As promised at the end of the video where I showed you how to make wine with rambutans, today, since papayas are abundant here in Manado, let’s make homemade papaya wine. If you live in cold county, you might prefer making other fruit wines; I recommend banana wine. But if getting papayas is easy for you, why not give it a try?
INGREDIENTS
INSTRUCTIONS
First, let’s clean the papaya by removing the seeds and the peel. Cut the flesh into pieces directly into the fermenter where we will ferment our homemade papaya wine.
Once all the fruit is cut, add the juice of half a lemon and the sugar, then mix for a few minutes.
WITH SUGAR or WITHOUT SUGAR?
Before starting the fermentation, I checked the sugar level of the papaya, and it turned out to be a bit low, only 10.20 Brix. With so little sugar, the wine would have had an alcohol content of only 4 or 5%. Since I wanted my homemade papaya wine to be at least around 9%, I decided to add sugar. However, if you prefer a lighter wine, similar to a beer, you can also choose not to add sugar.
FIRST FERMENTATION
After adding the sugar and lemon, the papaya will release its juice, as you can see in the video.
The lemon contributes to providing some acidity, and for tannins, we add a cup of black tea. We also pour 1 liter of hot water to kill wild yeasts and 1 liter of cold water from the fridge to lower the temperature and not kill the yeasts we are adding.
Before adding the yeast, give it a good stir, and if you are interested in knowing the alcohol content, now is the time to measure the initial density.
After adding the yeast, close the fermenter after putting some liquor in the airlock that you have at home.
Remember to shake the fermenter at least once a day to mix the fruit, which will start to float.
SECOND FERMENTATION
After 3 days, we transfer our homemade papaya wine into a second fermenter, removing all the fruit and collecting only the wine.
We leave it in the second fermenter until fermentation is complete; we know fermentation is finished when the airlock returns to level or stops bubbling.
BOTTLING
After 8 days, fermentation, in my case, was completed. Since I like sparkling wines, I added some sugar to the bottles, but be careful not to exceed 10 grams per liter, otherwise your bottles might explode.
If you add sugar, you need to wait for 2 weeks for refermentation in the bottle, and the bottles should be kept at room temperature.
But if you don’t like sparkling wine, you can enjoy your homemade papaya wine immediately without waiting for the 2 weeks 😉
If you have any doubts, check out the video and don’t hesitate to ask questions. You can write me directly on YouTube or Instagram.
