APPLE WINE RECIPE

Wine Style: Table Dry

	Aims:
	Flavour	Light
	Bouquet	Light/Medium
	Body	Light
	Alcohol	12%
	Starting SG	1.088
	Final SG	0.990
	Acidity	0.7% as citric

NB All our recipes are for 5 gallons.  If you want to make a smaller quantity just scale everything down accordingly.

Ingredients
Yeast 15 Litres Apple Juice 7.5 grams sodium metabisulphite Pectic enzyme 5 grams tannin (if no crab apples used)	15 grams ammonium sulphate Sugar to adjust as needed. 100 grams citric acid 5 gram potassium sorbate to use later (to kill the fermentation at the end)

NOTES To make your apple jouice use a mixture of varieties, both eating and cooking, and, if you can get your hands on them, some crab apples; these will add some useful astringency.  If you don't have a crusher or juice extractor: core, peel, slice the apples and pressure cook for just one minute at 15lbs pressure.  If you decide to "cheat" and use some commercial apple joice, take not of the following warning. WARNING! Many food preservatives kill yeast.  Preservatives E211 (Sodium benzoate) and E202 (Potassium sorbate) are used in supermarket concentrates. These two are particularly good at killing yeast.  Make sure any concentrates or juices you buy are free from such preservatives.

METHOD

Sterilise a 5 gallon fermentation vessel. Add the apple mush to the vessel. Add 7.5 gram sodium metabisulphate (to sterilisie the must), add the pectic enzyme as per instructions on bottle. After 24 hours, decant the fluid from the must.  Make up to 5 gallons with apple juice.  Add 100 grams of citric acid.  Add tannin and ammonium sulphate. Next the tricky bit: you need to get the SG to 1.088.  Read the current specific gravity.  You will need approximate 125 grams of sugar per gallon to raise the SP by 0.010.  Put the sugar in a saucepan and add sufficent sufficent juice from the vessel to disolve the sugar.  Heat gentle and stir until the sugar is fully disolved.  Add this to the vessel causiously as you do not want to find that you haved raised the specific gravity too high because of a calculation error.  Best add 25% or so at a time, stirring and rechecking the SG after each addition.  The aim is to finish with 5 gallons of fluid with a specific gravity of 1.088. Stand in a warm place overnight and then add the yeast. After 3 days or so strain and let fermentation proceed to dryness, a specific gravity of approximately .990.  Then add the 5 grams of potassium sorbate to kill off any further fermentation. Then, idealy, refrigerate for three days.  Unfortunately, few of us have a refrigerator large enough to do that - don't worry, just leave it in the coldest place you can find and then rack it. Leave in a cool place to clear.  Rack about once a week until no further lees appear at the bottom of the fermentation vessel and the wine is perfectly clear. Bottle and enjoy.