How to write a UTF-8 file with Java?

Instead of using FileWriter, create a FileOutputStream. You can then wrap this in an OutputStreamWriter, which allows you to pass an encoding in the constructor. Then you can write your data to that inside a try-with-resources Statement:

try (OutputStreamWriter writer =
             new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(PROPERTIES_FILE), StandardCharsets.UTF_8))
    // do stuff
}