Question about apple wine/cider

Dan2276 said:

Hello all,

Thanks for entertaining this newbie question in advance. I picked apples from my back yard, juiced them, and have started the fermentation process.

I only got about 3 gallons of must. My thought is to torn this into apple wine, and then add more non hard cider to to bring the alcohol level to about 5-6 percent, as a way to stretch the batch. It seems this is what Crispin does. Any thoughts as to the viability of this?

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gratus fermentatio said:

Well, sure, you could do that; I'm not sure why you'd want to though. Seems like you'd be adding an extra step where you don't need one. If you're going to add more juice/sweet cider to your must, why not just ferment it all in one shot?

Depending on the sugar content of your apples, you should only get about 5% without any added sugar. Use an ale yeast & it should ferment out dry, with plenty of apple flavour. You can always boost the sugar content & thereby the ABV with added sugar in various forms if you want, a lot of us do.

If you were actually wanting to backsweeten, you'll have to either use a nonfermentable sweetener or pasteurize once carb has been reached; or keep it still.
Regards, GF.

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