Mandarin Home Wine
Went to the market with a hope to get some black grapes, but instead got around 45 kg mandarins of the Clementine type, and decided to try what kind of wine I will manage to get.
A couple of days back purchased around 45 kilos of good quality mandarins at a very low price, about 20 pence per kilo,
or £9.00 for all. Only three mandarins with the green moldy spots went aside during the peeling process.
All the others were, I would say, just perfect for making wine, as you can see on the above picture.
While peeling these mandarins, I realized that this is the seedless variety, which meant that I could run them through the juice extractor, and there was no need to press, as that way it would take much longer.
After the peeling finished, got about two buckets of skinless mandarins
As the juice extracting went on, I also realized that the extraction was not as effective as I hoped, because every time after having extracted 2L of juice, I was removing the soft tissue from the extractor, and could see the there was still a lot of juice in it.
The juice from the extractor
So I decided to press the soft tissue further by placing it into a usual kitchen strainer and then squashing it with a masher. This way I was getting another half liter of juice, and from every two liters, that was nearly 25% of juice. Quite a lot.
Perhaps my juicer is not that good for the mandarin or perhaps all of them are performing this way. If you come across of a better juice extractor, please, mention this in a comment on the bottom of this page.
Nearly 25% of juice was still remaining in the soft tissue after it was removed from the juicer.
A masher and a strainer, and it all went like a charm :)
You can see how much juice was still in the tissue after the extractor
After the juice had been extracted, I added sugar (about 250 gram per every liter) strait into the juice, and also 1 gram of yeast per every liter of juice, and made sure that everything had been dissolved. I must stress, that no single drop of water had been added here.
All in total got around 15L of syrup, poured into the two 11L glass jars mixed and left to ferment.
At the beginning of fermentation the hydrometer showed around 24% of gravity, or potential alcohol content.
The hydrometer shows something like 24% of sugar
Updated: 03/01/2019:
On the first week of November the Clementine wine has stopped brewing. It came out very sweet with a good deal of sugar still remaining, but with a gorgeous taste.
I decided to separate it into two parts. One part, about 5L, was put into the clean jar as was, and the other 5L went into the separate jar where I added more yeast with a hope to make it less sweet. However, there was no success with it as it never restarted, and I do not understand why.
This gives me a good lesson that the best way is to set the sweetness of my wine from the very beginning by separating it into more parts with different percentage of sugar and thus getting different kinds of wine. And this is what I've done when a couple of days ago I started my apple wine - the last wine of the season. You can read more about it in the Jonagold article in the bottom of this page.
As you can see the wine came out very sweet, with about 8% of sugar remaining. Considering that in the beginning its gravity was 24%, we should now have about 16% of alcohol, and I must say that everyone, who tried, could definitely feel it :) .
Around 8% of sugar is still remaining. Very sweet wine.
Here I should also say that despite having relatively clear syrup in the beginning, this wine clears up very, very slowly, and this means that it will take long time before I begin bottling this wine.
While peeling these mandarins, I realized that this is the seedless variety, which meant that I could run them through the juice extractor, and there was no need to press, as that way it would take much longer.
After the peeling finished, got about two buckets of skinless mandarins
As the juice extracting went on, I also realized that the extraction was not as effective as I hoped, because every time after having extracted 2L of juice, I was removing the soft tissue from the extractor, and could see the there was still a lot of juice in it.
The juice from the extractor
So I decided to press the soft tissue further by placing it into a usual kitchen strainer and then squashing it with a masher. This way I was getting another half liter of juice, and from every two liters, that was nearly 25% of juice. Quite a lot.
Perhaps my juicer is not that good for the mandarin or perhaps all of them are performing this way. If you come across of a better juice extractor, please, mention this in a comment on the bottom of this page.
Nearly 25% of juice was still remaining in the soft tissue after it was removed from the juicer.
A masher and a strainer, and it all went like a charm :)
You can see how much juice was still in the tissue after the extractor
After the juice had been extracted, I added sugar (about 250 gram per every liter) strait into the juice, and also 1 gram of yeast per every liter of juice, and made sure that everything had been dissolved. I must stress, that no single drop of water had been added here.
All in total got around 15L of syrup, poured into the two 11L glass jars mixed and left to ferment.
At the beginning of fermentation the hydrometer showed around 24% of gravity, or potential alcohol content.
The hydrometer shows something like 24% of sugar
Updated: 03/01/2019:
On the first week of November the Clementine wine has stopped brewing. It came out very sweet with a good deal of sugar still remaining, but with a gorgeous taste.
I decided to separate it into two parts. One part, about 5L, was put into the clean jar as was, and the other 5L went into the separate jar where I added more yeast with a hope to make it less sweet. However, there was no success with it as it never restarted, and I do not understand why.
This gives me a good lesson that the best way is to set the sweetness of my wine from the very beginning by separating it into more parts with different percentage of sugar and thus getting different kinds of wine. And this is what I've done when a couple of days ago I started my apple wine - the last wine of the season. You can read more about it in the Jonagold article in the bottom of this page.
As you can see the wine came out very sweet, with about 8% of sugar remaining. Considering that in the beginning its gravity was 24%, we should now have about 16% of alcohol, and I must say that everyone, who tried, could definitely feel it :) .
Around 8% of sugar is still remaining. Very sweet wine.
Here I should also say that despite having relatively clear syrup in the beginning, this wine clears up very, very slowly, and this means that it will take long time before I begin bottling this wine.
