New experiments ; dry mixed berry and sparkling mango pinapple

I have enough juice to run a couple 1 gallon experiments. I also have a couple packs of kv1116.

Anyone tried a mango- pineapple sparkling wine?

Any experience with a mixed berry? Would this be nice dry, or do you think it should be sweet?

Is Kv1116 a good choice?

Bluespark said:

Anyone tried a mango- pineapple sparkling wine?

Any experience with a mixed berry? Would this be nice dry, or do you think it should be sweet?

Is Kv1116 a good choice?

Click to expand...

I have not made sparkling mango pineapple, but I have made a still version. Quite nice.

Mixed berry works as a still wine or sparkling. I personally think country wines need to be off-dry as this brings out the berry & I like sweet wines, and appreciate a good dry wine. But it really is personal preference. Just remember an off-dry but sparkling version can be a challenge for many, because you get into sweetening with unfermentable or bottle pasteurizing, etc.

K1-V1116 is great for fruity wines, especially fruity whites. I think it would be quite nice for mango-pineapple or berry.
It is a yeast that loves the low temp, with a wide range of 10-35C(50-95F). I have great success building a fruity profile when fermenting in lower range, and find a warmer ferment loses much of the fruityness. I usually start at a must temp of 65-70 and drop to 55F to ferment the first 2/3, and then drop to 50F to complete and bulk aging. It is a low to no foamer, does not kick out alot of H2S...but...you do want to maintain nutrient balance and oxygenation during early phase of ferment; means you keep must in open fermenter until OG has dropped by 2/3 and then transfer to carboy/airlock. You should stir twice a day while in open fermenter/primary and definitely use a staggered nutrient protocol. It is not a rapid fermenter, falls into moderate category, so you can anticipate the 2/3 sugar break by Day5 if you are at 70F--at least all of mine have fermented at that rate.

So, do you have a recipe for either?

...Sara

Thanks for all the info

I just threw them together. Recipes are:

Pineapple mango
2 litres pineapple juice
2 litres mango juice
Energizer and nutrient
1 cup brown sugar
Kv1116.

SG 1.07

Mixed berry
1 gallon mixed berry juice.
Energizer and nutrient
1.5 cups sugar
Kv1116

SG also 1.07

I will let them both dry out and clear. Then back sweeten and carbonate the mango pineapple.

Haven't used the mango, because they are crappy here in MS, but I make Pineapple
wine every third 5 gallons I make. I used canned Mandarin oranges, in it, a while back and it turned out excellent. The one thing about Pineapple Wine, that I have found, is that you don't want it to sit on heavy lees for too long. My max is 5 days then I rack it. I backsweeten when I rack, because I like semi-sweet country wines, but I am drinking a nice dry elderberry wine, as we speak that I really didn't think I would like. Turns out...it turned out.

Thanks for all the info. the more I think about it the more I think I'll keep the berry semi sweet.

Currently they are bubbling like crazy and smelling amazing