Any help on a recipe

[bristolcity]

Hi I've made my first batch of red wine from a kit the kit came with 5litres of grape juice and I had to add 17 litres if water.
Question is if I make a batch with out buying a kit do I just buy 5litres of shop brought grape juice and as before add the 17litres of water.

Any advice on this will will help my massively in future projects

 

[yetijunk]

The best thing you can do is buy your juice and add water incrementally; tasting it as you go to assure the must does not become too watered down! Are you using grape juice concentrate or just grape juice?

 

[bristolcity]

I was going to use just shop brought grape juice just to try a batch and see how it goes

 

[bernardsmith]

I was going to use just shop brought grape juice just to try a batch and see how it goes

You only really want to add water to any juice if that juice is a concentrate. If the juice was simply pressed fruit then the addition of any water will dilute it. That would be like making a cup of coffee or tea that you would enjoy drinking and then adding a few gallons of water to that cup. You would wonder what happened to the flavor and taste. The water content cannot be greater for wine making than the content would be for you to enjoy drinking the juice as pressed or squeezed. So, if the grape juice was sold to be drunk as is then you don't want to add water. If the juice is sold as a concentrate and you were expected to add water to make it taste more like fresh pressed juice then you add the amount of water that was removed when it was concentrated.

 

[bristolcity]

Thanks for the help makes much more sense to me now

 

[bristolcity]

Ok so I started my batch I've used
3 litres of water
5 litres of white grape juice
7 litres of apple juice
7 litres of pear juice
White bourdeoux yeast
1.4 kg white sugar
And yeast nutrient
My og was 1064
Pitched the yeast 24 house ago
What do think does that sound ok for my first attempt of making wine without using a kit

 

[oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer]

Why the three waters? When I make store bought juice wines it is all juice and no water. Also be sure it is 100 percent juice. A lot of juice in the store are 15 to 20 percent juice and the rest water.

 

[Bob_wv]

You're sg is lower than I like. I would add more sugar to get to about 1.080. It looks like your recipe will produce a light bodied wine, but 1.064 is still too low. 1.080 will give you an ABV of about 10.5 %. You will also probably want to get the acidity up. The fruits you selected are pretty low.

 

[bristolcity]

The reason I'm aiming for a low abv is I'm trying to get a similar tasting wine to a favourite of my partners wich is only 5% that's to low for me so we agreed slightly higher aiming for around 7%abv
The reason I added 3l of water was on the advice from a guy at the local hb store who said ideally you need to add water otherwise your wine will be acid tasting if you use 100% all juice so I took his advice and added 3l of water was he clueless lol

 

[bristolcity]

Fermentation has started now

 

[RegarRenill]

Having 100% juice gives a better impression of the fruit's character to the wine. If it's too acidic from the juice (shooting for around 3.5 or so) adding some potassium (bi)carbonate will help raise it. Getting a decent pH meter is a good idea. Remember, acidic is lower, alkaline is higher, and pure water is neutral at precisely 7.

 

[bristolcity]

Thanks mate I will invest in a ph kit