Tuscan Oak Apple Wine Recipe

This is the recipe I've come up with after reading about wine making and apple wine in particular over the past few weeks. I'm planning on starting this next week, and would really appreciate some feedback. I've been brewing beer for a year now, but this is my first attempt at a wine. I'm looking for something decent after 6 months that you would be proud to share with friends and will improve with age maybe out to 2 or 3 years.

12% abv apple wine 5 gallon batch
-Adhere to basic sanitation techniques
-4.5 gallons of apple juice (tree top 3 apple blend) Sugar content = 4.29lbs (SG of 1.055).
-Add 5tsb Pectic enzyme, wait 24 hours.
-Add 4lbs sugar and 0.5lb golden raisins to raise to a SG of 1.090.
-raisins added to just off boiling water and let sit for 10 minutes then rinsed to reduce sulfates before added to must.
-add yeast nutrient, 5tsb acid blend, and 0.2g of Tannin (UVA'TAN)
-add 1 package of Lalvin 71B-1122 Narbonne yeast, hydrated in boiled and cooled water. Fermentation will be between 72F and 74F.
-at 1 months secondary and add another 0.5lbs of golden raisins
-at 3 months rack a third time
-at 4 months Rack again if not clear add another 0.2g of Tannin (UVA'TAN) and 5tsb glycerine. Top off with boiled and cooled water if needed.
-at 5 months and 1 week degas add 1.5oz Tuscan oak blend (Midwest Supplies) for 3 weeks.
-at 6 months degas and add 2.5tsb Potassium Sorbate and 2.5tsb Potassium Metabisulfite dissolved and bottle.

I wouldn't boil or rinse the raisins, just putting them in the must and sitting for 24 hours will get rid of any excess sulfites.

Also, the yeast can be sprinkled on top dry or rehydrated. It works the same either way.

Don't top off with water, I used a white wine to top off my apple wine, it doesn't affect the overall flavor too much.

Lastly, don't just blindly add the late-point ingredients without testing the wine first. Keep adding tannins and you might make a undrinkable mixture!

Thanks, for the info on the raisins. I've read about a dozen different ways to prepare them for wine from re-hydrating to blending. I should have added I would be tasting the wine before adding the second addition of tannins and again during the oaking. I've tried to find general guidelines for both and haven't come up with much other than 'add to taste'. I'll also add the acid blend based on the results of the titration test to bring it to a level of .7 which seems to be where most articles and people's forum posts like there apple wine's to be.

-based on this article, i'm thinking about switching out the raisins for grape concentrate, curious what others think and have experienced.

so it's been a month and I'm still seeing activity in the carboy (very fine bubbles rising). Should I rack to secondary or wait until all activity has stopped?

JayDubWill said:

so it's been a month and I'm still seeing activity in the carboy (very fine bubbles rising). Should I rack to secondary or wait until all activity has stopped?

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Rack to secondary when the SG is at about 1.010. That's normally about 5-7 days for me.

I'd change up a few things in your timeline/recipe, but you should have plenty of time for that in the future. For example, I wouldn't use sorbate unless I was sweetening the wine- I just don't like the taste of sorbate and don't use it if it's not needed. I also don't rack by a timeline- I rack to secondary based on SG readings, and thereafter rack whenever there are lees 1/4" thick, or any lees at all after 60 days.

Yooper ~ thanks for the advice. I'll take a gravity reading and see where i'm at. My wife enjoy's sweet wines and I like dry, so I was going to backsweeten half the batch. Any thoughts on how long will this type of wine hold before spoiling without sorbate/sulfite? All the wine will probably be drunk in 6~10 months after bottling; i'm not really looking to celler anything for any length of time, maybe a bottle or two to see how it ages.

JayDubWill said:

Yooper ~ thanks for the advice. I'll take a gravity reading and see where i'm at. My wife enjoy's sweet wines and I like dry, so I was going to backsweeten half the batch. Any thoughts on how long will this type of wine hold before spoiling without sorbate/sulfite? All the wine will probably be drunk in 6~10 months after bottling; i'm not really looking to celler anything for any length of time, maybe a bottle or two to see how it ages.

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If you're sweetening, you have to stabilize with sorbate/campden- or the bottles will blow up. For dry wines, you don't as there isn't any more fermentable sugar in those wines and so the bottles will be fine.

Just wondering how this came out? I want to make a dry oaked version of Edwort's apfelwein with a slight higher abv and this seems fairly close.

Honestly, I'm still aging it. It's drinkable but not something I would go out of my way for. I figured I'll give it another year and pop another bottle. If I were to do it again I'd probably just follow edworts apfel wine recipe. Who knows though, in 2 years it might be fantastic...or some really interesting vinegar.

Might be to much tanin in the wine since you added it and it would of absorbed from the wood as well. Just my thoughts, probably best to do one or the other and not both. But I haven't wood aged anything yet, just what i read from some other posts and methods.

2 years is a long time, I don't think anything I've made so far has lasted that long. You could always stabilize and backsweeten to try and cover up some of the off flavors you don't like. Hope it works out, you have more patience then I do.