a new attempt at the 45day white grape peach wine.

[Arpolis]

Hello everyone

I have been trying to put together a nice recipe for a good wine my dad can enjoy. My only driving force in this is that I want to try and use no table sugar. I just think that using no table sugar will result in a wine drinkable sooner. I have been pulling data off of fruits & concentrates from different sources and have estimated the approximate grams of sugar from the below ingredients coming up with a total suggested gravity of 1.091. Which dry will take the ABV to about 12%. What do you think about the below recipe?

3 gal grape peach white wine

8 cans of Welch’s 100% juice concentrate, White Grape Peach
15# of green table grapes
15# of peaches
1tsp of pectin enzyme
3tsp of yeast nutrients (DAP)
2tsp of nutriferm advanced
Water to 3 gal
Potassium sorbate (stabilizer)
Wine conditioner to a gravity of 1.01


Yeast starter:

1 cup warm water
1 100mg B6 tablet crushed
10 raisins chopped fine
¼ cup clover honey
Yeast-Lalvin 71B-1122

Here is how I plan to put the must together:

10 - 12 hours before making the must I will mix together the yeast starter. Simply crush the B6 and add to water, Mix in honey, chop raisins and whip up a lot to aerate. Next sprinkle yeast on top & cover with a paper towel rubber banned to the container.

I will have a couple of fine mesh nylon bags that I will place the grapes in and start smashing in a large pot to get the juice out and remove the pulp. The pulp will be placed aside to be used later.

The peaches I planed on blending into a pulp with approx 1 cup of water per “as much peach that will work in a blender”. And once blended well place in a fine mesh nylon bag and squeeze the liquid out to mix with the grape juice. The pulp will be put aside to be used later.

Mix the squeezed juice, melted concentrate, pectin enzyme and yeast nutrients in the carboy. I will measure how much remaining liquid is needed. Put that into a large pot and place my leftover pulp in that water and bring to a boil. Hold the boil for 15 min and then let cool. The pulp will be removed & squeezed one more time. The resulting liquid will be used to top off the carboy. This is to try and make sure most all of the sugar & flavor is extracted.

I originally wanted 5 gallons done but am scaling back to 3 for money reasons and don’t want pulp that I will be racking off of to take up volume.

I then pitch the yeast starter once the must is at room temp. Aerate the must daily and when the 1/3 sugar break hits add the nutriferm advanced.

I will let this ferment dry. Rack as appropriate to clear. Once done add potassium sorbate and back sweeten with wine conditioner until we are at a gravity of 1.01.


All criticism and berating welcome so let me know what you think.

 

[DoctorCAD]

Don't boil, use campden instead. Boiling changes fruit flavors.

Also, wine conditioner is made of table sugar and potassium sorbate. Don't add extra sorbate with it.

 

[Yooper]

Any wine with an OG of over 1.090 is going to take a length of time to taste ok- table sugar really isn't the issue.

Peaches sometimes take a very long time to clear- a VERY long time. If they are put in a blender, they probably will never clear. If boiled, the wine will certainly not clear so it'll be a very cloudy hazy wine. I would never boil my wine ingredients, or my fruit.

Table grapes don't usually make very good wine. I'd leave them out.

Actually, I'd probably leave out all of the fruit, and just use the juice concentrate.

I don't like wine conditioner (don't like the taste) but it does work to stabilize wine.

 

[elly_karadimas]

why do you think that table sugar will take longer to ferment? i dont understand the rationale behind this.

i have made several batches of peach wine, and i can tell you from experience that you are definitely going to need more pectic enzyme if you want your wine to clear. peaches are NOTORIOUS for creating hazy wines. still drinkable, but not perfectly clear. also, the more you handle the peaches, the more likely it will be difficult to clear the wine. i would NOT boil or blend the peaches. you should dice them, remove the pits/stems, and use campden tablets to sterilize.

i agree with yooper too- probably should leave out the table grapes. they really arent good for making wine.

also agree that you dont need extra sorbate if your using wine conditioner- its already in there. the wine might taste funny if you put too much. also be careful with the wine conditioner, as it is easy to put too much of that too.

 

[Arpolis]

Ok great points everyone. I have been reading around and have read that when people get a wine with a lot of alchohol hot they have talked about a possible cause being that they added too much sugar. Maybe I am miss construding this and it is just the ratio of fruit to sugar not the fact that lots of table sugar being fermented is the cause.

Ok so wine conditioner has potassium sorbate in it already. I could have sworn I read that it had something else in it. but now I see you are correct. Knowing that I would not want more sorbate. I might as well just use sugar campden and potassium sorbate to stabilize and back sweeten.

Ok so no boil on any ingredients.*

I only have the table grapes in there because that's about all I can get without spending an arm and a leg. I also choose the yeast 71b because Lalvin says it is made for grapes with a higher acid level and will calm most of that down. SAMs club has some "black" grapes that are much sweeter than the classic ones I see around. Could that be good or just stick to the concentrate?

If I cut out the fresh grapes all together is there any good reason to have the fresh peaches?

I do have to get used to sterilizing must with campden. I have never had to do that with my mead.*

 

[elly_karadimas]

a "hot" taste is likely from too high a temperature during fermentation- when the yeast burns through all the sugar really fast, this can affect the taste.

you could try the "black" grapes. i would probably just stick to concentrate, but its totally up to you! whats the point of making wine if we cant experiment?

using the peaches would be a good idea i think, as long as you dont over handle them and use enough pectic enzyme.

campden tablets are your best friend

good luck! let us know what recipe you finally go with, and how it turns out!

 

[Arpolis]

Ok from all of your suggestions I have adjusted the recipe as so:

3 gal grape peach white wine

7 cans of Welch’s 100% juice concentrate, White Grape Peach
1 can of Welch’s 100% juice concentrate, White Grape
4# of peaches diced fine
3 cups of sugar
3tsp of pectin enzyme
3tsp of yeast nutrients (DAP)
2tsp of nutriferm advanced
Water to 3 gal
Potassium sorbate (stabilizer)
Campden tablets (sterilize at first and then help stabilize at end)
Sugar to a gravity of 1.01

I would start by adding all but the yeast starter and put in 3 crushed campden tablets to sterilize and after 24 hours pitch the yeast. The peaches will be in a nylon bag for easy removal. I removed a grape peach concentrate and added one grape concentrate because I do not want the peaches to dwarf the grape taste. The suggested gravity should still be around 1.09. I will just put in half the sugar and watch the gravity as I add to get it to about 1.085 – 1.09.

Recipe look a bit better?

 

[Arpolis]

Hello again.

So I want to say thanks for all the people that helped me with this recipe. I purchased all that I needed and put this together today. Now as most good plans go......they usually go wrong or get changed in mid step.......

So the recipe changed a little but here is what happened.

The recipe is now for 5 gallons rather than 3.
Also it seems impossible to find the white grape peach concentrate in any store. The white grape Raspberry abounds everywhere but not the peach. So I had to go with the juice. Also you all said to not mess with the fresh peaches much. I honestly was going to stick with that. Just quarter them and place in the carboy. But in my experience freezing and thawing fruits help with juice extraction so I thought that would not hurt. Well I should not have done that. The peaches were shear goo. I then decided that since these were mutilated beyond all reason to get into the carboy, I would cut the peach size down to 2#s & up the pectin enzyme. I also decided to up the sugar to 4 cups. Here is the new recipe.

1 gallon of Welch’s White grape juice
3.5 gallons of Welch’s White grape peach juice
4 cups of cane sugar
2 pounds of peaches
4 tsp of pectin enzyme
3 tsp of yeast nutrients (DAP)
2 tsp of Nutriferm Advanced (1 tsp added 24 hours after yeast pitch & the second 48 hours.)
5 crushed campden tablets

I will make the starter as shown in previous post with Lalvin 71B yeast and pitch after 24 hours past the campden addition. I still plan on stabilizing and back sweetening to a gravity of 1.01.

I will take a gravity reading right after the yeast pitch.

Here is a pic of the must after all is put together.

 

[Arpolis]

Ok I pitched yeast today and also took gravity readings. For a number of reasons I was not able to make a sufficient starter in the times needing to. So I used the instructions on the Lalvin yeast package to re-hydrate the yeast but added a cap full of some left over white grape peach juice and about 1/4 tsp of honey. After that 15 min past the yeast looked real active. I pitched that and gave the containger one last shake. The gravity read at 1.068. Taken dry we should have a wine at about 9.5% abv.

 

[Arpolis]

man I am impatient. Over 12 hours and no real airlock activity. If nothing in 24 hours I will add 2 tsp of nutriferm advanced and stagger another two over the following 48 hours. I should have really stuck to making a starter.

 

[DoctorCAD]

12 hours is nothing...give it time.

 

[Arpolis]

yea I know. Its is going on along now actually. A bit slowly but not bad at all. It makes it worse that I have it right next to braggot that is going nuts on the fermentation. In comparison this wine is standing still.