Rhubarb wine. Too much sugar, too little fruit... can it be saved?

[willy88]

Hello,

I'm new to this and I'm not sure if I've messed this up already. My aim was to make rhubarb wine from rhubarb we have at the allotment. I wanted to split the batch to make some non-sparkling and some sparkling. I was aiming for 5 gallons.

I probably didn't look into this as much as I should have before starting, but did look at various recipes and videos online. Maybe there was a bit of a misunderstanding.

I used 5kg of rhubarb, 6 kg of sugar, handful of raisins and the juice of an orange. I didn't add any water at this stage. The rhubarb had been frozen beforehand.

I left this for 3 days and yesterday evening strained the fruit to get the juice. I got about 5.5 litres of juice from the rhubarb and there was a load of undissolved sugar at the bottom. I added water to this to dissolve it and brought the level up to 10 litres. I left this to cool overnight. At this point it's in a bucket and I haven't done anything else to it.

Reading things online it seems that this was either too much sugar or not enough fruit for the amount I was aiming for. To be honest, I think I've ended up confusing a bit with all this. What should not my next step be and is there any way this can be saved?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi willy88 - and welcome.
I cannot say what you SHOULD do but this is what I see: you want a gravity to be around 1.090 for a wine. Six kg of sugar is 13 lbs and 13 lbs of sugar dissolved in water to make 2.5 gallons will have a gravity of (13/2.5 = 5.2 * .040 = 1.208 and that is about 2.3 times that gravity. That is sooooo high that it suggests that no yeast will be able to ferment anything, but you say that there is a great deal of undissolved sugar. Measure the gravity. If it is something like 1. 120 then you might simply pour the liquid off the sugar and get ready to pitch the yeast. If it is any higher, I would monitor the gravity (density) of the liquid while adding water to bring the gravity down towards 1.100.

When you add water , you are going to dilute not only the concentration of sugar but the flavors from the rhubarb. You could perhaps add another 4 Liters before the rhubarb flavors begin to thin but assuming that all the sugar is dissolved (and I know you are saying that that is not the case , but I am looking at the worst case scenario) then the gravity would be 13/3.5 = 3.7 lbs/gallon and that gives a gravity of 1.148 which is still in the stratosphere.

But for the next time, rather than follow recipes that may or may not have been written by folk who have little idea what they are doing (and as with all vanity publishing, those who self publish self publish and their qualifications may be zero) you want to basically start with about 2 kg of fruit / 4 L of liquid and add enough sugar to raise the gravity to about 1.090. Personally, I try to use as little water as I can and as much fruit as I can but I like my wines to taste of fruit rather than water. But many country wine makers tend to use 3 or 4 lbs of fruit per US gallon.
Good luck.

 

[willy88]

Hello Bernard,

Many thanks for your reply - it was very helpful and insightful, and I do appreciate it hugely.

At the moment, the specific gravity is 1.170, so although terrible it is sounds like I might be able to get something out of it.

If I were to add water to bring the specific gravity down to a more reasonable number, would I need to do anything to offset the dilution of the acidity? Rhubarb is pretty acidic anyway, or should I not worry about this at this stage?

Many thanks again.

 

[madscientist451]

Hello,



I used 5kg of rhubarb, 6 kg of sugar, handful of raisins and the juice of an orange. I didn't add any water at this stage. The rhubarb had been frozen beforehand.

What should not my next step be and is there any way this can be saved?

Many thanks in advance.

Can you get more rhubarb? If you can, chop it up and freeze it.
You'll need it later.
My experience with making wines with just sugar is that they have a "rocket fuel" taste that doesn't really go away, even with lots of aging.
So to save what you have so far, I'd add apple juice, enough to dilute your ABV somewhat without making it thin like just adding water.
You originally wanted 5 gallons? I guess shoot for that volume when adding the apple juice.
Let it ferment out and when its done, taste it and see how much rhubarb character is in there. If you want more rhubarb, rack the cider/wine on to thawed out rhubarb in a secondary fermentor. You'll most likely want to stabilize and backsweeten because the rhubarb will contribute a tart flavor. When I made a rhubarb cider, I ended up adding a strawberry syrup that had a pretty decent final flavor.

 

[bernardsmith]

I like that suggestion, Madscientist451. Adding apple juice is likely to add about 1.050 per gallon (4 L) but that will greatly reduce the average gravity the more apple juice you add. I may be wrong but I think if you use a Pearson's Square to calculate the volumes of apple juice to this rhubarb must you will see that you want to add twice the volume of apple juice to the volume of the rhubarb. (so say 2 gallons of 1.170 =( .340) + 4 gallons of 1.050 = (.200) = .540 /6 = .090 But that is now 6 gallons (or about 24 L)... But whatever the final volume you decide on the key is to add twice the amount of apple juice to the volume of rhubarb you want to ferment as this batch. Note that the apple juice must be preservative free (no sorbates).