Emptying the Freezer

Today I undertook a New Year's Day Tutti Fruti wine. This wine is inspired by Ben Hardy, who annually on Christmas empties his freezer and ferments all of the leftovers with the expected results. I may go with a more pretentious name, however. Varieta Tropica sounds good perhaps.

I'm going for high volume of fruit for this 1 gallon batch.

• 4# 12oz strawberry guava
• 3# 15oz june plums
• 1# 14oz annona, combination of sugar apples and one cherimoya
• 5oz jaboticaba
• 5oz hibiscus sabdariffa flower candies
• handful of limeberries
• handful of phalsa berries
• 42g dried lemongrass (equivalent to 2000g fresh lemongrass)
• 2 quarts water
• 12oz white grape concentrate
• 1tsp pectic
• 1 Campden tab
• 1/4tsp Optiwhite
• 1/2tsp citric acid
• 6.5 ounces sugar

I boiled the lemongrass in 1 quart of water, strained the water into the primary, and repeated with the second quart of water.  Then I crushed all of the fruit and added to the primary, along with the Campden tab, grape concentrate.  

June plums have big seeds

Once cool, I added Optiwhite and pectic enzyme.  The initial pH was 3.56, adjusted to 3.48 with 1/2t citric.  The grape concentrate had lots of tartaric crystals, hopefully they don't dissolve and cause it to be too sharp.  The O.G. was a surprising 1.062, adjusted to an early 1.080 with just 6.5 ounces of sugar.  

We'll let this sit for 24 hours, then pitch QA23.  By throwing everything in, I have lots of seeds and skins and so my intent is to press this off early, maybe three days, and hope for the best.