Warren Rutgers' Blog: Minute Maid Wine Recipe

Making Minute Maid Wine Coolers is fun and easy, tastes great and you may already have all the tools in your kitchen to get started!

Tools Needed

5 gallon food grade pail or 5 gallon glass carboy (23 L)
Air Lock
Stir Stick
Food grade siphon hose (4-6ft)
Measuring Cup
hydrometer (optional) but very helpful

Ingredients

14 Minute Maid frozen juice concentrate (Choose your flavor; Peach, Mango, Raspberry, Grape)
3 kg white sugar
3 oranges
5 tbsp Yeast Nutrient (buy at any wine making store)
1 tbsp bakers yeast

Cost of Ingredients should be (depending on where you live) $12 USD for roughly 30 bottles of wine when you are finished.

40 cents a bottle of wine, sign me up!

1 and 5 gallon Glass Carboys

5 Gallon Food Grade Pail - note air lock attached on top

2 L plastic pop bottles - give the option of second fermentation or fizz (such as the carbonation in soda)

READ ME FIRST: Cleanliness is very important in successful wine making. A solution made with potassium metabisulfite powder is common amongst many wine makers to sterilize all tools and bottles before wine ingredients and wine come into contact with them.

Directions

Clean and Sterilize all tools
Add 14 Minute Maid Frozen Fruit Concentrate (Flavor of your choice) to 5 gallon pail
Add white sugar
Add hot water to pail, stir mixture until dissolved, add enough water to make 5 gallons
(Optional) if you have a hydrometer, use to determine desired alcohol content, add more sugar for more higher alcohol content. *** NOTE: to much sugar and you will kill of the yeast, I recommend staying under the 15% alcohol mark ***
Cut up oranges, squeeze juice into pail as well as whole cut up orange pieces
Add 5 tbsp of Yeast Nutrient
COVER WITH LID AND AIR LOCK AND SET PAIL ASIDE AND WAIT 24 HOURS
After 24 hrs, put 1 tbsp of bakers yeast in small cup, add warm water and stir, wait few minutes, then add to 5 Gallon pail with wine mixture, stir.
Store wine mixture in pail in area that is roughly 70°F for 2 months or (When hydrometer reads 1-3% alcohol). YOU ARE NOW READY TO BOTTLE AND DRINK!!
CLEAN AND STERILIZE 12 2 L plastic pop bottles. Siphon wine into bottles, keeping end of siphon hose above sediment in pail (about 1-2 inches from bottom of pail).
Tighten tops on bottles and set aside at room temperature for a few days. What should happen (Definitely will happen if using a hydrometer, and bottled at 1-3% alcohol stage) is that your plastics bottles will firm up. This is cause by secondary fermentation happening within the bottles, what happens is that a natural fizz will occur in the bottles, as the gas has no where to escape, hence Minute Maid Wine Coolers. Refrigerate wine coolers, and share with friends and family time and time again.