Help for a Newbie Special Tomato Wine

Hello,

I am relatively new to brewing but I have made some simple wines and beers with a little success, now I'm going to attempt something a little harder.

I was hoping for some advice. I am going to try a tomato wine, but with a new hybrid of tomato. It's called "sun sugar" and these cherry tomatoes are sweeter than grapes. They're orange in color, and don't have very much acid either.

Here's a link http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/vegetables/sun_sugar_tomato.htm

I can not overstate how sweet these are, and I am hoping for a nice carbonated dessert wine for late summer evenings.

I was hoping someone might have advice about primary fermentation and when to rack.

Wine is wine for the most part. Following most of the wine recipes should work for your wine.

Your tomatoes may be "sweeter" than grapes but also may have too much acid. Once that sweetness is fermented you may be left with a very acidic wine. I say may, because I am not familiar with those tomatoes.

Your best bet is to extract as much juice from them as possible, measure both the BRIX (sugar content) and TA (titratable acid). If the acid is too high then you'll need to dilute with water.

Of course that will dilute the sugar level also so you'll need to add sugar to bring the BRIX back into wine Territory.

Check out Jack Keller's Getting Started page.

Then take a look at some of his Tomato Wine Recipes.

10-11 Brix scale sugar content.
~4.5pH

So yeah, a lot of sugar and relatively low acid content...

Buckshott00 said:

10-11 Brix scale sugar content.

Click to expand...

OH, well that's about half the BRIX of a wine grape. So you'll still need to add sugar to get to 20-22 BRIX.

Yup, I was thinking about 2lbs of granulated white sugar or light brown sugar, (1gal batch size) but I was worried about how the pH would effect it. I mean wine grapes have a pH in the 3.4 range give the pH scale that means they're 100x more acidic than these tomatoes.

Do I still need to add an acid blend? Do I still need an campden tablet? There won't be any stems because tomatoes are related to nightshade, but should I leave the skins in?

if you pour hot sugar water over your tomato juice you shouldnt need to add a campden tablet just make sure you add the yeast as fast as possible(when it cools down enough)

Let us know how this turns out I have a recipe for fresh tomato it says 1 1/2 pound sugar per gallon and 3 1/2 to 4 pounds tomatoes. it also calls for 2 1/2 tsp acid blend powder...

Im so scared to do a tomato wine you are brave....

Thanks Honda, I tried these delicious little things which are perfect for Northern MI (very quick mature, very hardy fruit) and knew I had to try I think fool hardy is probably the case.

I'm thinking bottle condition with honey?

probably wouldnt be a bad idea, if I were doing it Id probably use montrachet and set the alcohol at 12% but thats just me