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Crabapple Wine
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Crabapple Wine (& Mead)

Crab apple wine is a wonderful way to use up those crab apples that so often go to waste. Use honey instead to try your hand at crab apple mead for equally delicious results.
Prep Time20 minutes
Cook Time7 days
Secondary Fermentation60 days
Total Time67 days 20 minutes
Author: Ashley Adamant

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Wash crab apples before beginning. The peels may be left on the apples, but the stalks should be removed.
  • Crush the apples using a piece of hardwood. (Apples can be frozen beforehand and then thawed to help soften them for crushing.)
  • Place crushed apples in a wide-mouth carboy for primary ferment.
  • Bring a few quarts of water to a boil. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve.
  • Pour the mixture into the carboy, covering the crushed apples. Let cool.
  • Once lukewarm, add the remaining ingredients except for the yeast.
  • The yeast must be added last. Rehydrate the yeast first in a small portion of room temperature water before adding.
  • Once the yeast is added, top with enough water to leave 2 inches of headspace and seal with a water lock. 
  • Ferment in primary for 7 days.
  • Siphon to a clean fermentation vessel for secondary, leaving sediment and apples behind. Top with enough water to bring the level up to the neck of the carboy and seal with a water lock.
  • Rack the wine every two months. 
  • On the third racking, sample the wine. If needed, adjust to taste. (See notes for info regarding backsweetening.)
  • Once ready, rack the wine into bottles and seal with wine corks.
  • Allow the wine to mature for 1 year before drinking for the best quality wine.

Notes

Amount of  Crab Apples

You'll need about 4 lbs of ripe crab apples for every one-gallon batch of wine you want to produce.

Crab Apple Mead

If making crab apple mead, substitute 1 quart of honey (3 lbs) for the sugar. Know that the time spent in secondary may be longer, as honey is harder for yeast to digest than honey, and as such the ferment will take longer.

Yeast

For crab apple wine, look for a wine yeast with moderate alcohol tolerance that ferments clean or adds light fruit flavors. Champagne yeasts are preferred. Some particular yeast choices include Red Star Premier Blanc and Red Star Premier Cuvee or Lalvin EC-1118. See notes within the article for specific qualities of each yeast.

Stabilizing and Back Sweetening

If you sample your wine before bottling and find it too dry, you can backsweeten. To do so, rack to a clean container and stabilize (done by adding 1 Campden tablet and ½ teaspoon potassium sorbate). Wait 24 hours for the yeast to die off before adding sugar.
Add sugar by making a simple syrup of 1 part sugar and 1 part water. Tastes will vary, but beginning with ½ cup sugar is a decent start. Put the wine back into ferment for a week before bottling to ensure fermentation does not restart. Bottled wine that contains active ferments results in pressure (sometimes pushing corks out, other times causing bottles to burst.)
For further information on backsweetening, see notes within the article.