Pineapple Wine Recipe

The short answer: for one gallon of pineapple wine, peel, core and chop 4 pounds of ripe pineapple into a straining bag, crush it in the primary and pour over 7 pints of boiling water with 1½ to 2 pounds of sugar dissolved in it. When cool, add a crushed Campden tablet; 12 hours later add ½ teaspoon of pectic enzyme, ¼ teaspoon of tannin, ½ teaspoon of acid blend and 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient; 12 hours after that, add Champagne yeast. Ferment 7 days on the fruit, then finish in a jug until the gravity reaches 1.025 and below.

That recipe, adapted from Terry Garey’s The Joy of Home Winemaking, is the first of three pineapple wines in Jack Keller’s collection. Keller’s advice on which to choose is the most useful thing on this page: really fresh pineapple makes the best wine, but canned crushed pineapple or plain pineapple juice is every bit as good as a so-so fresh one, and much less work.

Fresh, Canned or Juice: Which Pineapple Wine to Make

Jack Keller’s Requested Recipes Collection (2020) gives three pineapple wines. His reasoning: a fresh pineapple is intensely sweet and flavorful when picked, but both fade quickly after harvest, so by the time the fruit reaches your store it may have lost much of what makes it worth using. For that reason he rates wine from canned pineapple or pineapple juice as generally every bit as good as wine from fresh fruit.

The canned and fresh recipes are both adapted from Terry Garey’s The Joy of Home Winemaking; the juice recipe is adapted from Leo Zanelli’s Home Winemaking from A to Z.

Choosing the Pineapple

Fresh fruit

Keller’s test for a fresh pineapple: it should be fragrant and a little sticky to the touch, and the tuft of leaves on top should be a little loose. If the body of the fruit is soft, it is past ripeness; skip it. If you have doubts about freshness, he says, you might as well make one of the other two versions.

Canned crushed pineapple

Buy crushed pineapple canned in its own juice. Keller drains the juice into the water and puts the fruit in the straining bag.

Pineapple juice

Keller’s condition is that the juice contains no preservatives, artificial flavor or artificial sweetener. With no pulp to ferment on, it makes the easiest of the three, and he describes the result as a very good white wine. The same no-preservatives rule applies to the white grape concentrate in the canned version; North Dakota State University Extension gives the same warning about frozen concentrate in its home winemaking guide.

Sugar, Acid and Strength

Keller gives the sugar as a range, 1½ to 2 pounds per gallon, because pineapples differ in sweetness. Check the gravity once the must has cooled. Virginia Tech’s Wine Making for the Home Gardener explains that a starting gravity of about 1.090 gives about 12% alcohol, and NDSU’s rule of thumb is that 11 grams of sugar per liter raises the gravity by about 0.004. Our sugar calculator and hydrometer guide do the rest.

Pineapple brings its own acidity, so the fresh recipe uses only ½ teaspoon of acid blend; the canned and juice versions, which are diluted further, use a full teaspoon. Pectic enzyme goes into all three to help the wine clear.

The Best Yeast for Pineapple Wine

Keller’s fresh and canned recipes call for a Champagne wine yeast. Lalvin EC-1118, which Lallemand calls the original Prise de Mousse and which was selected in the French region known for high-quality sparkling wine, is the usual home winemaking choice: 18% alcohol tolerance, 10 to 30 °C (50 to 86 °F), neutral and fast, so the pineapple stays at the front. The juice version uses a Chablis-style white wine yeast; Lallemand’s ICV-D47, a white wine strain recommended for Chardonnay, with 15% tolerance and a range of 15 to 28 °C (59 to 82 °F), fits that role. More strains on our best wine yeasts page.

How to Make Pineapple Wine, Step by Step

Step 1: Sanitize

Clean and sanitize the bucket, straining bag, masher, spoon and jug.

Step 2: Dissolve the sugar

Bring the water to a boil and stir in the sugar until it has completely dissolved.

Step 3: Prepare the pineapple

Cut off the top and the skin, catching the juice as you go. Cut the flesh away from the core, chop it small and collect the juice from the board too. Put the fruit in a nylon straining bag in the primary and crush it with a potato masher or a piece of hardwood.

Step 4: Pour on, cool and sulfite

Pour the boiling sugar water over the bag, cover and let it cool to room temperature. Stir in the crushed Campden tablet, cover and wait 12 hours.

Step 5: Add the additives

Stir in the pectic enzyme, tannin, acid blend and yeast nutrient. Cover and wait another 12 hours.

Step 6: Seven days on the fruit

Add the activated yeast and ferment for 7 days, stirring twice a day. Then lift out the bag and let it drip drain without squeezing; Keller is specific about not squeezing. Discard the pulp.

Step 7: Finish, clear and bottle

Keep fermenting until the gravity falls to 1.025, then rack into a jug and fit an airlock. Rack and top up after two weeks, then every 30 days until the wine is clear and stops dropping sediment over a 30 day period. Stabilize, sweeten to taste, wait 10 days and bottle if it is stable. Keller ages it 6 months to a year before tasting. Our guide to bottling and corking covers the last step.

Scaling Up: 5 Gallon Pineapple Wine

Multiply the fresh pineapple recipe by five and check the gravity the same way.

Use a 7 to 8 gallon bucket for the primary and a 5 gallon carboy after that; our carboy vs bucket guide compares them.

Common Mistakes With Pineapple Wine

Using a tired pineapple

A soft, past-ripe pineapple makes a dull wine. If the fresh fruit is only so-so, Keller’s advice is to make the canned or juice version instead.

Squeezing the bag

Let the pulp drip drain. Squeezing pushes fine solids into the wine that then take longer to settle.

Juice with preservatives

Read the label. Preservatives in juice or concentrate can stop the yeast from starting.

Sweetening without stabilizing

Virginia Tech points out that adding sugar to a finished wine makes it unstable, because fermentation could start again. Stabilize first, as Keller does, then sweeten.

For the method behind every fruit wine see how to make wine from fruit, and browse the recipe collection for more. Make and drink wine responsibly, and only if you are of legal drinking age.