on the base. While you're letting that happen wash the oranges and lemons you'll be zesting.

Now zest the oranges and lemons, fastidiously. You don't want any pith in your wine, it'll make it bitter. Which is not the same as sour, it doesn't work. Be a real stickler for this. I use a potato peeler to get the zest off and then still take a sharp knife to the skin to remove all traces of pith. If you know the expression "the most dangerous thing in a kitchen is a blunt knife" then you'll know the value of a regularly sharpened knife. Sharpen it and you'll save vast amounts of time and won't chop your fingers off or pulp the zest. If you have a scary grater that you've injured yourself with previously then its probably a good thing to use. But resist the temptation to get as much zest as possible, instead aim for getting the very best quality zest only.

By the time you've done this the sugar solution will probably be boiling. Tip it into your fermenting bin and put the lid on. The steam will do a great job of sterilising it, tho you should have made sure it was clean and chemical free already. Chop up the zest into pieces about half the dimensions of a match stick. Put the zest into a muslin bag and tie it up. Add to the fermenting bin and put the lid on.

Now juice all the rest of the fruit. Hold on, don't use a juicing machine. This must be old skool stylee. A juicing machine will add loads of tiny wee fragments of pith, pips and juice that has been in contact with macerated pith and pips. This'll make your wine bitter and you won't like it. So you gotta get that old skool orange juicing gizmo or squeezer out and give yourself some hand cramps. No other option. And if you're not in practice then you may need to up the fruit content by 10-30%. I have strong hands and use them a lot for repetitious stuff (which all sounds quite deviant but actually i walk with crutches ... so it's very boring!). In short i get more juice from my fruit than most would. Is that showing off ;-)

Add the juice to the fermenting bin and put the lid on. Then dissolve all the other stuff (except the yeast) in water, 0.5 - 1 litre should do it, and add to the fermenting bin. You've probably got somewhere close to 2 gallons in there, so make the volume up to 3 gallons and measure the gravity with your hydrometer. Hopefully it's way high, even beyond your hydrometer scale. Mine was something like 1135, off the scale so couldn't tell, had to guesstimate. I added enough water to make the volume up to 3.5 gallons. Including the muslin bag of zest. The gravity then was 1124. Last brew was 1122 and that wine was delicious. So i stopped there. it's close enough.

Then i added my yeast. This is probably the most important wine to make a good choice of yeast for. Something sweet and strong really needs a yeast that you can depend upon to do what it says "on the tin". I used to use Vintner's Harvest Sauternes yeast, and it worked great.. Then i couldn't get it and was told that Gervin number 3 (GV3) was great for sweet wines with high alcohol by volume and start's fine in a super sweet must. So i use that, sprinkle it onto the surface, put the lid on, tightly.

As for all your other brews after a few days to a week or so move the wine to secondary fermentation, and when you do remove the muslin bag of zest. I think you can err on the side of length for this brew. Maybe primary ferment for upto 10 days. Keep an eye on it tho. It may be slow to start due to the high sugar content. So it may need extra sloshy stirring (i use an old skool egg/cream whisk) to help the yeast bud (breed). Or may need more time to get busy. This is a sweet strong wine, everything about it takes longer.

When it's stopped fermenting, which may be weeks or months, then rack it to fresh demi-johns. That is siphon so you leave the sediment behind. And if it's still fermenting after 2 months and has deposited a substantial sediment (0.5 - 1.0 cm) then rack it anyway and let it ferment more with a much reduced sediment. It may take a long time but the sediment can taint the wine. ultimately the best bet is to keep an eye on the gravity too. If it's not going down quickly then leave it on the sediment cos it'll need all the yeast it can get. But if it is going down rapidly then you can afford to remove most of the sediment. There's a bit of an art to this, and you'll probably get close enough to a brilliant result however you do it. From there on you'll be refining this wine.

The wine, if i remember right, always clears without needing finings. Don't expect to drink it until it's at least 6 months old. A year is a respectful wait and worth it. And if you have enough capacity to set a bottle or two aside and forget about them then some years later you'll be in heaven when you open one.

 If - at the bottling stage - you're at all unsure about whether to use stabilisers like campden tablets and potassium sorbate (both) then use them. This is sweet wine with  a high tolerance yeast. There will be enough residual sugar for more fermentation and as conditions change your tiny invisible yeasts may burst back into life, start to bud, and ferment. If this happens in a bottle you'll either blow the cork, or if using a screw cap your bottle will go off like a glass grenade. In a normal wine the low final gravity at bottling is often safety enough. but with a high final gravity then caution is wisdom.

Discussion

I'd advise anyone making this wine to go wild and do your own thing with the fruit combo. Keep the lemons in there at around 2 per gallon. Then for all the rest of the fruit juggle it about. If you;re not feeling too bold then keep the oranges and mix up the clementines, tangerines, satsumas, mineolas etc etc according to what you like and/or what is cheap and/or available. You will end up with a citrus wine like mine but different. It's differentness is it;s delight. so the subtle difference resulting from your own mix of "little oranges" will only really matter to you. and that is because you are paying most attention, not because you're a super-hero ;-) I like adding grapefruit cos i'm quite partial to it, i eat them like oranges occasionally and never add sugar to them. This wine has residual sugar, it's sweet. so if you like sour anyway then try some grapefruit. Similarly if you like what lime has to offer throw that in too, replace 1:1 for lemons.