Bird cherry is a peculiar berry. Delicious, but you can't eat much. But making homemade bird cherry wine is very useful. And the nutritional value of the berries will be preserved, and a pleasant tart drink is always useful. Homemade wines differ from those purchased in the store chain in simplicity of preparation, budget and good energy. With your own hands, you can make a wonderful aromatic drink that will please family members and guests. The astringent taste of fresh berries, which many do not like, gives the wine an originality. The bird cherry contains pectin, which is useful for older people. Therefore, you should pay attention to the beautiful fruits. Bird cherry is often left out.
Housewives prefer wines made from grapes, currants, plums, and they may not even remember about bird cherry. But if you try this amazing product at least once, then bird cherry wine will take its rightful place in the list of blanks.
Consider a simple way to make wine from black or red bird cherry at home.
Strong bird cherry drink - preparatory stage
For cooking we need:
- bird cherry berries in the amount of 5 kg;
- clean water in a volume of 5 liters;
- granulated sugar - 1.5 kg (ideally, you can take 250 g per 1 kg of berries);
- black raisins - 70 g.
First, let's prepare a glass container. You can take a volume of 10 or 15 liters. It depends on the amount of berries and the need. Wash the bottle, dry it, cover with a clean lid or cloth.
Let's move on to preparing the berries. The very first thing that needs to be done is to sort out the fruits of the bird cherry. To make the wine tasty and aromatic, we need ripe, but not overripe berries. Too soft it is better to put it off. At the time of the bulkhead, we remove spoiled berries, leaves, twigs, any debris.
Water washes away natural yeast from the surface of the fruit, so fermentation will be weak and the drink may not work.
Pour the clean, sorted out fruits of the bird cherry into a convenient basin and knead. When all the berries are still whole, you can take a mortar, then continue with your hands. Be sure to put on gloves so that your hands do not become the color of a bird cherry. We knead thoroughly.
We prepare wine from black or red bird cherry in sugar syrup. Therefore, it will have to be prepared. Housewives know how to make jam syrup. The technology in the wine process remains the same:
- Pour sugar according to the recipe into an enamel bowl and fill it with water.
- Mix well so that the syrup does not burn in the future.
- Boil sweet water for 3-5 minutes, remembering to remove the foam.
- We remove from heat and set aside for cooling to 20 ° C.
Cooking the wort. It is better to make it in a separate bowl, and then put the wine in a previously prepared container.
Fill the berries with syrup, add the washed raisins and cover the container with gauze folded in three layers. Be sure to fix the edges, you can use an elastic band. We remove the pan in a warm and dark room. The exposure time is from three days or more. During this time, do not forget to stir the contents daily to remove excess acid. Once fermentation begins, the wort is ready. The beginning of fermentation is easy to determine by the appearance:
- foam on the surface;
- bubbles in the contents of the pan;
- the characteristic smell of mash;
- wort hiss and boiling.
Now we take the prepared container and pour the resulting wine into it, which must stand and replay.
The main stage of making wine
For proper fermentation, it is necessary to make a water seal on the bottle.Usually at home, this is a tube that helps gases out of the container. One end of the tube is lowered into a bottle, the other into a container with water.
It is necessary to carefully insulate the tube at both ends. Bubbles that appear indicate that the fermentation process is still ongoing.
We put the container in a room with a temperature of 17 ° C-24 ° C without direct sunlight on the liquid.
It will take 3 to 6 weeks to infuse their bird cherry wine. Readiness is determined by the clarification of the wort, the absence of bubbles and the appearance of sediment. Now the bird cherry drink needs further processing.
We pour the wine into a large bottle very carefully. It is important for us not to stir up the sediment.
We pass to the final stage.
Final steps
We need to taste the wine for sugar. If you want a sweeter drink, then add sugar. We do it like this:
- We pour 0.5 or 1 liter of wine into a separate container.
- Add the right amount of sugar.
- Mix well.
- Pour into a bottle.
Now we send the bird cherry wine to a cooler place with a temperature not higher than 11 ° C and keep it for 2 to 6 months. It is better to withstand the maximum period, then the drink will be tastier.
We pour the finished wine into small bottles and cork it. Store in a basement or refrigerator. The shelf life is 2-3 years, the strength of the drink is 12%.
If you want the red bird cherry wine to be more tart, add the leaves of the plant in a ratio of 300 g per 5 kg of ripe fruits.
There is another easy and simple recipe for making red bird cherry wine.
The option does not provide for the preparation of wort. Chopped berries are placed in a bottle and sprinkled in layers with a thin layer of sugar. The bookmark is carried out on ¾ of the container volume, then the mixture is poured with water. A water seal is put on the neck, and the wine is aged for the prescribed period until the end of fermentation. Once fermentation is over, the drink is bottled and sent to the basement.
If you try to make bird cherry wine at home, the result will force you to change your attitude towards this shrub. The drink makes the berry taste much softer. Make a fine wine with varying degrees of sweetness and strength. You will appreciate this wonderful drink with an unusual taste and aroma.
