hey gang it's your old buddy Platt and
today I'm going to show you how to make
watermelon wine so let's go so if you
can watch the channel for a while you
know I like to make all kinds of things
home home brewing beer making a mead
cider homemade or prison wine what have
you and so I'm always looking for
inspiration well there's two men named
Tom tea hall it's the classic country
singer I don't believe he's with us
anymore but he had a song about
watermelon wine you may also know him as
a gentleman that had the classic I like
beer song spoke definitely also on us
drinkers can appreciate wait wait that's
all I needed when I hear him singing
about watermelon wine I'm like we've got
the technology I know I can do it just
let me find a recipe and I found a good
recipe um let's go over what we need to
make that recipe we need obviously first
for watermelon one large watermelon will
do for this we're making a one gallon
batch here in Nevada offseason fruit I
don't necessarily get the best selection
out of here out here in the desert so
I've got one medium ish size watermelon
and then one like personal size
watermelon that should equal one large
watermelon I'm gonna need sugar
I need roughly three pounds of sugar now
I hear you out there dealing right now
three pounds of sugar you had say
diabetes none of them remember we had
sugar going on these things the sugars
not necessarily for us it's for the
yeast that's what the yeast needs to
produce alcohol so if you want alcohol
in this you're gonna need to add sugar
all this sugar that we're adding it's
not necessarily going into the glass
that we drink so don't freak out now
that being said this is designed to be a
sweet wine so if you want to try our
wine cut it down to two pounds pound and
a half what have you but we're going to
intentionally make a sweet wine but
again a lot of that sugars going for the
yeast and not for us because we're
adding a lot of sugar to this we're
going to need some yeast
nutrient also because we're producing a
wine but we're not using wine grapes
wine grapes a little more balanced shoot
if you see me my wine series you know I
talk about acidity in wine and that's
important for valence and complexity of
flavor water so we have at your local
brew shop you can find acid blender you
find it online too I'll leave the link
down below for the yeast nutrient and
the acid blend if you don't have a home
brew shop nearby
and then finally we're going to use I'm
going to use a champagne yeast it's a
regular wine yeast you can even use a
beer yeast in heaven or if you're again
somewhere or you can't don't have access
to a brew shop or what have you you
could also use break East the taste is
on B is good but you can use it you've
seen another experiments I've done like
with basic cider basically you can use
break ease then finally you need a
couple different pots and then you're
going to need a sifter a warmer because
we're gonna filter out any pulp or seeds
that might be in the watermelon so now
we've got our inhibitory outwait let's
make some watermelon wine so the first
thing we're going to do actually
sanitize all our equipment if you've
never done any home brewing you don't
know much about home brewing sanitation
I'll leave a link to a video up here
about home brewing sanitation I've got
my fermenter and my hydrometer other
piece of equipment my airlock all right
now in the sanitizer so while I'm doing
that I want to prep the watermelon
watermelon wise when the questions you
may have is seedless or with seeds most
people like watermelons with the seeds
they think it's a bitter melon we're
going up filtering it so don't worry if
you bought a watermelon with seeds
what I had access to at my local grocery
store of seedless so it kind of saves me
that time but it's not that big a deal
either way if you have a personal
preference on melon feel free to go with
that so what we're going to do is we're
going to come
off the ends of the watermelon we we
want to take the Rhine off don't want to
take off too much of the kind of meat of
the melon and we're just going to cut
likes it a little bit off the ends yeah
that's probably a better cut right there
and then we're just going to cut the
rind off the sides and then we're going
to after we carefully cut that right off
we're gonna cut the cubes
I mean I want to throw in our pot so and
after that we're going to bring that too
we're gonna bring that to medium heat
and that's gonna help break down that
watermelons kind of them half liquid
half solid-state well that's gonna break
down the watermelon the heat and after
we get it liquefied than one filter are
more so but anyway I just want to review
the melons and the prep on the melons
let me get done cutting this up in cubes
like everything from in the pot here and
then we'll come back to discuss the
process once in the park alright so
we've got our watermelon all cut up sin
- roughly one by one or two by two cubes
and we throw it in our pot and we now
turn on the heat to about medium and
what's gonna happen over the next
roughly thirty minutes maybe a little
less is this watermelons going to break
down and liquify likes it's kind of in a
half solid half liquid form already but
the heats going to help break it down
you'll notice over the next few minutes
and this will break down if you have
like a potato masher if you're made
homemade potatoes you use that or I've
got a little handy spoon and when things
start warming up will kind of help help
the process along a little bit you don't
have to but likes it just helps the
process along a little bit after we get
everything broken down and everything
liquefied we're then going to run it
through our strainer put it in another
pot over here if you have any excess
juice left over let's say you we end up
with more than a gallon
I was just sigh siphoning off or
separating the extra liquid and adding
either vodka or some good bourbon to it
it's probably the best use for it if not
if we end up with a perfect gallon I'll
work out just fine so let's break this
down then I'll filter it and then we'll
come back after we filtered it and
liquefied it will come back to add the
sugar and again continue on the process
okay so we've went ahead cubed or cut up
a watermelon we lit we put it on medium
heat and kind of liquefied for us we
then filtered it out after it broke down
I think I said 30 minutes earlier took
me a little over 30 minutes a little bit
longer but it may vary again depending
on the watermelon you get what have you
I ended up with roughly gallon of juice
and now we'll bring this back up to a
simmer we're not going to boil it bring
up to a simmer because we're gonna now
add the sugar if we make the liquid
hotter that sugar dissolves easier like
I said earlier the reason the reason ran
sugar is we've got to give the yeast
something to eat there's not a ton of
sugar in watermelon juice and also to
are wanting to make a sweet wine you can
adjust if you don't want it that way you
can adjust down to two pounds to the
three we're going to use also in case
you get any ideas hey how about some
brown sugar or some honey agave nectar
whatever I would advise not to normally
I'd encourage you to explore try
whatever watermelon is not the most
intense fruit or intense flavored fruit
and can easily be masked by brown sugar
honey molasses water so I would go with
just a simple cane sugar for this one so
we don't want to mask the watermelon
flavor so that being said like so we're
bringing up to simmer now I'm going to
go ahead and add our three pounds this
is a four pound bag going about this
much
in there all at once and I'm just going
to keep stirring this up and let it
until it gets up to a simmer and then
we're going to let it cool off and then
we're going to put it in our fermenter
and then we'll add our yeast nutrient
and our acid blend there so let me get
all that sugar mixed in and then we'll
come back and everything in the
fermenter alright so we've got our one
gallon of watermelon juice we've got a
filtered we've got it cooled down now
it's time to add our yeast nutrient in
our acid blend it's never used in yeast
nutrient before not sure what it is
anytime we make an alcoholic a fermented
alcoholic beverage wine Meads site or
whatever and there's a lot of sugar in
there or a high what's called a high
gravity think of like a barley wine if
you produce beer you know really big
IPAs double porters you know stuff like
that
or me - whatever yeasts are glad to work
a lot with all the sugar that's in there
and so we like to add yeast nutrient
when these high gravity projects just in
a gravity reading on this she was at a
one point one three zero to give you
general idea your regular pale ale or
lighter ale bla light lager your leaning
out like 1.04 1.05 so we got a lot of
potential alcohol in here and our yeast
are going to have to work pretty hard so
we're going to give some east nutrients
about a teaspoon of the yeast nutrient
just a little tip if you do not have
access to yeast nutrient um one little
tricky dudes throwing raisins something
about the skin of the race in I know
there's also some did yeast on the skin
so people use that to start the
fermentation but raisin the skin of a
raisin will help out
fermentation and so you can substitute
that as far as asset plan I'm not a
hundred percent sure how you can
substitute the acid blend this only
about the second time I use this so I
haven't found a substitute for the acid
blend so we got both those in there and
we'll give you a little trick to when
dealing with these high gravity
solutions you will want to give it a
good shake to give the yeast you're
going to do a lot of work so besides
adding the yeast nutrient the acid blend
we gonna give it a good shake this is
going to help oxidize if it was beer we
call it war we're oxidizing the wine or
the juice and that's going to give the
yeast something to work with
now after fermentation starts you don't
want to do this you don't want to stir
keep stirring it up I have seen in
recipes and if you're looking online for
recipes for amount of wine you'll see
some people talk about every few days
give it a stir because you'll have a
head on top don't do that once we get
the fermentation going let it be mostly
- speaking of fermentation several the
recipes and sites I looked at on
watermelon wine I could tell these for
folks that have not brewed anything
before why because long are suggesting
that you would throw in the yeast and
after three or four days you would move
to secondary if you know anything about
fermentation that's just too fast
the bubbles slow down after the first
few days but it really takes at least a
week or so to let a maturity that
fermentation happened and that's what
you want to do before you transfer to
secondary fermentation so what we're
going to do here is when I add the yeast
I won't let this sit here for two weeks
in primary and then I'm gonna move to
secondary and I'm gonna let that sit for
about another six six weeks there and
then after roughly a two month period
we'll be ready to bottom I've read some
recipes where they're like
you know after one week or a few days in
primary you move to secondary for a
month or two then you move into a third
fermentation for another two or three
months I don't know if we need those
steps I think a secondary fermentation
for about six weeks and then we bottle
and then you can leg condition some
suggest in quite accurately so that you
would after each week you do a firm and
tender you would do a gravity reading
and once you got down to about one point
zero zero then you would be done
fermentation ready to bottom you can do
that if you like I know a lot of you
don't have hydrometer so I'm making a
little bit simpler like simple just do
two weeks in primary six weeks and
secondary and then we'll bottle and then
you can let age however long when you
never once while trying a bottle just to
see how it ages well hope you like this
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well until next time bottoms up