Mango Wine Recipe - Celebration Generation (2024)

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When we first started making wine, the first few batches had to rely on recipes we found online.

It didn’t take long before we figured things out on our own, and started coming up with our very own recipes.

This wine is not only one of the very first recipes we created, it’s one of our absolute favorite wines to drink, and also one of the cheapest/easiest to make. In other words, a damn fine foot to start out on!

This wine starts out very orange, thick, and pulpy. It won’t look anything like wine for a few months, as the pulp and yeast slowly settle.

When all is said and done, you will be left with a crystal clear, pale, straw colored wine. Sweet, fruity, delicious wine that goes down a little too well... and costs only $1-2/bottle!

Another nice thing about this wine is that it is very good when “young”.

Unlike many recipes, this one is tasty and ready to drink in only about 4-5 months! Age it if you like - we haven’t been able to keep any long enough to see how it ages!

The ABV on this comes out to about 15-16%.

How to Make Mango Wine

If you haven't attempted making wine before, don't be intimidated! Check out our primer to home brewing:

- Wine Making At Home, Part 1: Why?

- Wine Making at Home, Part 2: Equipment to Get Started

- Wine Making at Home, Part 3: The Brewing Process.

- Wine Making at Home, Part 4: How to Stabilize and Back Sweeten Wine

Just a small handful of entries, and you'll be good to go!

Mango Pulp Wine Ingredients

This wine recipe requires only a few ingredients to make - super simple! Here is some information about those base ingredients that you may find helpful.

Mango Pulp

Due to the seasonality and variable quality / availability of mangoes when we wrote this recipe, we designed the recipe to use canned mango pulp, rather than ripe mangos.

We use canned sweetened mango pulp as the basis for both this wine, and for our Homemade Mango Strawberry Wine Recipe. Some thoughts on that:

Flavour

Canned mango pulp is super flavourful, and really just delightful. Fresh mangoes are also super flavourful - though more work, more on that in a minute - but frozen mangoes were another option we’d considered.

Frozen mangoes don’t necessarily seem to be made from mangoes at peak ripeness, and I find their flavour and sweetness to be lacking.

Consistency

Mangos can vary wildly in size, flavour, sugar content, ripeness, and more... but buying a can of mango pulp takes all those variables out of the equation.

One can of mango pulp is fairly indistinguishable from the next can of the same brand, and that’s handy when it comes to making future batches of a wine you like.

While your fermentation may vary the final ABV, etc... the general flavour and outcome should be pretty similar between batches.

Convenience

Opening a can of mango pulp and dumping it into the mix is a whole lot easier than peeling, pitting, and chopping ripe mangos.

... not to mention the hassle of looking for the perfectly ripe mangos, before even getting to that point! We like to keep a few cans of pulp on hand for whenever a mango craving hits - it’s great for making things like Mango Lassi Popsicles or Mango Mojito Ice Cream, after all!

Price

A can of mango pulp usually costs around $3.. While the mangos that would be needed to make the same amount of pulp would cost several times that amount.

When you add in the labour savings AND the bonus of consistency... canned mango is a no-brainer, IMHO.

When we first created this recipe, we were still living in the USA. At the time, Swad Kesar Sweetened Mango Pulp was our default, as it was readily available in our local grocer’s international foods aisle for about $3/ can. It’s also available at Indian grocery shops and online.

Now that we’ve moved, the brand that we see more often locally - Quality Alphono Mango Pulp - is the one we tend to default to. Both taste great and work well, so go with what you have access to!

There are probably other brands out there - if it’s in the 800-850 g range and is sweetened, you’re good to go.

Sugar

While sugar is technically optional when making wine, NOT adding any sugar will result in an INCREDIBLY dry wine.

When you’re making wine from mango - much like with any other light coloured, non-grape fruit - you’ll want it to have at least some residual sweetness to it, or it just won’t taste like much. The sugar helps to bring out the mango flavour!

Sugar is an important part of wine making, and there are a few aspects of sugar to keep in mind:

Type of Sugar

In terms of type of sugar, we prefer to use plain white granulated sugar for this wine. I find that any of the brown sugars overwhelm the flavour of the mango pulp.

How to Make Mango Mead

If you’d like to make a mead rather than a wine, you can swap the sugar out for honey. We’ll usually use 4-5 lbs of honey for this.

A couple notes:

- I say “Mango Mead”, as that’s what most people would understand... but mead with fruit is technically called “melomel”.
So, swapping sugar out in favour of honey would give you a mango melomel. The more you know!

- When you’re using honey instead of sugar, you’re going to want to be careful in your choice of honey. Where white sugar is fairly neutral in flavour, honey can be aggressively flavoured.

I recommend picking something lightly coloured and lightly flavoured - a clover or orange blossom honey, for instance.

Something like a wildflower or buckwheat honey is likely to completely overwhelm the flavour from the mango pulp.

Alcohol Content

Aside from flavour, there’s the matter of alcohol content.

Your wine’s final ABV will vary wildly dependent on a few things: The initial sugar content of the mango pulp you use, how much sugar you add, and what kind of yeast you use (more on that in a bit)

Any amount of sugar will result in a higher alcohol content than making the same wine without sugar added. Sugar - both in the base wine itself, and from the added sugars - is what feeds the yeast, the yeast eats up the sugars and gives off alcohol as the byproduct of that process.

More sugar = more food = more alcohol... to a point, anyway. About that...

Yeast

The type of yeast you use will impact the alcohol content of the final product.

Yeast organisms don’t have an *unlimited* capacity to process sugar into alcohol. At some point, the environment they’re living in - the brewing wine - becomes too high in alcohol for the yeast to survive. They die off, the fermentation stops.

Different types of yeast have different tolerances for alcohol in the environment. That is, some yeast will be able to survive higher amounts of alcohol in the wine, so they’ll continue producing it longer than some other types.

Some types of yeast will bring you to something like an 8% ABV, while others will let things run wild until close to 20% ABV.

It’s good to know what you have in mind, when you choose your yeast.

Note: I’m going to refrain from using brand names in this section, as what’s available varies wildly between suppliers and regions! Ask your local homebrew supply shop for recommendations based on what you’re looking for.

If you want a sweet wine with a low-ish ABV - without having to back sweeten it (more on that in a bit) - choose a yeast with a lower tolerance for alcohol.

If you’re looking for a dry wine with a low ABV, choose a yeast with a lower tolerance for alcohol, and don’t use a ton of sugar.

If you want a sweet wine with a high ABV, use a bunch of sugar with a high-tolerance yeast... and be prepared to backsweeten it.

If you want a dry wine with a high ABV, use a fair amount of sugar and a high tolerance yeast.

Making Larger Batches of Wine

As a note, you can easily scale this wine recipe up - in fact, there's a function inside the recipe card itself to do the math for you!

One note, though: You don't need to multiply the yeast, but the software doesn't know that. We will use one pouch of yeast for anything from 1-5x batches, and then 1 pouch for every 5x batches beyond that.

As a related note: The recipe software is definitely geared towards cooking, not wine making. Therefore, you can pretty much ignore all of the info it gives you: The nutritional info is calculated on everything that goes into the wine.

It does not take into account how much sugar will be fermented out, how much volume is lost to racking, the fact that the fruit pulp is removed before the final product, etc.

Back Sweetening Your Homemade Mango Wine

Sometimes - usually, even - you’ll find that the yeast went a bit too far with their smorgasbord, and you end up with a wine that’s not as sweet as you’d like it.

... and that’s when you back sweeten it! You can read my How to Stabilize and Back Sweeten Wine post for information on how to back sweeten it.

How to Make Sparkling Mango Pulp Wine

As I’d mentioned earlier, mango pulp wine is especially nice as a bubbly beverage. There are two main ways to accomplish this, both of which happen AFTER fermentation has ceased.

Note: Consult your local homebrew store for what your options are when it comes to bottling sparkling wine. As this ferments a bit in the bottle, normal wine bottles aren’t a good idea - they can explode from the extra pressure.

We’ll usually use beer bottle and caps for any sparkling wine or sparkling ciders that we make, but there are options more along the lines of champagne bottles. Selection and brands tend to vary wildly by location.

Anyway!

For Naturally Carbonated Sparkling Wine

In a small pot, mix together 1 cup of water with 1 cup of granulated sugar. Use a sanitized funnel to pour this into a sanitized large carboy.

Rack the wine over into this carboy, swirling it as you go.

Bottle the wine into appropriate bottles, following directions for whatever kind of cap/closure you will be using.

Allow wine to age at least a month or two – residual yeast will ferment the added sugar, carbonating the wine. Serve chilled.

For Force-Carbonated Sparkling Wine

Alternatively, you can rack the wine (without the added sugar syrup!) into a keg and force carbonate it, if you have the set up for that - That’s what we tend to do with our ciders.

More Home Brewing Recipes!

While you've got your current homebrew fermenting away, why not consider putting a batch of something else on, to occupy your wait time? Here are a few of my other wine, cider, and mead recipes:

Wine Recipes

Banana Wine Recipe
Blackberry Wine Recipe
Blackcurrant Wine Recipe
Blueberry Wine Recipe
Cherry Wine Recipe
Cranberry Clementine Christmas Wine Recipe
Cranberry Wine Recipe
Faux Lingonberry Wine
Lychee Wine Recipe
Mango Strawberry Wine Recipe
Mint Wine Recipe
Lychee Wine Recipe
Partridgeberry Wine Recipe
Passionfruit Wine Recipe
Peach Wine Recipe
Stone Fruit Wine Recipe
Strawberry Wine Recipe
Ube Wine Recipe
Watermelon Wine Recipe

Mead Recipes

Black Cherry Mead Recipe
Blueberry-Clementine Mead Recipe
Blueberry Mead Recipe
Clementine Mead Recipe
Pumpkin Mead Recipe
Wildflower Mead Recipe

Cider & Miscellaneous Homebrew Recipes

Hard Apple Cider Recipe
Home Brew Hard Iced Tea Recipe
Maple Hard Apple Cider Recipe

Share the Love!

Before you drink up, be sure to take some pics of your handiwork! If you Instagram it, be sure to tag me - @CelebrationGenerationCA - or post it to My Facebook Page - so I can cheer you on!

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Well, the published nonsense, anyway!

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