Strawberry Wine
Brewing Progress
Brewing Data
Ingredients
- 5.76 lbs fresh strawberries
- 1 Camden tablet
- 1.5 lbs granulated sugar
- 1 packet Red Star Premier Cote Des Blancs yeast
- Water to volume
Instructions
Prepare the Strawberries
Start by pureeing 5.76 lbs of fresh strawberries. The pureeing process breaks down the fruit cell walls, releasing more juice and flavor compounds than using whole berries.
Add Camden Tablet Treatment
Place the pureed strawberries into a brew bag and add one crushed Camden tablet. The Camden tablet contains potassium metabisulfite, which eliminates wild yeasts and bacteria present on the fruit. This is a critical step for strawberry wine — strawberries carry a lot of wild yeast that can compete with your chosen yeast strain or produce off-flavors. Let the strawberries sit with the Camden tablet for 2 days before proceeding.
Create the Must
After the 2-day waiting period, add the strawberry-filled brew bag to your fermenter. Add 1.5 lbs of granulated sugar and fill with water to the top of the fermenter. Stir gently but thoroughly until all sugar crystals have dissolved — this takes quite a while, but it's important not to proceed until the sugar is fully incorporated.
Pitch the Yeast
Once the sugar is completely dissolved, pitch one packet of Red Star Premier Cote Des Blancs yeast. This yeast strain is ideal for fruit wines — it ferments cleanly while preserving the delicate strawberry aromatics. Install the airlock and let fermentation begin.
Primary Fermentation
Allow primary fermentation to go for as long as necessary until there is no more activity in your airlock. Note that this tends to take between 2 to 3 weeks, but you can check with a triple scale hydrometer to ensure fermentation is complete. After two weeks, remove the strawberry purée bag from the must and allow fermentation to continue until complete. Starting OG was 1.080.
Transfer to Secondary
My final gravity after primary was 0.994. Transfer the wine to secondary fermentation, leaving any sediment behind. This is the start of the long conditioning and aging phase.
Secondary Fermentation
After secondary fermentation completed, I let the wine continue secondary fermentation for 3.5 months before bottling. This long conditioning and aging period is where it cleared up drastically — what started as a cloudy, pink liquid settled into a beautifully clear, bright strawberry wine.
Bottling
After four months of fermentation and aging, bottle the wine. The long secondary period allowed the wine to clear and develop complexity.
Awaiting the Taste Test
Now these bottles will go on the shelf until one year has passed, at which point I will do a taste testing and update this post with the taste testing results.
Note on Secondary Fruit Addition: I considered adding fresh strawberries to secondary fermentation for more vibrant color and flavor, similar to the cherry mead technique. However, when I treated the original fruit with a Camden tablet, I noticed the strawberries turned from bright red to a muted pink — I suspect this chemical reaction would affect any fresh fruit added later as well. Additionally, since fresh strawberries carry wild yeast on their surfaces, adding them to secondary could introduce unwanted fermentation activity and alter the wine's flavor profile. I opted to keep the secondary phase fruit-free and let the wine develop from the single fruit addition in primary.
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