Are Preserves Comparable to Jelly/Jam?

[IrishBrewer420]

Hi all, how is you Easter weekend going so far? I was hoping to get a bit of wine-making advice today. I have a 5-gallon batch of grape/strawberry wine that is in its later clearing stages and hopefully will be bottled this season. The recipe I followed was the jelly/jam wine recipe from the Winemaker's Recipe Handbook, which allows substitution of any flavor jelly or jam. In case you are unfamiliar with such a recipe, it reads as follows:

3 lb jelly or jam
6 pts water
1 lb sugar
2 tsp Acid Blend
1/8 tsp Tannin
1 tsp Nutrient
1 tsp Pectic Enzyme
1 pkg Wine yest

The method is exactly what you would expect - mix in primary, stir daily, syphon into secondary and proceed to clear. Anyway, due to availability, I ended up substituting most of the "jelly" or "jam" with fruit preserves. I need to know: are the two products comparable enough that it won't be a big deal? On the Wikipedia page for fruit preserves [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_preserves ] jelly and jam are listed as sub-categories of preserves. Did I ruin my wine or not? Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you!

 

[buMbLeB]

It's probably just a regional thing. Here in Canada, the only things​ ever called "jelly" are grape and mint; jam is sweet and uniformly blended, while preserves tend to be lower in sugar and have chunks of fruit. If it works the same in Ireland you're probably better off. The only possible pitfall I can imagine would be if they were loaded with preservatives, aside from that I'm sure you're fine.

 

[IrishBrewer420]

It's probably just a regional thing. Here in Canada, the only things​ ever called "jelly" are grape and mint; jam is sweet and uniformly blended, while preserves tend to be lower in sugar and have chunks of fruit. If it works the same in Ireland you're probably better off. The only possible pitfall I can imagine would be if they were loaded with preservatives, aside from that I'm sure you're fine.

Thanks for your response, that certainly eases my concerns. However, it never occurred to me to check the nutrition facts on the product to see if it had a high preservative content. Just in case it did, what would you say could possibly go wrong with my batch? Note that I followed the above recipe to the letter aside from multiplying the ingredients up to a 5 gallon batch, meaning that I used all the recommended chemicals (i.e. acid blend, tannin, pectic enzyme ect.)

 

[buMbLeB]

I'm not an expert, but mainly you're concerned with words like sulfite or sorbate or their variations. All that can go wrong is your fermentation won't start, or the yeast will be stressed possibly creating off flavors. But then again it's jam, not juice, so how much could there really be?

You're probably fine, give it a day or two and make sure it has lots of air, it needs to breathe. If it doesn't take off, you can make a new yeast starter mixed with some dilute jam to acclimate it, then pitch again.

 

[bernardsmith]

I have made wines from jam. The one issue might be the pectins in the jam used to make the fruit gel. I added pectic enzyme and never had any problems with haze or a lack of clarity. The nutritional label will give you the amount of sugars in the jam and so enable you to determine how much water you want to add to reach the ABV you are seeking.

 

[StonesBally]

Jelly is made with fruit juice and sugar, jam is made from crushed or chopped fruit and sugar, and preserves is made with whole fruit and sugar. I'm pretty sure that is the breakdown. They all have relatively the same sugar content.

 

[IrishBrewer420]

This is all great information, thank you! I certainly didn't have any problems with failed fermentation. In fact, my wine was kicking like I've never seen before. In the primary stage, it foamed the entire time and made a loud sizzling sound when I stirred it; and it continued to foam two weeks straight in the secondary, with a high rate of airlock activity the entire time.

Also, my only other concern was that preserves were different from jam, but it sounds like they are certainly comparable enough for the wine. Thanks all!