In-laws want to make cranberry wine

flars · November 20, 2017, 3:47pm

My in-laws have tasted cranberry wine and liked it. They also have a lot of frozen cranberries. NB is offering 20% off and free shipping on starter kits for 48 hours. I’ve never made wine and they have never brewed anything.

Would this starter kit have the gear needed for the first attempt to not end up in failure?

Can a good tasting wine be produced from cranberries or should the cranberries be blended with another fruit? They don’t know if the cranberry wine they had was a blend of fruits or not.
A moderately successful first attempt will probably lead to getting one or two books for a better second attempt.

porkchop · November 20, 2017, 4:00pm

Looks like a reasonable kit. Star-san would be a nice addition, but probably not really necessary. Those racking canes aren’t much fun if you aren’t used to getting the siphon going, so an auto-siphon would make their lives easier.

I’ve made this recipe before:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/highbush.asp

Although it uses highbush cranberries (which really aren’t cranberries), it would probably work just fine with real cranberries.

damian_winter · November 20, 2017, 8:11pm

Cranberries are hard to work with fresh that is . They just don’t break down like other fruits to add much flavor without alittle extra work. The meat of the berries are tough to extract flavor from. If you have them frozen unthaw them gently mash them not to break the seeds freeze them again unthaw and freeze again. This will break down the fruit to get the most out of them.

jimrmaine · November 21, 2017, 2:45am

I started a 1G batch a couple weeks ago, using 3.5 lb. of cranberries and 1 lb. honey. Basically used Jack Keller’s recipe as in porkchop’s post, and treated the berries as in damian’s post. My 1st time starting a cranberry wine, but I’ve had some really good stuff by other people. For my 1 gallon fruit wines, I start them in a bucket with the fruit in a BIAB bag, then rack them to 1 G glass jugs with airlocks after about 2 weeks. Then following Yooper’s recommendation, I rack every time the lees get an inch thick until there are no more lees. Tends to take 2-4 months before bottling.