Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

• 3,8 liters of water
• 1,4 kilo sugar or 1,36 kilo mild honey
• 1,36 kilo gooseberries
• 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• 0,5 teaspoon pectic enzyme
• 1 sachet champagne yeast

Procedures

1. Boil the water with the sugar or honey and if necessary skim it.
2. Take the stems of the berries (you can leave the tails though), put them in a straining bag and crush them with clean hands or a sterilized potato masher.
3. Be careful to only pick berries that still look good, berries gone bad can make the taste of the wine go moldy.
4. Pour the hot water over the crushed berries (leaving the berries in the bag).
5. Add the yeast nutrient and wait for it to cool down to add the Campden tablet.
6. Cover and fit with an airlock.
7. Twelve hours after you added the Campden tablet, add the pectic enzyme.
8. Cover and fit the airlock again.
9. Wait another twelve hours and then add the yeast.
10. Stir down daily.
11. After one week, remove the bag (look out not to squeeze).
12. After the sediment has settled down again, rack the wine into a demijohn.
13. Bung and fit with an airlock.
14. Rack the wine once or twice during this secondary fermentation.
15. After about four to six months, taste the wine.
16. If it's too dry for you add 57 to 170 gram of sugar boiled in water.
17. The wine will be drinkable in about a year.