Peach Wine Follies

Tons of peaches, gallons of wine. So I thought. This year's making of peach wine has been quite the adventure

I brought home a bushel of the red haven peaches with the intent of making wine. I use the red haven's because they are small and fit in the Mr. Juicer. Just cut those babies in half and juice them. The only problem with the juicer is that the juice has tons of solids left in it.

Problem #1. With so many solids it became very difficult to get an accurate reading on the hydrometer. So I put in about 5 pounds of sugar for 5 gallons figuring that it would be about right. Well, must have been to high a gravity because it didn't ferment which was problem #2.

To solve the second problem, I diluted the batch and ended up with 10 gallons of must. After diluting, the peach juice really began to ferment. After being in the primary for a week, I transferred the wine to a secondary fermenter. The secondaries were 2 plastic water cooler jugs that are similar to carboys. Made a blow off tube and that everything would be ok.

Well that's when problem #3 stepped in. Seems that there was still too many solids in the must, which clogged the blow off tube. To make a long story short, I got a call at work saying that the lids blew of and there was peach crud all over the ceiling and the walls. After the explosion, problem #3 was pretty much solved since most of the solids were on the walls. Cleaned out the blow off tube and washed the walls and ceiling and thought everything would be fine.

Racked the wine over to another secondary a couple weeks after the incident and added oak chips. Allowed it to sit for about 2 months and just racked it over again. Problem #4, very little body to this wine. Seems that the dilution made it thin and water. I'm going to try and solve this by adding Welch's frozen Grape/Peach juice to the wine and allow it to ferment again. I think one 11 ounce can per gallon should do the trick. If all else fails, I just mix it with a fuller bodied wine. Cross your fingers.