In many areas today you can find such a plant as chokeberry. It came to us from North America, where it is called "chokeberry". The fruits of the culture help with many diseases in the form of medicinal syrups and vitamin complexes, but at home it is easy to make homemade wine from chokeberry.
Selection of berries
In order for the drink to turn out to be of high quality and tasty, you need to know when it is better to pick the berry. It is filled with dark color already at the end of August, but it is not yet considered ripe by this moment.
Only after the first frost in October, chokeberry gets a sweetish flavor and can be used to make wine or tincture. Juice of ripe berry must be saturated ruby, and it must be smooth, shiny and large.
What do you need?
In order for wine from chokeberry to turn out without any extra smacks, you should choose the right utensils for fermentation. Glass or wood is best, but you can use enameled. For intermediate overflows of wine in the process of preparation, plastic containers are also suitable. Aluminum, copper or iron cookware is not suitable for making wine. The drink in it will get an unpleasant aftertaste and sediment from metal impurities.
A wooden container made of oak is considered a traditional container. It protects the drink from light, sudden changes in temperature and at the same time allows the wine to "breathe". Of course, finding an oak barrel is difficult today and most use glass containers.
They can freely observe the fermentation process, but the drink is very susceptible to temperature changes, so many additionally wrap bottles with cloth.
Variety of options
Aronia was very fond of winemakers for their tart special taste and rich ruby color. A drink made from berries collected in September will be an order of magnitude lighter, but it will not lose its taste. Dry wine from chokeberry is rarely prepared, since such a drink has a heavy taste. Most often, winemakers prefer sweet dessert varieties, and to give the wine softness, they mix berries with other juices or leaves of cultivated plants. Below are the most popular and proven recipes for homemade chokeberry wine.
Classic version
To get the maximum aroma and a bouquet of taste from blackberries, wine is prepared according to the classic recipe for home winemaking. It is necessary to cook:
- mountain ash - 5 kg;
- unwashed raisins - 50 g;
- sugar - 2 kg;
- purified water - 1 l.
For those who have already prepared grape wine at home, all processes will be established. The berries should be kneaded as much as possible with your hands or with the help of a pusher so that each one bursts and lets juice out. After that, half the sugar and all the raisins are poured into the resulting mass, the container is covered and left for 7 days in a warm place for fermentation. The pulp will constantly rise, so you need to mix the mixture daily. After a week, you need to carefully pour the wine into a glass bottle so that all the pulp and sediment remain in the first container.
The remains of fermented mountain ash should be covered with the rest of the sugar, pour with prepared water and leave to ferment for another week. The drained first chokeberry wine is left in a warm place with a rubber glove on the neck of the bottle.
After a week, it must be removed and add the second juice to the container. Every couple of days the wine needs to be filtered and poured, leaving it under the glove until fermentation stops. The finished drink needs to be bottled and left in a dark place for ripening for another 8-16 weeks, after which you can try.
Wine from juice
So that wine from chokeberry does not immediately take up a lot of space during cooking, you can not use berries at all in the fermentation. To do this, they must be twisted through a meat grinder and used in the future only fruit juice. So, you will need:
- chokeberry juice - 1 l;
- water - 0.4 l;
- sugar - faceted glass;
- wine yeast - 30 g per liter.
All components must be mixed with each other and left to ferment in a bowl under a cotton plug. When the fermentation rate decreases slightly, you should put on a rubber glove and, at the end, strain the wine into bottles and leave to ripen in the basement for a couple of months.
With cherry leaves
In order for the wine from the berries of the aronia to gain an enhanced taste and aroma during the cooking process, add cherry leaves to the recipe. The drink will not turn out to be strong, but, in fact, there will be no natural fermentation in it, therefore it is correct to call such a product a liquor. You need to cook:
- berries - 1 glass;
- cherry leaves - 0.1 kg;
- sugar - a glass;
- citric acid - 5-7 g;
- half a liter of vodka.
First, berries and leaves need to be poured with prepared water and boil over low heat for a quarter of an hour. After that, leaves are removed from the dishes, citric acid is added, sugar and the liquid are again put on the fire for cooking for another 20 minutes. In the end, the resulting concentrated mixture should be cooled, filtered and mixed with vodka. You can drink the drink the next day.
Bank Recipe
If a small number of chokeberry berries are available, wine can be made directly from the bank. For this, a liter jar of berries must be poured into a quarter, topped with 0.7 kg of sugar and 100 g of raisins. After that, the mixture is filled with water, not reaching the edge for a couple of fingers. After this, the bank is poured and put in a dark place. Shake the container daily so that the liquid inside mixes well. After a week, add another 300 g of sugar to the jar, and after another week the same amount. A month after the last addition, add another 0.1 kg of sugar to the wine and leave until all the berries settle to the bottom.
After this, the product can be drunk.
Classic taste
To wine from chokeberry at home acquired a more familiar taste for most people, it must be prepared with the addition of grapes. Such a drink will be less tart and will appeal to many. To prepare it you need:
- rowan berries - 5 kg;
- grapes - 2 kg;
- wine yeast - 30 g per liter of product;
- sugar.
All berries are crushed and left in a fermentation container under the lid for 6 days. After this, the juice is carefully decanted, and the remaining pulp is poured with a small amount of water and also decanted into a common bowl. For 1 liter of liquid, you need to add 200 g of sugar and leave for further fermentation. In the end, you can add sugar to your taste and after clarifying the wine, pour it into bottles.
In order for any drink from the proposed options to be more concentrated, you do not need to re-fill the cake, the wine should be prepared only from the first juice.
With apples
You can make wine from aronia without yeast and with the addition of apples. Such a product will be sweet and tender, completely balancing the astringency of chokeberry. For the recipe you need:
- rowan berries - 2 kg;
- apples - 2 times less;
- sugar - 3 kg.
Fruits need to be chopped, add a third of sugar and, placing in a bottle, pour six liters of water. After daily mixing and weekly fermentation in a warm place, another 1 kg of sugar is added to the mixture.
The liquid is also left for a week, after which the last sugar is poured. A week after this, the wine is constantly mixed, and then left for some time to ripen, until the sediment sinks completely to the bottom and the cake rises. Now the wine is carefully drained using a straw and ready to drink.
Honey wine
Quickly and easily allow you to make wine from chokeberry recipe with vodka. To do this, you will need:
- a glass of berries;
- water - 1 l;
- citric acid - 0.5 tsp;
- cherry leaves - 70-90 pcs.;
- half a liter of vodka;
- honey - 1 cup or more to taste.
Honey will give the final product an extraordinary aroma and benefit, and making such a drink is very simple. First you need to boil the leaves and berries over low heat, then cool, strain the liquid and add citric acid and honey to it.
Put the resulting mixture back on fire, boil for a quarter of an hour, cool and mix with vodka. After insisting for a couple of weeks, the drink can be drunk.
Strong tincture
How to make homemade wine from chokeberry, it’s now clear, and everyone can choose the option they like, but berries can be an excellent basis for stronger drinks. Aronia tincture of alcohol can be prepared from the following components:
- rowan berries - 2 kg;
- sugar - 800 g;
- vodka - 1 liter.
To prepare the fruit, you need to pour over boiling water and grind it through a meat grinder, so that it is easier to express the juice. The resulting juice is mixed with sugar and vodka, and then sent for storage to a dark, cool place.
The second option involves adding plum fruits. To do this, you need:
- plums - 0.3 kg;
- mountain ash - 0.7 kg;
- alcohol - 1.5 liters.
In this case, the berries are simply washed and poured with alcohol for 2-3 weeks. As a result, the liquid is decanted, diluted to 400 and can be used.
The benefits and harms of the product
Absolutely any wine helps with problems with digestion, and the properties of chokeberry wine allow you to get an additional positive effect. So the product improves the outflow of bile, normalizes the liver, protects against radiation and helps with diseases of the thyroid gland. Its rich vitamin composition helps boost immunity, lower cholesterol and normalize blood pressure. To do this, you need to drink wine no more than 100 ml per day.
Of course, an alcoholic drink has contraindications. So, drinking it is not recommended for people with high acidity of the stomach, ulcers, gastritis, hypertension and varicose veins. In addition, wine can harm with thrombophlebitis.
Common problems
Choosing from the proposed even the simplest wine recipe from Chokeberry, any beginner may run into the problem of stopping fermentation. Most often this happens due to depressurization of the wine container. In the best case, carbon dioxide will come out of other holes and fermentation simply will not be visible, although it will take its course. In the worst case, oxygen will penetrate through the holes in the bottle and provoke vinegar fermentation, which will spoil the entire product. For prophylaxis, all openings should be carefully corked even when the wine is set to ferment. You can smear the edges of the glove with plasticine or dough.
It should be remembered that for the start of fermentation, several days must pass and, perhaps, the process has not yet begun.
The biggest problem with winemaking is maintaining a stable enough temperature. Yeast is activated only at 10-30 degrees and, if they started their activity at 25, then the whole process should be maintained at this temperature. There should not be drops, at low temperature the bacteria lose activity, and at high temperature they generally die. To enhance the process, you can add wine yeast.
Fermentation can stop even with too thick a consistency. In this case, you need to add water to the wort. Too sweet wort will also inhibit fermentation, dilution with water is required, and in an acidic environment, you need to add 50-100 g of sugar per liter.
If mold appears on the surface of the wine, you can try pouring the drink into another container using a tube and add wine yeast or yeast from crushed grapes or raisins. This usually happens when spoiled berries or poorly washed dishes are used in the product.
If the process went well, and then just stopped, then perhaps the wine finished the game prematurely. The fact is that with natural fermentation, when the drink reaches a strength of 12-14 degrees, the yeast dies. That is why it is impossible to get a stronger wine at home. The duration of fermentation is usually 2-4 weeks, after which the drink should settle for clarification and a sediment, also called tartar, will appear at the bottom of the container.
Upon completion of all processes, you can enjoy the astringent taste of wine, but it should be remembered that the longer it is stored, the more intense its aroma becomes.