Looking for a wine that is good in the fall? Maybe seeing pumpkin beer has got you bummed out if your a wine maker. Well this is the recipe that you want to do if you want to make a pumpkin wine. With this wine you can either produce a super dry wine which will be around 18% or a sweeter wine, it’s all based off the wine yeast.
If you wanted to go the high alcohol route use Lalvin K1V-1116 or Lalvin EC-1118. If you wanted to have a sweet wine use, Red Star Côte des Blancs. This will get you about 13% with 5% residual sugar. If you wanted a little less sweet I would recommend Lalvin 71B-1122.
This is one of those recipes that you want to get a early start, it takes some time to get done with this recipe. Make sure you have plenty of time.
Pumpkin Wine
Yield: 1 Gallon Batch
- 5 lbs grated pumpkin flesh
- 2 lbs finely granulated sugar
- 1 tsp pectic enzyme
- .5 oz citric acid
- 1.5 tsp yeast nutrient
- 1/4 tsp yeast energizer
- 1 finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet
- 6-1/2 pts water
- Wine yeast (see above and choose)
Directions:
- Take pumpkin flesh and grate the pumpkin flesh. (Don’t place chunks in a blender and attempt to chop them.)
- Take water bring water to a boil and stir in the sugar until dissolved.
- Take off the heat, and then put pumpkin flesh in primary.
- Pour boiling water over pumpkin.
- Take mixture and cool to room temperature and add crushed Campden tablet.
- Take cover and put on top of primary and allow to sit 8-10 hours.
- Add pectic enzyme and allow to sit overnight.
- In the morning, add citric acid, yeast nutrient, energizer and yeast.
- Cover primary and shake daily for about 5 days.
- Take mixture that was in the primary and pour through a nylon straining bag and let pumpkin drip drain.
- Transfer to secondary and put on an airlock.
- If you do not get a full gallon of liquid, wait 5 days and top up as necessary.
- Rack after two weeks
- Rack again after additional 30 days, topping up and refitting airlock each time.
- Set aside for 3 months and then rack, stabilize, sweeten if desired.
- Wait 3 weeks rack into bottles.
- Set aside and wait 1 year to drink.
Jay's Brewing Blog 
October 11, 2012 at 3:02 pm
I envy anyone that can make wine or meads. The fermentation/aging process takes so long that if it came out tasting terrible it would break my heart. Kudos to you though for making a pumpkin wine, I love pumpkin beer myself. I would be interested to know how this comes out.
October 11, 2012 at 3:22 pm
I use to only make wine for the longest time. It’s hard to get into because there is this lag where you don’t have anything to taste so it seems a bit pointless at first, but once you get a supply chain going on then it becomes pretty fun. I got into beer because I wanted to make stuff faster but wine you can literally go into the woods or a field and find stuff to use for wine, so if you are, “one with nature” as some might say then it’s really cheap – just a packet of yeast and some sugar or honey which I have bee’s so makes it really cheap. Try it out if you are bored, just make a 1 gallon batch of something. The key is to sanitize and forget about it. I’ll find stuff from wine I made back in 2007 every once in a while.
January 31, 2013 at 3:53 am
I just made an incredible mead with zero effort, just steeped the water for the mead (after boiling) with fresh lavendar heads, chucked in the honey at the right time, and bottled after primary fermentation. We left it outside for a couple of days, when opened it was fizzy and delicious!
January 31, 2013 at 8:15 am
It is pretty simple!
January 31, 2013 at 7:24 pm
I would love to hear about your brewing experiments! Do you recommend adding yeast and using Camden tabs, or have you explored lots of wild yeast ferments too?
February 1, 2013 at 7:33 am
I’ve done the wild yeast thing before, but I normally I just add wine yeast. Nothing wrong with doing the wild yeast though, I don’t have a ton of experience personally with it though. One of my brewing buddies does it that way, and that’s about the only way he does it. It’s defiantly more, “old school” to do it with the natural wild yeast.
For most people though would just go the adding wine yeast, it takes out the, “x factor” which makes it a bit easier to get the hang of it. If it’s a wild fruit or vegetable that I pick from my garden then I’ll add the camden tabs or pot. Metasulphite but otherwise I personally just add yeast to it.