Makes one gallon.

Ingredients:

Keep your acid tester and hydrometer handy. As with all wild fruit the sugar and acid content varies greatly from year to year and even from one location to another. The recipe above is a general recipe to use which you may have to adjust.

Directions:

1. Pick fully ripe persimmons, preferrably after first frost.
2. Wash and drain the persimmons. Cut in half and remove seeds. Cut into chucks and using nylon straining bag crush, mash and strain juice into primary fermenter. Keeping all pulp in straining bag, tie top and place in primary.
3. Stir in all other ingredients EXCEPT yeast. Cover primary.
4. After 24 hrs., add yeast . Cover primary.
5. Stir daily, check hydrometer reading (S.G.) and press pulp lightly to aid extraction.
6. When ferment reaches S.G. 1.040 (about 5 days) strain juice from bag. Syphon off sediment into clean secondary. Attach lock.
7. When S.G. reaches 1.000 (usually about 3 weeks), fermentation is complete. Syphon juice off sediment into clean glass container. Re-attach airlock.
8. To aid in clearing, syphon again in 2 months and again, if necessary, before bottling.
9. Allow the wine to age.

If a slightly sweetened wine is more to your taste, add 1/2 tsp. of stabilizer and 1/4 to 1/2 cups of dissolved sugar at bottling.