welches wine FAIL

Hey every one, well I'll cut to it! i was making a 2 gallon batch frozen welches wine. half way threw i notice oh shoot. this is grape juice cocktail not 100% juice.

Here's what I did I used 3 cans frozen welches grape cocktail 4 cups of sugar and red wine yeast. here's another problem i wasn't thinking and filled the juice cans with tap water to rinse the remains of juice back into the fermenter! Help me guys this is one experiment gone horribly horribly wrong!

redstar89 said:

Hey every one, well I'll cut to it! i was making a 2 gallon batch frozen welches wine. half way threw i notice oh shoot. this is grape juice cocktail not 100% juice.

Here's what I did I used 3 cans frozen welches grape cocktail 4 cups of sugar and red wine yeast. here's another problem i wasn't thinking and filled the juice cans with tap water to rinse the remains of juice back into the fermenter! Help me guys this is one experiment gone horribly horribly wrong!

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What's wrong with it? Does it taste really bad, or what's going on?

I use tap water for every wine of my wines. I assume most every body does, unless they get their water from a sewage treatment plant or something. Is your water terrible tasting?

Hello, thank you for your reply. The issue is using the cocktail will it screw it up? Also the potential alcohol is only at 10% " I don't care about that to much" but here is some additional details. Its in a new Mr.beer keg. I used generic one step for sanitizing.

redstar89 said:

Hello, thank you for your reply. The issue is using the cocktail will it screw it up? Also the potential alcohol is only at 10% " I don't care about that to much" but here is some additional details. Its in a new Mr.beer keg. I used generic one step for sanitizing.

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Instead of "potential alcohol", it's easier and more customary to use the "specific gravity scale". What does that say? It's next to the PA scale, but I don't have a hydrometer with me right now so I can't see the correlation.

The cocktail will not really "screw it up" in the sense the wine will be ruined. But it won't taste as good as if you would have used 100% juice. It will be thinner and have less of a "wine" taste and more of an alcohol taste.

The wine should finish very tart and dry, but it can be stabilized and sweetened later on and that can help alot.

Thank you very much! I greatly appreciate it. How should i bottle this one think the Mr.beer tap would be "safe" to use?

redstar89 said:

Thank you very much! I greatly appreciate it. How should i bottle this one think the Mr.beer tap would be "safe" to use?

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I don't know. I've never used it. I think if it has a tube or something that can gently put the wine in the bottle without any oxygen, it could work.

but you're about 4 months away from bottling, so don't worry about that now!

I would consider more practical matters, like getting the wine out of the fermenter by siphoning and getting it off of the lees. (that sediment in there that will get thicker as the wine finishes up).

There are many people who use the cocktail juices, though most try to work with 100% juice. I think you will be fine. Worse case scenario use it to blend with future wines or make sangria or mulled wine.
If the 10% ACV (1.076) is not high enough, if your wine is still fermenting (what is S.G. reading 1.0_ _?), you can add more sugar. One cup sugar per gallon will increase S.G. by 0.020.
If you end up backsweetening consider using 100% red grape juice concentrate from freezer section.
Have fun, no worries. FWIW I use tap water too!!

I make wine from grape concentrate quite a bit. I started out adding the sugar in the beginning but lately I have had success adding it after. I sometimes have to add more concentrate to get it tasting right.