[Jabberwock]

Hi,

I've been making my own wine, for quite a few years now with varying degrees of success, for instance my elderberry wine is amazing however my strawberry wine always seems a bit meh!
My strawberry wine always has a slightly "stewed" taste and  after looking back on my previous notes for past attempts have come to the conclusion that this is because the recipes I have been following have always advised pouring boiling water over the strawbs in the primary fermenter. 
So my question is this:
Can I use cold water instead and leave it in the primary fermenter for longer than usual and add some pectolase to extract as much juice from the fruit as possible, say 7-10 days stirring daily.
Hope one of you can advise as I have a strawberry glut at the moment and the freezer is already full to bursting with the blighters, so no room for any more.

Thanks in advance

[sunshineband]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/jun/22/how-to-make-strawberry-wine

Last time a made strawberry wine I waited until natural yeasts had arrived for fermentation.

the link above is a similar recipe, and uses cold water, not boiling.

Hope that is useful 

[Jabberwock]

Wow,

Now that's what I call a quick response
I can't believe I have been googling for recipes using cold water for the last 2 hours and still managed to miss that one!!
Thank you so much for this it's exactly what I'm looking for..................I'm off to sterilise my buckets now

Thanks again

[sunshineband]

You are very welcome 

[SG6]

Cold water wines are easy enough, use cool water and add camden tablets to kill off the wild yeasts. Wait a day or two for this then add your wine yeast. Seems that there is a bit of an odd way of getting greater flavour etc from the wines but I haven't got the book yet, nor at this time can I recall the title. Fruit goes in late, very late, is the basis of it. Author has however won lots with the method.

Usually the boiling water option is to kill off the wild yeasts by cooking the whatsits. You do however get cooked strawberry's as a side product.

Made strawberry some years ago and found it somewhat thin, smelt great but no body to it and it needed drinking before a year was gone. Lost colour and whatever body it did have after that.

May be worth getting hold of either of the 2 following yeasts:
Gervin Yeast - No. 5 : White Label
Gervin Yeast - Varietal B

The White Label one should be the better of the two. Most homebrew shops will have them. If you can get Lavin yeasts then more options available.

Picked these yeasts from:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/
Look for artical/link on Yeasts, then a link in the page it takes you to. Sorry cannot be more precise.

Also:
http://www.brsquared.org/wine/CalcInfo/yeasts.htm

[mike1987]

Seems that there is a bit of an odd way of getting greater flavour etc from the wines but I haven't got the book yet, nor at this time can I recall the title. Fruit goes in late, very late, is the basis of it. Author has however won lots with the method.

the late addition of fruit or flowers to the brew is to add the flavour of it without frementing all the natural sugars from it for example if i want a rose with a slight note of rasberry i start with a recpie like this but adding 1 liter of red grape juce instead of white and after 4 or 5 days adding 500g of rasberrys (or whatever i wanted to flavour it with) to the bucket theres as many arguements against doing this as there is for it tho

[Jabberwock]

Well my strawberries are in their buckets and i now have a little more room in the freezer, so life is good.
Thank you for the suggestions on yeasts SG6, as this was probably going to be my next quandary   I have had a thorough rake through my wine making stuff and have no Lalvin however I do have several sachets of the Gervin 5 left so will try that with this batch and maybe order some Lalvin for subsequent batches.

I must say I'm quite intriqued by the late addition of fruit and I think I will perhaps try it with some raspberries as I have always found raspberry wine too overpowering and a bit "chemically" tasting on it's own so a supermarket juice wine with the late addition of raspberries might be just the thing I'm looking for, thanks for that suggestion mike1987.
 
My strawberry has always been decent enough body and colour wise but I just can't get past the "stewed" flavour so hopefully I'll overcome this using the cold water method.

Have got to say a big thank you to you all for the very helpful replies and interesting links, I'm off to do some research now in anticipation of my autumn raspberry harvest!!

[sunshineband]

We would all be glad t help with the quality control later in the production process 

[Jabberwock]

Mmmmmm,.................................perhaps it would have to be a virtual wine tasting,  ie, I do all the tasting while you guys watch me get drunk on a web cam!!