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Living in Southern California north of San Diego I have a few tropical guava trees—ranging from big Thai guavas which grow to 6” wide to tiny Mexican crème guavas that are around 1” wide. This year with the fruit dropping from the trees faster than we could pick it I decided to try my hand at making some fruit wine. Better than throwing the fruit away, I reminded myself.

So I found myself at a wine shop, buying a giant food-safe plastic fermenter bucket with a tight lid and a place for a fermentation lock to fit. I made wine. Fruit wine. If you’re interested, here’s the recipe:

10 lbs. of honey
3 cans of frozen Welch’s Grape Juice
1- 16 oz. container of white grape concentrate (from a wine-making supply store)
10 lbs of extremely ripe African Tropical Guavas
4 extremely ripe mangoes
6 lbs. of extremely ripe bananas
1 pineapple
3 extremely ripe oranges
3 limes
Three tablespoons of loose green tea
3 pieces of cinnamon
6 whole nutmegs.
5 gallons of water
German wine yeast
Camden tablets

The process:

1. Peel the extremely ripe bananas cinnamon, grated nutmeg and place them into a cheese cloth fruit bag. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil. Pour in the honey—while stirring like crazy. Then keep the water hot—but don’t let it boil. Plop in your fruit bag and let the bananas linger in the hot water for around 5 minutes. This will also work to disinfect your honey. Add green tea bags to the water (or bulk tea in a strainer).

Chop up your guavas into slices, peel your oranges and limes, and Remove your fruit bag. Add your fruit into the hot bag, and squish the fruit with your hands or potato masher (if you’re squeamish) into the plastic (food grade) fermenter. Add four gallons of water into the fermenter, along with your frozen grape juice and grape extract. Pour your hot water into the frementator and add 1 Camden tablet for each gallon of water. Close the fermentator tight and place fermentation lock on top.

The Camden tablets act like germ killers and in this case you want a sterile environment for your yeast to grow strong and flourish. Wait 24 hours and then add your yeast. Stir everything up once a day for the next five days. After 5 or so days when the fermentation slows down, siphon into a 5-gallon glass water bottle and attach a fermentation lock to the top. Allow another three weeks to go by. Then siphon off the clear liquid from the poop at the bottom. Add sterile water to bring up to within 3” from the top of the glass fermentator. After 6 months bottle and enjoy!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2006 at 8:40 am and is filed under Wine Making. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.