Early Spring is Strawberry picking time and the perfect time to make some strawberry wine. Strawberry Wine is easy to make, whether from fresh or frozen strawberries.

This homemade strawberry wine recipe will show you how.
While you can technically make a batch of wine using only fruit, you’ll get a much better finished wine if you use some additional ingredients. This homemade strawberry wine recipe uses few ingredients, but it's important to make them the right ones. Most importantly: For the most flavorful wine, use ripe fruit. You’ll want to through to remove anything that's not ripe, is moldy, etc. When making strawberry wine, unlike most fruit wines, you don't want the flesh of the strawberries because the flesh turns into mush.

Hull them and discard the leaves/stems. I like to chop the strawberries and let them sit in sugar for a couple hours before starting on the wine making, as it - maceration - draws the strawberry juice out of the berries.  You can mash strawberries with a potato masher if you don’t feel like chopping them.
Use plain white granulated sugar (Fructose or Dextrose also works) - as brown sugar could overpower the delicate taste of the strawberries with the molasses flavor of brown sugar.

Unlike many red wines, strawberry wine really needs to be a sweet wine, or it doesn't taste like much of anything. Depending on how your yeast progresses and your understanding of use of a hydrometer, you will likely need to back-sweeten it. More on that in a bit.

The type of wine yeast you use will impact the alcohol content of the final product.
Yeast Nutrient just helps the yeast do its thing and is generally optional.
Acid Blend This is for taste - without enough acid, the wine will taste kind of flat, and lacking in character.

Pectic Enzyme is used because of the technique we use - boiling water - to kill off natural yeast and bacteria. 
Tannin imparts a sort of bitter, astringent mouth feel to wine, and makes wine... taste like wine. Anyway, we use a touch of it in this wine, to round it out a bit and make it taste more like a “proper” wine.

Boiling or simmering fruit activates the pectin in it - this is how you make jam. When it comes to wine making, that pectin can lead to cloudy or hazy wines. Pectic enzyme breaks down the fruit pectin, to prevent this.

For each gallon of wine, you’ll want to use about: 
3.5+ pounds ----- strawberries (juiced and the fresh discarded)
7 pints ----- Water
1 tsp ----- Acid Blend
1/4 tsp ----- Tannin
1 tsp ----- Pectic Enzyme
1 tsp ----- Nutrient
1 ----- Campden Tablet

First, sanitize everything! Rinse and pick through strawberries, removing any that are moldy, etc. Remove stems and leaves. Chop or crush fruit and place in a large pot. Cover with sugar and allow the strawberries to syrup up like making strawberry shortcake. Add additional sugar if desired to create more syrup. When you're satisfied with the syrup stage, pour off the syrup into your sanitized fermenter. Juice the strawberries. Throw away the flesh of the fruit and add the collected juice to the fermenter. .

Add the water for the desired batch size. Stir in acid blend, pectic enzyme, nutrient, tannin and the campden tablets. Place lid (does not have to be locked down) or cheese cloth on fermenter and wait 24 hours.

The next day, give the must a quick stir with a long sanitized spoon, Extract a sample of the must so you can take a hydrometer reading. Use the specific gravity reading to determine how much sugar to add. We suggest increasing the potential alcohol up to 12%. Sprinkle yeast into fermenter, cover with sanitized cover and air lock. Fermentation should be evident within 24 hours. At the 12% level of alcohol, you will leave the must in the fermenter for about 4-5 days at which point ~80% of the fermentation will be completed. The specific gravity should have dropped below 1.020 by this time.Transfer into a secondary fermenter. Head space is no problem because the fermentation will fill the fermenter with CO2, moving all the oxygen out.

Fermentation will usually be completed within 7-10 days. However, we'll leave the wine in the fermenter for about 3 more weeks, allowing time for the wine to clarify. The specific gravity of the wine should be .995-.990 by this time. If not, just wait until that gravity is achieved. If you aren't happy with the clarity, this is a good time to add a fining agent to improve the clarity.

Bottling can happen at a time of your choosing, A couple of days before bottling, elevate the fermenter (if needed) and add potassium sorbate to neutralize the yeast.

Transfer the wine into your bottling bucket. With the gravity at or near .990, the wine will have lost almost all of its flavor and aroma. Back-sweetening to the rescue, Remove 3-4 ounces of wine and place in a sauce pan. Add a couple ounces of sugar and use low heat to dissolve the sugar. Add it to the wine in the bottling bucket, stir and evaluate.  Repeat this sugar addition until you achieve the sweetness and flavor desired.

If corking the wine, leave the bottles sitting up-right for about a week, allowing the cork to seat to the bottle before laying laying the bottles down for storage.

With this being a sweet wine, it will not take age well. I would suggest that it would be best if this vintage would be completely consumed within 18 months.

If you are not using a hydrometer, you should not use more than 2 pounds of sugar per gallon wine. That should net you an alcohol content of approximately 12%