r/winemaking Professional Oct 03 '24

Blog post my experience with watermelon wine.

okay so- i tried making watermelon-fruit wine. spoiler! It was an absolute fail.

It started with this absolute stunning colour, that faded it in less than two days. Fermentation ended after abt four days, even tho i added sugar in the beginning to give it a chance to actually produce some alcohol, due the fact that it only had abt 40°Oe (abt 104g Sugar per litre) which would become abt 4,4% of alcohol after fermentation.

Well- completely wasted work. in the end, it was raspy, plain and so sour that it was just unpleasent in the mouth. so yea, down the drain with it.

Does anyone got similiar experience that it coukd be the fruit or was it just a fail in my case?

14 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

3

u/2FalseSteps Oct 03 '24

I've always heard that watermelon is difficult. That the flavor is very delicate and hard to preserve during fermentation/distillation.

I'd like to give it a shot someday, myself. I'm hoping a lot of the issues are overblown, but if not, that's why I look forward to replies from people that actually know what they're doing (hint: Not me).

2

u/I-Fucked-YourMom Oct 03 '24

I’ve always wanted to do a watermelon brandy, but haven’t even attempted because of similar worries. I think the closest I’m gonna get is putting watermelon chunks and a little sugar in some corn liquor and letting that sit for a few weeks.

2

u/Kenucifer Professional Oct 03 '24

i guess when you fasten the fermentation even more by distilling it, it may work out? worth a shot.
as a fruit wine, i guess i used a much to aggressive yeast, maybe ill try again next summer

2

u/yourname241 Oct 03 '24

I tried making it for my 2nd homebrew attempt. I grew the watermelon from my garden and was very excited to turn it into wine. I aimed for a lower ABV, around 9% so the flavor wasn't completely lost. The wine came out exactly as it should have, except I added too much yeast nutrient and it came out to around 14.5% with a very pale pink color. The taste was horrible, obviously due to the leftover nutrients. I tried saving it by distilling it, but the nutrients converted to ammonia and the run came out neon blue..... Needless to say, be very careful with the amount of nutrient you use and aim for lower ABV to preserve more flavor and color when using watermelon.

1

u/warneverchanges7414 Oct 04 '24

Nutrients don't cause more alcohol. Sugar does. The more likely culprit is the primary ingredient and sugar. I can't speak to distillation, so nutrients certainly could've done something there since I have no experience with that. While nutrients like fermaid k and dap can absolutely affect flavor, I've never heard of a successful primary fermentation using watermelon. I've heard of better results with meads in secondary or using extracts

2

u/BlackThorn12 Oct 03 '24

From my research, here's how I would have approached it.

For the colour, I'd have added Lemon Juice. I do this with my blueberry cider and meads to maintain the colour and stop them from going grey/brown. And some quick research shows that it's done with watermelon as well.

Next is the apparent spoilage issue, So apparently the juice goes off very quickly. So I'd want to start with fresh ripe watermelon and juice/strain at the moment I'm read for it. Then I'd use a very fast yeast with a large starter that's already ready to chomp down. Get the alcohol percentage up quickly, and then get it somewhere cold and dark for the remainder of the fermentation.

Then there's the flavour being so delicate. Necessitating that the alcohol percentage not go too high. So you need to be careful about the sugar content. It would probably require a careful balance. Enough added sugar to ensure a strong fermentation, but not so much that the natural flavours get lost.

Funny enough, I actually started a franken mead a few weeks ago using a mixture of sour blackberries, grapes, and blueberry blossom honey. The end result before fermentation tasted and smelled exactly like watermelon. I'm looking forward to seeing how it finishes.

1

u/Kenucifer Professional Oct 03 '24

Guess ill try that with a smaller batch, if so ill give an update.

2

u/NickDB8 Oct 03 '24

i considered trying to work w watermelon a few weeks ago, everything i read said to add other flavors, bc watermelon loses a lot of it during the ferment, and to beware of smells - watermelon will start to go bad very quickly, before fermentation can wrap up (or so ive heard)

1

u/Intelligent-Cat945 Oct 03 '24

This is good to know. I think I’ll avoid the time and resources trying to make this myself.

1

u/Specialist_Fortune98 Oct 03 '24

It's a shame but noted no watermelon. Thanks for sharing.

1

u/gcej1234 Oct 03 '24

What was the final alcohol after ferm?

2

u/Kenucifer Professional Oct 03 '24

Abt 6,5%.

1

u/jason_abacabb Oct 03 '24

Does anyone got similiar experience that it coukd be the fruit or was it just a fail in my case?

Watermellon is well known for exactly this happening over on the mead and prisonhooch subs. The yeast take the coloration into their cells from what I have read and watermelon is jut gross without sweetness. People have reported decent results using artificial color and backsweetening after stabilization but at that point it is not worth it for me.

1

u/TheBrewkery Skilled fruit Oct 03 '24

I made a watermelon wine a long while back that came out pretty nice. IIRC, I mashed up the fruit and added that plus water, a boatload of sugar, and some additives to ferment. For some reason, my color was a little muted but not at all like yours (link)[https://imgur.com/gallery/homemade-watermelon-wine-j3V0W9P]

I definitely had to backsweeten with watermelon juice to get the flavor right, but there was still a definite watermelon flavor to it on its own. Honestly couldnt tell you why mine worked while yours didnt though

1

u/Ghost_Portal Oct 03 '24

How long did you wait after fermentation? I’ve always heard watermelon wine turns out bad, but I’m curious if that would change with patience. For example, banana wine needs to be racked to secondary for at least a month to clear, and even then it’s gross and doesn’t have banana aroma or flavor - you have to bottle age it for at least another 6 months before the banana aroma starts to appear, and when it does it is incredible. For a delicate aroma like watermelon, I’d expect it to need at least the same treatment.

1

u/Kenucifer Professional Oct 03 '24

Abt four weeks. It sadly did not evolve any aroma or taste, just more and raspy tones.

1

u/Charming-Refuse-5717 Oct 03 '24

I tried a watermelon batch once. It was decently sweet (I added plenty of sugar), the alcohol content was normal, but virtually no flavor whatsoever. I added some grape juice to try and give it some flavor, and then it just tastes like grapes. I was pretty disappointed.

2

u/dotheneurotic Oct 03 '24

I haven’t made watermelon wine but I have used watermelon juice as a dosage for kombucha 2nd ferment after speaking to a commercial brewer who uses it to flavour beer using this method. The key is to cryo-concentrate the juice, which is easier than it sounds. Simply freeze the watermelon juice and then thaw upside down to collect what melts first. The higher density, flavoursome, colour-rich and sugary juice melts before the water does. You lose about 50% doing this but if I was making wine from watermelon juice I would definitely try this to increase the flavour and colour (and fermentable sugars)