Fermenting pomegranate juice

Not sure if im posting in the right thread. So I usually brew beer, but I went to the store and found one of those $16 bottles of pomegranate juice for $6. So I wanna ferment it. Any suggestions. I bought champagne yeast and figured I'd add some sugar. It's a quart jar and I figured I would add enough water to make it a gallon batch. How much sugar? Use the whole packet of yeast? Yeast nutrient or energizer? Boil? Any help would be appreciated.

Sounds like i'd work to me, work out the kinks on the second try.
I don't have any knowledge of that juice and fermentation of it, so let me know how it works out. Best of luck!

I do a lot of 1 gallon batches of store bought juice. I don't dilute the juice with water. I usually just add sugar to bring it up to a starting gravity of 1.090. I use a whole pack or 1/2 pack (if I'm starting 2 batches) of yeast and I don't usually use yeast nutrient. One of my favorites is a Blueberry/Grape/Pomegranate blend.

Thats real cool, im new to home brewing, it sounded interesting and alot more fun then spending money in store bought alcohol.
What is gravity? Whats the deal on that, and how do you measure it?

Specific gravity is a measure of sugars dissolved in the wort and the remaining sugars and alcohol after fermentation.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Specific_gravity

It can be measured with a hydrometer.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Hydrometer

Here is a great site for learning to make beer...
http://howtobrew.com/

and one for winemaking...
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp

Look at the label. Most store bought juices contain potassium sorbate. This inhibites yeast reproduction.

Search on this thread, there are methods to overcome the sorbate.

If you want to continue on making wine, buy a hydrometer. This measures the specific gravity of your sugary liquid. Water measures 1.000, when you add sugar, the specific gravity is above 1.000. 1.090 will give you ~12%.

Welp. I did water it down by 1/2. I dissolved 1 lb of table sugar and about 1 lb of honey. Hydrometer read 1.140. Should be a beast. Used a little yeast energizer. Hope to see some bubble action in the morning.

Oh my...

It's odd that this just came up. I had an experience with POM juice that turned out awful! Here's the story:

I got two 1.4L bottles of POM pomegranate juice that I was going to use for a one gallon recipe. I combined that with enough sugar and water to make it up to 10%, trying to make a wine suitable for SWMBO, and the required amount of nutrients and what not. I used Lalvin KV1-1116 to bring out the fruit flavors, and let it ferment to dryness.

I bottled a few months ago, after one racking and cold crashing. I used only 375 ml bottles, as they were to be hers. I opened up one a few days ago out of curiosity, and jeez! It was like some form of cruel and unusual punishment. It was terrible, and quite possibly the worst wine I have ever tasted in my life. It was beyond tart, and could have used some back sweetening. I'm debating whether to throw it out and reclaim my bottles, but I'm going to let it ride just a little longer to see what happens.

It probably should be blended with something to bring down the pomegranate flavor. Hopefully yours will turn out better than mine.

Ha ha ha ha. That sounds promising. Ug.

Call it concentrated wine. Add water or fruit juice concentrate untill drinkable, to each glass as you drink. After all "make it your way, or custom blending" are in style trends! You saved on bottles making the wine so consentrated. Sometimes the bottles are the most expensive part of wine making!

I suppose I could do that. It's super concentrated for sure! I probably have a full bottle of wine for each 375ml bottle!

If you are still interested in making it, post tour recipe, I might be able to make some suggestions.

Bloop. Bloop. Bloop. Tis bubbling away.

WOOOO!!! Strong. but good...

strong as in, "I've been beat with a bat", or strong as in "OMG POMOGRANATE!!"

Strong as in, it's very alcoholic. I watered the pomagranite juice down a little bit, so it would be less tart. It tastes pretty good though for not really trying hard. Gonna let it sit until Christmas. Excited to try it then.

novalou said:

Look at the label. Most store bought juices contain potassium sorbate. This inhibites yeast reproduction.

Search on this thread, there are methods to overcome the sorbate.

If you want to continue on making wine, buy a hydrometer. This measures the specific gravity of your sugary liquid. Water measures 1.000, when you add sugar, the specific gravity is above 1.000. 1.090 will give you ~12%.

Click to expand...

+1

Also, POM juice is extremely tart! Consider diluting it with another juice or something of the sort

Eh. I was kinda wanting it to be over the top. It was just an experiment. I'm actually making most of the bottles carbonated. Should be fun.

MedicMang said:

Eh. I was kinda wanting it to be over the top. It was just an experiment. I'm actually making most of the bottles carbonated. Should be fun.

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Just be careful, pomegranate in French is grenade, could have bottle bombs

jensmith said:

Call it concentrated wine. Add water or fruit juice concentrate untill drinkable, to each glass as you drink. After all "make it your way, or custom blending" are in style trends! You saved on bottles making the wine so consentrated. Sometimes the bottles are the most expensive part of wine making!

Click to expand...

Or make a blueberry wie and blend them. This could be a great blending ingredient even if you never drink it straight. Since you don't wish to pry your face out of the back of your head... :-D

I made a cranberry pomegranate mead and a Pom cran cyser both came out quite sweet but really good.

Well the carbonating didn't go as planned. It's been bottled for quite some time now (probably 3 weeks or more). I used some carb tablets. It said for light carb use 3, for mid use 4, and high use five. I ended up with only 5 bottles of this. So one is still, one has 3 tablets, one has 4 tablets, and two have 5 tablets. So yesterday I was all excited to try my sparking wine and blah. Tastes like straight sugar. Yuck. I like my wine dry, so it was extra horrible. But ya, NO carbonation. I did let the wine sit in the carboy forever, so did all of the yeast fall out? Maybe they are dead? I don't know. Either way, it doesn't seem that I'm going to enjoy them as much now that I basically just added sugar to it for no reason except to make it taste bad.

MedicMang...had you treated this with k-meta plus sorbate prior to adding the carb tabs? What temperature are you storing at?

I typically use three tabs for every 12 oz, store at room temp for 5-7 days and have successful carbonation. I found that two tabs per 12-ounce bottle provide low carbonation, three tablets provide moderate carbonation, four tablets provide typical carbonation and five tablets provide a high carbonation level. I do not recall where I read about how many tabs to use, for how much carbonation...but it sounds like the same dosage that your refer to.

No k-meta or the other thing you mentioned. What are those? I'm storing at about 68. In terms of the carb tablet dosages, they were on the package. I'm thinking that there was just not enough yeast in suspension to properly carbonate.

MedicMang said:

No k-meta or the other thing you mentioned. What are those? I'm storing at about 68. In terms of the carb tablet dosages, they were on the package. I'm thinking that there was just not enough yeast in suspension to properly carbonate.

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Assuming you are asking what potassium sorbate is? I will provide a link to a glossary of winemaking terms, that way you can read up. Http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/glossary.asp