Blog, Booze Recipes, Fermented Food, Homebrew Recipes, Recipe Box

Recipe Box: Strawberry Pineapple Wine – 1 Gallon

Amber Shehan May 30, 2012

I had an intense craving for fresh fruit and veggies the other day.  Since that is one of those food desires that is acceptable to give in to,  I drove down the street to the local fruit market. The awesome little tienda down the road was on my list to visit anyways, as they have…

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Strawberry-Pineapple Wine

I had an intense craving for fresh fruit and veggies the other day.  Since that is one of those food desires that is acceptable to give in to,  I drove down the street to the local fruit market.

The awesome little tienda down the road was on my list to visit anyways, as they have a wonderful selection of 7-Day candles, and we go through those fairly quickly.  I love their bins of dried peppers, and they also stock local produce, as available.  The rest of their products come from Mexico and Guatemala.  I merrily went home with a coconut, a pineapple, a bucket o’strawberries, a cucumber, a tomato, and an amazingly sweet watermelon!

Once I was home, I realized that I’d probably gone a bit overboard on fruit for just me and Eric, so decided it was a good time to brew a quick gallon of wine. 

Strawberry Pineapple Wine

Into a big brewing bucket went:

  • 3 lbs strawberries, washed, with greens and most white cores removed. They were so sweet and awesome, and local from SC!
  • 1 lb fresh pineapple – it could have been sweeter…not bad, but I’ve had better.
  • 2 small oranges, cut in half, squeezed, and thrown in, the skin and all

On the stove, I boiled just about 1 gallon of water. While that was heating, I mashed up the fruit with a sterilized masher in the sterilized bucket. When the water boiled, I added it to the mashed fruit.  It smelled like strawberries and happiness!

Next, it needed to cool so that I could add the yeast.  I covered it with a clean towel and strapped it down to keep any fruit flies and other pests out of it.

Once that was all cooled off to below body temperature, I opened it up and added a healthy sprinkle of regular baking yeast, and re-covered the bucket.  Within a few hours, the whole bucket was fizzing away merrily while distressed fruit flies gathered around in abject misery at being kept from the fermenting fruit.  I swear that I could hear their tiny violins…

Three or four days later, I strained the bubbling mass into another sterilized bucket, stirred in about 2 pounds of sugar, and poured the whole thing into a sterilized gallon jug.  The bubbling was fierce! The color was vibrant!  The smell was alcoholic!  In the first 6 hours of being in the jug, it blew off the airlock.  I sanitized a new airlock and replaced it, and the fermentation slowed down after that.

It’s been in that gallon jug now for over a week…more like 10 days, and I think it is DONE.  There are no more bubbles rising to the surface, no more pops from the airlock.  The sediment is settling and the wine is clearing.  The next step is bottling, then the waiting, and finally the drinking!


Bottling Update:  Well, I must say that it’s lackluster.  *sigh*  The amazing, potent, heady strawberry scent has vanished, and left only a tiny trace of flavor, and the yeast nommed up ALL of the sugars.  It’s very dry and definitely alcoholic!  

But not all is lost!  I bottled it anyways and labeled the bottles with the flavor and date.  I also made a note to add a Simple Syrup to jazz them up when I open them for use.  Maybe even a Strawberry or Pineapple flavored simple syrup using fruit juice…mmm…

Waste not, want not!  Booze abuse is not tolerated in this house. *grin*

I think that my mistake was that I used standard-activated kitchen yeast.  I know that it works, but I really do prefer the sweet mead yeast that I get from the brew shop.  I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy some more!


Tasting Update:   I made a simple syrup, as in this recipe, and it worked out quite well.  Adding it to the bottle of wine as my tastebuds dictated returned quite a bit of the fruit flavor.  Next time I make the syrup, I’ll use some fresh strawberries as well to restore some more of the sweet fruitiness!  I love it when something works out…

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Amber Shehan

Hi! I'm Amber Pixie, and this is my site. Enjoy the recipes, information, posts, and please feel free to message me if you have questions!

9 Comments

  1. L.M.Tea on May 30, 2012 at 11:41 am

    Maybe it would be good mixed in with some fruit juice or 7up? Just a thought anyways. Whenever I’ve gotten a wine that I think is too dry/not sweet enough mixing it with 7up and/or fruit juice works for me. I don’t like wasting that alcohol either lol.

  2. Connie on May 30, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    Hi, Amber! I think you are probably right in guessing that the yeast was the culprit. I’ve used kitchen yeast before (the muscadine came out delicious!), and it worked fine, but other times it was bad. I used kitchen yeast in my last batch of strawberry wine and it was too dry also. I used champagne yeast once in a strawberry wine, and I think it was the best I have made.
    Love and hugs!
    Your Other Mother

  3. Pallas Renatus on May 30, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    “Light” aromatics like that fresh strawberry scent are incredibly hard to capture. If you ever get the chance to snag some specialized champagne yeast, stock up; they tend to destroy less of the delicate fruity goodness.

    Where is this tienda? Hendersonville and Mills River are quaint, but I’ll be damned if I can find any decent 7-day candles or specialty herbs without spending an entire day hunting them down.

  4. Amber on May 30, 2012 at 5:14 pm

    L.M. Tea: That’s a trick I use for dark red wines. I’ll put sprite or ginger ale in burgundy, merlot, or any other red wine when it is too tannin-heavy, or starting to turn. 🙂 Maybe some strawberry nectar would be good at adding some sweet flavor!

    Connie: Champagne yeast isn’t my favorite, but there’s a sweet mead yeast that rocks my socks. 🙂 It keeps it from going too dry, like the champagne yeast does, in my opinion.

    Next time, I’m going to try using two bucket fermenters, and adding fruit to the secondary to try to kick it up a notch in flavor, and yes, a proper yeast!

    Pallus: I forgot you were local! 🙂 It’s on Smoky Park Hwy in Candler, a bit before the Food Lion. Called Farmer’s Best, or something similar? You can also find 7-days in a lot of random cheapy and outlet shops around here. A lot of my herbs that I can’t wildcraft myself, I’ll get from markets online!

  5. Jen | www.theeasyhomestead.com on October 20, 2014 at 10:32 pm

    This sounds amazing. We will take the tips from your updates and implement them! We are in SC- less than 2 hours from you!

    Jen

  6. Russell Yeomans on April 25, 2020 at 11:59 am

    Hi Pixie. Love your approach to all things brewable and doable.
    We made 5 gals of Columbian coffee on rainy Saturday morning. REALLY strong! Smelled DIVINE!
    Froze all the grits and liquid to bring more coffee flavour (flavor?)
    We defrosted 2.5 gals warmed it up just enough to melt 4 bags of demerara sugar, REALLY sweet!
    Used Turbo 48 yeast and thought this will never work.
    Everyone who has tasted it has gone wild for it. It finished up about 17% so it is not a quaffable wine BUT….
    Pour it over ice cream or better still make tiramisu. Jungle drums will bring all your friends out to test it for you. Someone has too.
    XXX Russell and Wendy

    • Amber Pixie on May 1, 2020 at 9:50 pm

      Omg, that sounds lovely! I’ve always wanted to try a coffee mead or wine. I’ll have to give it a shot – I love a good coffee stout! It sounds rather like a cordial. Cheers!

  7. danleep11 on December 6, 2021 at 1:48 pm

    Dearest Pixie: You commented in your wine update about the baker’s yeast used and the sweetener. This is what I have found about this wine and wines like it, that sweetener (sugar) is needed in the fermentor, ie, the must. The yeast will have negligible effect upon the flavor of the wine but will greatly impact the alcohol content of wine. Wine yeast will produce measurably more alcohol than baker’s yeast. The sugar is needed to bring out the flavor of the strawberries (fruit). Adding sugar to the must in the fermentation will provide fuel for the yeast to do its job. Back sweetening will be effective, but be careful, that if you get ahead of your bottling intentions and bottle too soon after back sweetening, the remaining yeast may blow up your bottles, or at least pop their tops. What I do is taste the wine as it progresses from it fermentation stages to its bottling stage and add sweetener as “I” desire or what I think others may prefer. Last year (2020) I made over 4 doz. varieties of wine (none grape based, as I don’t readily have grapes available) and this year (2021, I have made slightly fewer varieties, about 40 varieties, _ or + a few. Also, as for stabilizing any homemade wine, my old alcoholic uncle, who used to make barrels of wine (50 gal. drums) told me to use a vitamin C tablet, crusted and dissolved in each gallon of wine for stabilization…for ever! Or use the powdered form which is much more dissolvable and easy to work with.

    • Fred foss on January 2, 2023 at 9:40 pm

      Hello I keep my strawberries and pineapples in a glass jar in the refridgerator keeps them fresh longer . I left them in longer than usual and the pineapples are full of juice and over ripe and strawberries as well can I use this too make something to drink?

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