Easy Watermelon Moonshine Recipe

Ferment your own watermelon moonshine using a just few ingredients. Old fashioned watermelon moonshine is a light tasting alcoholic beverage, preserving the juicy flavor of watermelon.

Watermelon Wine Cocktail

Making moonshine out of watermelons requires the use of a secondary fruit, because the low acid levels in watermelon. A common secondary fruit that does not overpower the watermelon taste is grapes. Using grapes in this recipe makes this recipe a watermelon wine recipe. Another common secondary fruit used in watermelon moonshine is strawberry. Strawberry watermelon moonshine is a delicious tasting cocktail.

How to Backsweeten Watermelon Moonshine

For a sweet social watermelon wine, you may need to backsweeten the wine. Backsweetening means that additional honey or sugar is added after the fermentation is done, and the wine is stabilized. Fermentation “uses up” a lot of the sweeteners in the wine, leaving behind a tart and dry tasting wine. Simply adding more sugar or wine will only cause more fermentation, so the wine must be stabilized first to actually sweeten the taste. In order to stabilize the wine, the wine will need to be racked (or transferred to a new carboy, removing debris and sediment). Once the wine remains clear, you can stabilize it by adding potassium sorbate. This prevents a second fermentation from occurring. Once the wine is stabilized, more sugar or honey can be added to improve the taste.

Watermelon Wine Alcohol Content

This recipe produces watermelon moonshine with an alcohol content of about 15%. The alcohol content of homemade moonshine or homemade wine depends on the type of yeast used. As the brew ferments, the alcohol levels increase. The yeast will die after a certain alcohol level, and prevent further fermentation. This causes the alcohol levels to stop increasing. Bread yeast will tolerate up to 8% alcohol by volume or ABV. Brewer’s yeast will tolerate 8%-12% ABV, while wine and champagne yeast will tolerate up to 18% ABV. For reference, beer alcohol content usually runs about 5% ABV, typical wine contains about 12% alcohol, and distilled alcohols like rum or brandy usually have about 40%. High alcohol moonshines require a distillation process, which is where the legality of home brewing becomes an issue. Homebrews that are fermented are perfectly legal to produce.

Homemade Watermelon Moonshine Ingredients

This watermelon wine recipe is set up to make 1 gallon of wine, however, you can click on the 5x box for the 5 gallon watermelon wine recipe version.

Watermelon: Watermelon has been used to treat various ailments, such as cardiovascular diseases, aging related ailments, obesity, diabetes, ulcers, and various types of cancers.
Grapes: Grapes possess antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic activities and have wide applications in food and nutraceutical industries. Use of grape extracts rich in these bioactive compounds are linked to reduced incidence of cardiovascular disease and hypertension. A few studies have shown that feeding grapes to chickens resulted in improved nutritional value in chicken meat after harvest, due to the increase in the polyunsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids ratio, and extended shelf-life due to improvement in the oxidative stability. Another study showed improvements in the nutritional properties of milk from dairy cows fed grapes.
Lemons: Lemons are a great source of A study done in mice found that mice who were regularly fed lemon polyphenol (found in lemon juice and lemon peels), showed less signs of aging including less age-related hair loss, better activity in advanced age, improved cognitive function in advanced age, better intestinal microbiome in advanced age, and a longer lifespan.
Honey: Local honey is great, but you can also buy honey from a big box store. Honey will supply the nutrient and sugar for the yeast to ferment. You’ll need about 3 pounds of honey per gallon of watermelon wine.
Yeast: For higher alcohol content, use wine or champagne yeast.
Yeast Nutrient: Yeast nutrient is an optional ingredient, but it will give the yeast a better environment for fermentation.
Potassium Sorbate (optional): Used to stabilize wine for backsweetening.
Campden Tablets (optional): Also used to help stabilize wine for backsweetening.
Peptic Enzyme: Breaks down natural fruit pectin, preventing the wine from being thick and prevents haze in the final product.

Equipment Needed to Make Watermelon Wine

1 gallon carboy (Amazon Affiliate Link), 5 gallon carboy, or glass jar with fermenting airlock lid (Amazon Affiliate Link)
Siphon (Amazon Affiliate Link)
Flip top bottles (Amazon Affiliate Link), this is not needed until after 5-6 weeks of fermenting

How to Make Watermelon Moonshine

The first step in making watermelon wine is to dilute the honey in a cup or two of water. Warm up the water to almost boiling, turn off the heat, add the honey and stir. (To enhance the flavor of the wine, you could use the remaining watermelon juice after using this watermelon slicer (Amazon affiliate)).
While the water is heating up, cut the rind off of the watermelon and dice it into one-inch cubes. Tip: use this watermelon slicer (Amazon affiliate), it makes cutting up watermelon much easier and less messy. You’ll want to remove most of the seeds, and put melon and any free juice in the primary fermenter.
Thinly grate the yellow of two lemons, juice the lemons, and add the juice and zest (gratings) to the primary fermenting bucket.
In a separate bowl, wash, destem, and crush the grapes. Then add the grapes and grape juice to the primary fermenter.
Crush a Campden tablet and add it to the primary fermenter.
Once the diluted honey has cooled to below 90 degrees Farenheit, add the diluted honey to the primary fermenter.
Add enough water to top off to 1 gallon (not much, if any).
Cover the primary fermenter with a cloth, and wait 12 hours before adding pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient.
After an additional 12 hours add the wine yeast.
Cover with airlock and ferment 5 days, stirring daily.
Transfer the wine into secondary carboy and fit airlock. Ferment another 30 days.
On day 37 transfer the wine into another carboy, refit airlock, and ferment another 30 days.
On day 67, if the wine is clear you may backsweeten if desired and bottle. If the wine is cloudy and has sediment, rack it into another carboy and wait for another 30 days.

How to Backsweeten Watermelon Wine

If you wish to backsweeten the watermelon wine, you must first rack the wine into a new carboy (this will prevent stirring up any possible sediment). Add the potassium sorbate, and let it sit for 24 hours. The next day, prepare additional honey by diluting it in a glass of your new wine (don’t use water). Siphon 1.25 ounces (37 mL) of wine into a tasting shotglass (Amazon affiliate link), and add a few drops of honey (keep track). Stir well and taste. Refill the empty glass and repeat this process until the desired taste. Count up the drops of honey mixture, and multiply by 5. This is how much of your diluted honey mix in mL to add to your gallon of wine. (Example: If your desired taste took 5 drops of the honey mix, you would add 25 mL of the honey mix per gallon of wine, or 50 mL for 2 gallons of wine.) Stir well, and do a final taste test, bottle, and age one year.