Adding water during fermentation

[Kevin baugher]

Newbie to wine making here. I have several batches of strawberry and other blackberry wines mixing. I always seem to have much less than the recipes call for in terms of volume. For example, my strawberry wine was a 3 gallon recipe and after the second rack I have 2 1/4 gallons . Should I add water to the wine to make up for losses of volume or not? How do I tell?

 

[IslandLizard]

Welcome to our forums!

No, don't add water. By adding water you'd be diluting your wine. That's counterproductive.
When making wine (or mead, cider, beer, etc.) there are always losses in the process.

For example, you have less volume due to racking, some wine is left behind with the lees.
Also, everytime you take a sample for reading gravity, that wine is lost from your batch. You can drink it, though, it's quality control.

Now, can you tell us where exactly those missing 3/4 gallon went? That's quite a large volume of wine to get lost.