Topic: freezing fruit

[paddy]

Hi all
i am about to make some gooseberry wine and also some blackcurrant wine and wondered if either of these can be frozen before i do it as i have limited time and only one fermentation bucket.

I did it with the rhubarb i made earlier in the season with good results.

many thanks from  rather damp Lincolnshire

Paddy

[skintnbitter]

Hi

I had the same problem last year and found by accident freezing the fruit i could extract more juice due to the freezing process starts to brake the fruit down. I am going to freeze all fruits from know on before i use them.

I froze some plums last year with great results.  The wine recipe said i had to boil my plums and than lightly mash them to extract all the juice, however when i defrosted the plums they had gone all soft so i could just pulp them with my hands.  When i measured the sugar content eg SG reading it was off the scale.  The plum wine i have now looks / smells like a smooth sherry.  Not tried to drink yet as going to bottle in October as the wine will be a year old then.

I also did this with Elderberry & Hawthorne berry with no problems so far.

As for the gooseberry i will also be freezing mine this year for around a month or so before i start a batch.

Hope this helps
Sarah
   

[paddy]

Great thankyou, i am finding this winemaking very addictive!!

[skintnbitter]

Tell me about it!

I have started looking at things in a completely different way - if i cannot eat it or drink it - i don't grow it!

Started some Elderflower off the other week smells very pungent.

Just had a thought, if you freeze softer fruit eg strawberry's, blackberry's etc it may be best freezing them on a flat tray to start with as you would if you was freezing broccoli.  I would say fruit with skins could be put in a bag and frozen, fruit without skins freezed first on a tray and then put into a bag.  In the back of my head i seem to remember freezing some strawberry's and they went off and all i can think of is soft fruit eg without skins must need freezing more quickly to stop decay.

Hope this makes sense?

[Spademan]

hi Paddy

Yes it si fine to freeze all fruit till you have time,

[Vortex]

I used to freeze all my fruit before turning it into wine - you get a much better flavour as a result.