Easy Pineapple Wine Recipe - Abby's Plate (2024)

28 February 20241 April 2020 by Abby

Pineapple wine is an easy-to-make-at-home fruity wine that gets served for Christmas, Easter, or other family gatherings along with all the other wines, co*cktails, and drinks. Here’s how we do it here in Bombay aka Mumbai.

Ingredients for the Homemade Pineapple Fruit Wine

But first, the list of ingredients we use.
800 grams pineapple
2 litres water
750 grams sugar
10 grams yeast – we use active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
50 ml warm water
2 pods vanilla – Optional
1 egg for clarification or 1 sheet veg gelatin or 5 drops milk – Optional
*reduce the amount of yeast and sugar you use as you increase the amount of wine

Steps to make Wine from Pineapple Fruit

Please make sure it is legal to make homemade wine in your city or country before you try out this recipe to make wine from pineapples.

Start by cleaning the pineapple and chopping it into small pieces. Get rid of any overripe pieces as these will make the wine bitter. Some people also use the skin of the pineapple to make wine, and you can too if you want to.

Proof the yeast by adding it to a bowl with sugar and 50 ml warm water and leaving it aside for 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes, the yeast starts to bubble, which means it’s active.

In a large ceramic jar (we call them barnis) add your 2 litres of water and the 750 grams of sugar. Next, add in your proofed yeast and stir. Then add in the chopped pineapple and vanilla pods and stir with a wooden spoon.

On the first day, you might need to stir the wine 3 or 4 times to release the gasses as the levels rise.

After that, stir the must (wine mixture) daily to release the carbon dioxide. Oh, and try to be smarter than we are and use larger barnis. This picture is of the time when the wine almost overflowed because the carbon dioxide inside made the pineapples rise to the top and all the gas was pushing upwards.

Also, these barnis come with ceramic lids which are good to use. They will keep the oxygen out and help release the carbon dioxide slowly. If you’re not using barnis, tie a cloth around the top of your glass jar or cover it with a balloon.

And if you’re wondering whether you have to stir the wine, you don’t have to. But it’s recommended. Stirring the wine gets rid of the excess carbon dioxide that might be suffocating the yeast. It also gives them access to a bit of needed fresh oxygen, get rid of sulphites, and keep your sugars moving. You don’t need to know this, it’s just here if you’re interested. So carrying on…

We sometimes keep a small jug for testing outside, so that we can see how the wine is doing. It’s not a necessary step. Just depends on whether you want to see how the wine is progressing or not.

After 7 days of stirring, strain the wine into a large glass jar or steel vessel. This is Day 7 or Day 8.

Taste the wine to confirm that it’s fine. If it’s sweet and fruity, you’re good to go. If by chance, your pineapple has lent the wine some of its bitterness, you can back-sweeten the wine by adding in 200 grams or 250 grams of sugar. There’s no need to worry about it being seen. The remaining yeast will gobble up the sugar over the course of the next few days, and your wine can soon be on its way to your glass.
Note: *In case you’ve already bottled the wine before realizing it needs to be back-sweetened, use a funnel to add the sugar in spoon by spoon. This will reduce some of the bitterness, not all of it.

Now the important notes before bottling the wine on Day 14 or Day 15. When the wine is just formed, it’s quite cloudy. So take a glass or decanter and fill it with the pineapple wine, then add just a teaspoon of the white of an egg to it and stir well. Add this wine back to your glass jar or steel vessel and stir the wine. Next step is bottling it and waiting another 7 days to drink it! (The egg white will help the dregs settle and clarify the wine till it becomes clear like below by Day 21.)

If you’re worried about the wine becoming acidic, use half a teaspoon of baking soda instead of the egg white. This will both clarify the wine and reduce acidity.

If you’re a vegetarian and can’t use eggs, use a sheet of veg gelatin instead or 4 to 5 drops of milk or a pinch of baking soda to clarify the wine on Day 14 or 15. Don’t add too much, mind you! Then bottle in glass bottles and store.

(*Note: “Veg Gelatin” as it’s called in my country is made from carrageenan powder.)

And that’s it! Wait another week, and your wine is ready to drink. If you can’t wait for the wine to clarify, you can actually drink the wine now itself. It just depends on how much patience you have. Wink wink!

Other Recipes You Might Like

• Make wine with ginger root
• East Indian warm winter drink
• Chocolate aitolas
• Latin American Enchiladas
• Chicken with beaten rice