Why apple wine is your best first wine
When someone asks me where to start, I always say: with apple wine. It forgives you more than any grape wine, you get the juice all year round, and after around eight weeks your first own bottle sits on the shelf. I have been doing this for over thirty years, and apple wine is the only one where I can tell newcomers with a clear conscience: if you work cleanly and bring a little patience, it turns out well.
The juice and the one ingredient that ruins it
You do not need freshly pressed must. Perfectly ordinary apple juice from the shop is enough, clear or naturally cloudy, that is a matter of taste. There is only one thing you have to watch out for, and it is printed small on the label: preservatives. Sorbic acid or benzoate kill your wine yeast before it gets going. Buy juice whose ingredient list says apple juice and nothing else. Not-from-concentrate juice without additives is ideal.
Apple juice usually comes with around 50 Oechsle of must weight. As a rough rule of thumb you divide the Oechsle figure by eight, which lands you at about 6 % vol alcohol in the finished wine. That is plenty for a fresh, easy-drinking apple wine. Feeding in sugar is something you can learn later; for your first run, leave the juice as it is.
The equipment
It is not much. A demijohn of glass or food-grade plastic, 5 or 10 litres. An airlock (the fermentation tube) that lets the CO₂ that forms escape, but no air and no fruit flies in. A piece of food-grade tubing for racking. A funnel does not hurt.
Two things beginners overlook. First: never fill the demijohn to the brim. Leave a good hand's width free, better still a fifth of the volume. During the vigorous fermentation the foam rises, and if it pushes into the airlock you have a mess and a clogged airlock. I learned that early, with an overflowing demijohn on a light-coloured carpet. Second: the airlock belongs filled with water, and a drop of potassium metabisulphite (KMS) in it keeps it germ-free.
Yeast and nutrient
Do not rely on the wild yeasts in the juice. With a bit of bad luck they give you vinegar or rotten-egg off-notes instead of wine. Take a pure-culture yeast for cider. Dry yeast is rehydrated before pitching: sprinkle the 5 g into about 50 ml of hand-warm water (30 to 35 °C, no hotter; above 40 °C you kill it), let it swell for 15 minutes, then stir it into the juice.
Apple juice is poor in nitrogen, and a hungry yeast ferments sluggishly and likes to stink of rotten eggs. That is why yeast nutrient goes in, dosage as per the package instructions. This is no chemical frippery, but the difference between a clean and an agonising fermentation.
Setting up: the steps in order
- Thoroughly clean everything that touches the juice and disinfect it with KMS solution: demijohn, airlock, tubing, funnel. Cleanliness is no side matter with wine!
- Fill the juice into the demijohn, leaving the headspace free.
- Rehydrate the yeast as above.
- Dissolve the nutrient in the juice.
- Add the rehydrated yeast, swirl briefly.
- Fill the airlock with water, fit it, and place the demijohn in a quiet spot.
The fermentation temperature decides the aroma. Put the demijohn in a place at 16 to 20 °C. Cooler ferments cleaner and fruitier, which is exactly right for apple wine. Above 25 °C the fermentation turns hectic and afterwards tastes of solvent instead of apple.
The eight weeks
After one or two days the airlock starts to bubble, which is the finest moment. In the first one to two weeks the vigorous fermentation runs, bubbling by the second. Then it grows calmer. When only one bubble comes every few minutes and a thick lees of yeast has settled at the bottom, usually after two to three weeks, it is time for the first racking.
The first racking
In racking you lift the clear young wine off the yeast. Set the full demijohn higher than a second, clean vessel, feed the tubing in, but not down to the bottom, otherwise you suck the yeast back up with it. Let the wine run across and leave the cloudy third with the lees behind. The dead yeast bed has to go, otherwise the wine turns bitter and musty over time. Work calmly, do not splash, because oxygen is your enemy now.
After that the airlock goes back on, and the wine stands for another three to four weeks, cool and dark. It clears by itself, the last remaining yeast sinks, and if you like you give it a second racking in week six or seven, so the bottle later has no sediment.
Into the bottle
The most common expensive mistake comes at the end: bottling too early. Only bottle when the wine is fully fermented: the airlock silent for over a week, the wine clear. If there is still residual sugar in it and the yeast wakes up again in the sealed bottle, pressure builds up, and then the glass flies about your ears. If you want to be sure, measure with the hydrometer; if the must weight stays unchanged and low for several days, all is quiet. Fill near the brim into clean bottles, cork or screw shut, and your first wine is done.
The mistakes I see again and again
- Juice with preservatives. It never bubbles, and nobody knows why.
- Demijohn filled to the brim. The foam pushes into the airlock.
- Scalded yeast. Water above 40 °C during rehydration, and the yeast is dead.
- Fermented too warm. Above 25 °C, and afterwards it tastes sharp and alien.
- Bottled too early. Residual sugar plus yeast equals burst bottles.
- Sloppy hygiene. My vinegar taint of 1998 came from a piece of tubing I had only rinsed briefly. Ever since, I disinfect everything, always.
From the cellar
Two things I recommend to you with conviction, because they decide between success and frustration. For the fermentation I use the KITZINGER Joenos Cider Fresh wine yeast, a pure-culture yeast from the old Kitzinger tradition, because it starts reliably and keeps the apple in the foreground instead of fermenting it away. And I always add Joenos yeast nutrient, because apple juice supplies the yeast too little nourishment and a hungry yeast is the most common reason for pungent-smelling fermentations.
Both come from the Kitzinger heritage. Arauner in Kitzingen made these things from 1897 on; we carry the remaining originals onward from Aachen. You can get the Arauner Kitzinger airlock made of plastic in the same go, it costs little and lasts forever.
You need no more than that. Patience, yes.
From the cellar, Magnus