Apple wine recipe (from juice)

From Ian Ball's "Wine making the natural way".

Delightful able wine. Ready to drink 10 weeks after the fermented wine has been transferred to a storage vessel to clear and mature. Alcohol content about 9.5% abv. Use only pure apple juice from a hippie shop - no preservatives, no stabilisers, not from concentrate - nothing but apple juice!

Sultanas give flavour, body and smoothness, and boost yeast efficiency (more alcohol).

Ingredients (country recipe using sugar)

• Pure apple juice - 1 L
• Sultanas - 120 grams
• Granulated sugar - 700 grams
• Pure malt extract (hippie shop again) - 1/4 teaspoon; marmite is fine too
• Wine yeast
• Chlorine free water to 4.5 L (boil and cool tap water first, or leave it to rest for a day. You can treat with sulphites to remove chloramines, or use filtered water, too)

Stage 1

Pour apple juice into fermenting bucket. Rinse sultanas in warm water, then chop or mince them and add to the bucket. Cover it. Warm half a litre of water in a saucepan, and stir in the sugar and malt extract. When dissolved, cover it and let it cool, then pour into the bucket. When the bucket's contents are below 24°C (and preferably above 18°C) add your yeast to them. Top up to 4L with cold water, and give 5cm at the top of the bucket to allow for frothing. Cover it (ensuring there's a non-explosive way for gas to escape - resting the lid on top loosely but securely is fine) and leave in a warm place for 10 days, stirring twice daily.

Stage 2

After 10 days, rack the fermenting wine from its sediment and straing into a demijohn or other 4.5L vessel, and top up with cold water (see ingredients). Discard the solids onto your garden. Leave to ferment to dryness, which might take 4-5 weeks at 18°C.

Wait 2 weeks after fermentation's finished, then rack wine into another demijohn, and top up with medium white wine or cold water. Fit a cork or rubber bung and leave somewhere cool for 10 weeks, to allow it to mature and clear. It'll be ready for bottling now, though you can leave it for longer.

Once bottled, it's ready for drinking, but hits its peak about 10 months after being racked to clear.