Ever since we started making wine in 2007, Kathy has wanted to make peach wine. Finally we decided to just do it. Our first decision was how much to make. Since we have two empty 3 gallon carboys we decided on three gallons. Next we needed to find a recipe or two to follow. Unfortunately, there are recipes for one-gallon peach wines and recipes for five-gallon peach wines. We settled on a five-gallon peach wine recipe and I converted the measurements for everything except the yeast.
One of my conversions was to convert Campden tablets into potassium metabisulphite. I should probably just buy the Campden tablets, but would still rather use the potassium metabisulphite on hand. Our next decision was how much of the directions to follow and when to follow them. We have read many directions and picked up things from different sets of directions. Many of the directions called for letting the peaches, sugar, water and potassium metabisulphite rest over night. Our set of directions didn’t have us doing that. Since we have to read the specific gravity and TA before correcting, we thought we’d let it set a few hours before taking those readings. Another directional change we made was to peel away the red meat that touched the pit. Those two and adjusting the ingredients for three gallons instead of five were the only changes made.
Of course we discovered that the list of ingredients called for acid blend. We have citric acid on hand but not acid blend. So that required another trip to Maryland Homebrew which isn’t a bad thing. They just moved into a new location that opened on Wednesday and it is interesting to check them out to see their progress. Their new facility is two and a half times larger than their former location.
After letting the juice set a few hours we added the yeast energizer, acid blend and tannin. We then let it set a couple more hours and took the sugar levels. The juice measured about 15.7 brix and 1.060 SG. Noting a chart, at 16 brix one needs to add 0.6 pounds of sugar per gallon to raise the brix to 21. That came out to 1.8 pounds of sugar. We added a bit at a time and took brix and SG readings. Our final reading was 20.8 brix and 1.084 SG. Based on these readings we have the potential for an 11.8 to 12.0 percent alcohol wine. We decided to leave well enough alone.
Next we used an acid testing kit to test for total acid titration. Our juice measured about 0.40% TA. We read that we should use 0.65% TA as a goal for peach wine. We added a total of five teaspoons of acid blend to the must.
We waited until the next day to add the pectic enzyme since the directions on the bottle said to add it one hour before adding the yeast. We waited an hour and then added the yeast. Again we strayed from the directions. We hydrated the yeast according to the directions on the yeast package. We used the Lalvin ICV-D47 yeast. Now we’ll wait to see what happens. Meanwhile its off to start some Sauvignon Blanc wine.
Cheers,
Terry
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