Red Tart Cherry Wine

Hello HBTers!

So today I have pitched yeast (Lalvin 71b-1122) into cherry juice to make my first wine and I have a few questions for our members.

The juice I used I got from Trader Joe's- it's red tart cherry juice, not from concentrate, 100% cherry juice, no preservatives.

I was wondering about the nutrition of cherry juice for yeast. Is there a need to add any nutrients for cherry wine? I have some Wyeast that is called "beer yeast nutrient." Now, this is saccharomyces cerevisiae I am using for this wine here, so I am assuming the "beer yeast nutrient" would be okay, is that safe to assume?

Also, I was wondering how fermentable cherry juice is. I did not add anything to the juice other than the yeast, and afterword I took a gravity reading on an extra bottle I bought and was surprised by the seemingly low gravity of it at 1.040. I know for apple juice the FG can dip below 1.000, is this true for cherry juice? Even if it does, the abv would come out on the low side, I would really like this to finish at at least ~11% or so, but ideally 13% would be nice.

So it seems I should add some extra sugar. Since the juice was very tart to begin with, I do plan on back-sweetening the finished product.

I used 2.75 gallons of juice. Could anyone recommend to me how much sugar I should add to achieve at least 11% abv for my finished product?

Thanks so much! I hope I didn't do anything to drastically wrong here...

Cheers!

to get right around 12% you need your starting SG reading at 70 degrees to be 1.090 and let it ferment to 1.000

You need to pull a sample, known size, say a cup into your beaker. Once you do so take the sg reeding, start adding sugar by the teaspoon full till it hits 1.090

So if it took lets say 5 teaspons in a cup to hit 1.090 and theres 16 cups in a gallon

you would need 80 teaspoons in a gallon or 400 teaspoons in 5 gallons.

Theres 48 teaspoons in 1 cup

400/48 = 8 1/3 cups of sugar in five gallons
80/48 = 1 2/3 cups of sugar in a gallon


NOW... those are not the actual numbers you need, you will need to do your own sample, find what it takes and do your own math.

Cool, makes sense- thanks!
I did end up adding a bit of nutrient as well.