As threatened, here's my recipe for Marmalade Wine.
My thinking is that I need as much fruit as I can get from as many pots of marmalade as I can use, but that number is limited by the amount of sugar in the jam. Berry's recipe for orange wine starts with 12 oranges, which is several kilos- we're not going to reach that target.
I've got 9 pots: 6 of bitter orange marmalade 370g pots containing 59g sugar per 100g and made with 30g oranges per 100g which gives me 6x3.7x59 which gives me 1.3 Kg sugar and 0.67Kg oranges; and 3 x 335g pots of low sugar (no artificial sweeteners) of bog standard orange marmalade containing 40g sugar and 35g oranges per 100g giving me 3x40x3.35 or 0.4 Kg sugar and 3x35x3.35 or 0.35 Kg oranges.
Berry reckons 1.5 Kg sugar to 5 litres of wine and I've got 1.7 Kg, but Berry hasn't accounted for the sugar in the oranges so I reckon I'm fine. And there's a kilo of oranges so I'm good to go.
Both jams contain lemon juice or citric acid so I'm not going to add any more.
I'll tip the jam into a sanitised 2 gallon bucket and make up to 5 litres with boiling water to dissolve the jam. Cover with a tea towel and when cool add two good teaspoons full of pectin degrading enzyme. Leave for 24 hours and add yeast and nutrient. When the first flush of fermentation is over, strain the wine into a 5 litre demijohn leaving the bits of peel behind. Et voilĆ . Bob's your uncle et Fanny ta tante.
It works for me, but I'm not a serious winemaker and there may well be better ways of doing this and I should remind myself that my original objective was not to make the wine, but to have a number of empty jars for my Chilli Death Pickle.
