So for those of us that love milk chocolate and wine, you are going to love this. Who fancies making Milk Chocolate Wine?
Watch our YouTube Video on How To Make Milk Chocolate Wine
Watch The Milk Chocolate Wine Tasting
There are lots of recipes online where you combine red wine and melted chocolate, well not with this recipe. Here we are making wine from cocoa powder. Cocoa powder is made by roasting the cocoa beans and then crushing them into powder, so you are really making chocolate wine with this recipe.
Now my favourite type of chocolate is orange flavoured, I love a Terry's Chocolate Orange, so I have added an Orange to this recipe. If you prefer your chocolate just plain milk chocolate, then just swap the orange for 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid. This will help to add some zing without adding the citrus flavours.
This recipe makes 6 bottles of chocolate wine at about 12% ABV. If you love it that much and want to make larger quantities, just up the ingredients accordingly, with the exception of the sachet of yeast, as that will ferment up to 23 litres of wine.
So, if you like having some fun with your wines, lets get brewing. But be warned, the aromas when making this wine are divine!
Ingredients to make Milk Chocolate Wine.
175g Cocoa Powder (not hot chocolate)
1150g Granulated sugar - Supermarket (granulated) sugar
2 Pints Boiling Water
6 Pints Cold Tap Water
1 Orange - Juice and Zest. If you don’t like orange chocolate, use 1/2 tsp Citric Acid.
1/4 tsp Tartaric Acid
1 Pint Raisin Juice (see step 1)
- 250g Raisins
- 1 Pint Boiling Water
1 sachet VR-21 Red Wine Yeast
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient
2 tsp Pectic Enzyme
400g Lactose Sugar
5 tsp Vanilla Extract
Fermentation Stopper
1 Crushed Campden Tablet
Finings
Equipment: (We have a fruit wine starter kit if needed for £25)
Saucepan
Potato Masher / Liquidiser
Juicer & Zester
Brewing Bucket
Demi-John with Air-Lock
Syphon
Steriliser
Hydrometer
Thermometer
Bottles & Corks & Corker
Degasser (optional)
Method:
1 - The night before beginning the wine, you need to make Raisin Juice. This will add lots of body and depth to the finished wine. To make the Raisin Juice, put the 250g of raisins into a heat proof bowl and pour on 1 pint of Boiling Water. Cover with clingfilm and leave to cool to room temperature naturally. The raisins will soak up the water and swell. When cool, mash with a potato masher (or roughly liquidise), re-cover and put to one side until needed later in the recipe.
2 - In a saucepan, put in the cocoa powder. Add the water a little at a time and mixing it in, then add a little more cold water and stir, until it begins to make a thick smooth paste that holds its shape.
3 – A little at a time, add the 2 pints of boiling water to the cocoa paste and stir until it makes a smooth fluid consistency.
4 - Put on the hob and bring to the boil. Stir regularly to avoid it catching on the bottom. It will start to become frothy and as soon as it does, remove it from the heat.
5 - Into your fermenting bucket, add the 1150g of sugar.
6 - Pour the Hot Chocolate liquid onto the sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
7 - Zest and then Juice the orange and add this to the hot chocolate. Make sure you don’t use the white pith as this is bitter. If you don’t like orange, you can skip this or just add the juice.
8 - Add the Raisin Juice to the fermenting bucket and stir in.
9 - Pour on the 6 pints of cold tap water and stir until thoroughly combined.
10 - Check the temperature. If it is between 18-22°C perfect. If not, then leave to cool / warm up to 18-22°C.
11 - Add the Pectolase, Tartaric Acid & Yeast Nutrient and stir.
12 - Take a sample and a reading with your hydrometer and keep this safe
13 - Then sprinkle on the yeast.
14 - Loosely put the lid on and put it into a warm cupboard (20°C) for 7 days.
15 - Each day gently lift the lid and check if the cocoa powder has formed a foamy crust. If so, with a sterilised spoon, gently stir this back in so we extract all the chocolate flavours.
- Do not stir on day 5 or 6
16 – On day 7, syphon the wine (just break through the crust and syphon the wine from underneath) into a sterilised Demi-John & pop in the airlock. You may wish to use a syphon sock on the end of your syphon to prevent unwanted raisins and clumps of cocoa powder getting into the demijohn.
Tip - Pour any left over pulp and cocoa and yeast into a coarse straining bag and squeeze the bag into the bucket to extract the trapped wine. You can then use this to top up the demi-john.
17 - Put this back into your warm place (20°C) until no more bubbles pass through the airlock. Approx 2 weeks.
18 - Once fermentation is complete, check with a hydrometer it should be below 1.000. Ideally around 0.996.
19 - Rack off into a clean sterilised Demi-John.
20 - Add the fermentation stopper and 1 crushed campden tablet to the wine, stir thoroughly.
21 - We need to degass the wine, this means knocking out the dissolved CO2 gas as this will help with the clearing process. To do this you can swirl the wine in the demijohn, or to speed up the process you can use a whiz stick degassing tool that fits into a power drill. You will notice bubbles rising from the wine, this is normal and is CO2 escaping from the wine.
- If you are using the manual process, you will need to swirl the wine for 5 minutes at a time, changing directions every 30 seconds. And you will need to do this 3 times a day for 2 days.
- If you are using a drill, then a 10 minute blast, changing directions every 30 seconds.
22 - Once you have knocked out the CO2 we can add the finings. Add the Finings (as per the instructions on the packet), then put the demi-john somewhere cool and where it won’t be disturbed for 2 weeks (preferably below 18°C) to allow the wine to clear.
23 - Once clear rack off into a clean sterilised Demi-John being careful not to disturb the sediment at the bottom.
24 - While syphoning, take 250ml of wine into a jug as we need this to dissolve the lactose.
25 - In a saucepan add the 250ml of the chocolate wine. Turn on the heat and as it's warming up, sprinkle in the 400g of Lactose while stirring.
26 - Bring to the boil stirring all the time. It will look milky, but as it begins to boil, it will turn clear. Boil for 30 seconds. Take off the heat and work fast... Do not worry if it has not gone perfectly clear.
27 - Swirl the wine in the Demi-john so the wine is spinning.
28 - Using a funnel, slowly pour the wine & lactose mixture from the saucepan into the demi-john.
29 - Swirl the wine some more to mix the lactose into the chocolate wine.
30 - Add the Vanilla extract and swirl some more.
31 - Put in the airlock and now leave for 2 hours for the wine to rest. Some of the lactose may have settled out. If it is still cloudy, you can leave for 24 hours, and it will clear.
32 - Rack off into a clean sterilised Demi-John being careful not to disturb any sediment at the bottom.
33 - Now it's time to bottle into clean sterilised bottles.
34 - Once bottled, lay down and ideally leave for 3-6 months for its full flavour potential to be reached.
Remember to check out our other Hombrew Beer and Wine Recipes