pomegranate wine

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maenad

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Apologies if someone has written about this - I can't find exactly what I need.

I have just acquired 3 litres of pure, freshly squeezed, pomegranate juice (with a few bits in it, but none of the white pith stuff.) I want to make it into wine.

I have a half-litre of grape juice concentrate in the house, and some dried elderberries, plus sugar of course. I have the usual basic wine-making equipment except I do not have a hydrometer. (I can access one three days later, by which time the juice will have started to go off.)

And I live in Istanbul so please don't recommend I pop down to Tesco's. :)

If anyone can post me a link to a suitable recipe, or tell me one, I'd be very grateful!
 
Hi maenad. Sorry, I don't have a recipe and you don't yet have an hydrometer so this is going to be a bit like flying by the seat of your pants. Let's assume that your juice will give you a gravity reading of about 1.050 (could be 10 points lower or higher). I would add a scant 1/2 kg of sugar and your yeast. This will give you a likely gravity of about 1.090 - 1.100 or close to a potential ABV of about 12 -13%. You could add the grape juice.. your call and you may want (later - just before you bottle) to see if the wine needs any additional tartness (say lemon juice?) to give it more zing. Pomegranate is fairly acidic so you may want to allow this to ferment dry (1.000 or less) and then back sweeten either with sugar or some concentrated pomegranate juice (freeze or heat the juice to remove about half or more of the water). Before you back sweeten you need to stabilize the wine - and that is usually done with the addition of K-meta and K-sorbate. How easy they are to find in Turkey I do not know.
What yeast will you be using? Can you get hold of 71B? Or are you likely to be using bread yeast?
I have made pomegranate wine using commercially pressed pomegranate juice here in the US and I have had commercially made pomegranate wine and your wine is likely to be every bit as good as the commercial wine.
 
Looks like the use of barley was a modification from the time when people added a slice of bread to act as nutrient for the yeast. Not entirely sure that pomegranate needs nutrient and if it does what the value of adding barley is... but hey... if you need a recipe to follow...
 
Looks like the use of barley was a modification from the time when people added a slice of bread to act as nutrient for the yeast. Not entirely sure that pomegranate needs nutrient and if it does what the value of adding barley is... but hey... if you need a recipe to follow...

Yes, I think it would have to do with low acidity. I looked around for recipe and each one I saw had "barley" in it. Yeast nutrient might do, but I know that in most grocery stores there is barley, not yeast nutrient.

I used to be a kind of "hobo" brewer, and everything worked out with the simple recipe of one quart canning jar of fruit mash (or juice), 1 quart canning jar of sugar, and a packet of yeast per gallon of water. I always got decent tasting wine.
 
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