Watermelon Wine

Watermelons are dirt cheap this year. I found a guy selling them out of a truck 2 for $5 so I picked up four. He asked what I was using them for, and when I told him "wine," he got all excited and handed me a business card. People always do that when we buy stuff from them to brew.

It's a pretty easy process and Man and I had a good time singing along to my Repo! The Genetic Opera Pandora channel while processing melons.

First you have to scoop out the melon. I just took big spoonfuls and chopped them smaller with the edge of the spoon. I'd fill a bowl and take it to the dining room and dump into a bowl for Man to mill in the foley mill.



Then he'd mill the melon while I kept tearing apart the watermelons in the kitchen.



Then we strained the milled juice to get the pulp out.



Once we were finished we used to hydrometer to get a reading on the specific gravity and potential alcohol so we could determine how much sugar to add to our must. Our first reading (before adding sugar) would have given us a 4% potential alcohol...so yeah...we added 7 POUNDS of sugar. Not cups...POUNDS. That's 15 3/4 cups of sugar. Yeast are hungry little bastards.



Our final specific gravity after adding sugar was 1.15 and potential alcohol volume will be 19% with an expected turnout of about 14-16%.

Then we added our yeast. My yeast had accidentally been tucked into a bag and put in the garage with the rest of the supplies instead of in the fridge, so we had to proof it before adding it to make sure it wasn't dead. Thank goodness it wasn't and it was very healthy, hungry yeast.



We did some stirring and covered it with a sterile cloth (yes, Chococat) and tied it shut with some yarn because I'm too damned tired to look in the garage for my bungee cords right now. And there it will sit until it starts to ferment and we get to stir it daily, measure, etc...for seven days. Then it sits for another seven, then we lid it with the valve in place for ten more days, rack it into our secondary carboy, and leave it for about three months. Then it's bottled and rests for a year.



Here's so we can keep track.



--oh...yeah we put about 1/2 cup of milled blueberries in there too for color and body.


This should be finished in a minimum of 16 months.  A LONG wait for a taste of summer.