Fermenting grape juice concentrate

[Jokester]

Has anyone tried fermenting Welch's type grape juice concentrate without diluting it and adding sugar ?
I guess sugar is cheaper and much more friendly fuel for yeasts.

I have fermented regular Welch's grape and apple juice too, but recently have been thinking of making something in the 35-40% range.

 

[mredge73]

I don't think you will find a yeast that will be able to effectively chew through that concentrate without diluting it. What is the OG of the concentrate?

Not sure what you mean by 35-40%, there is no yeast that will get you there in ABV. The best you can hope for would be around 14%.
To get any higher you would need to distill or freeze distill (I think I just made that one up, it is a process used by some people to remove water by freezing thus concentrating the alcohol).

Note, sugar is cheap but not a friendly fuel for yeast as it contains no nutrients.

 

[madscientist451]

I've made some experimental fruit wines with grape juice and other juice/concentrates from the grocery store and added sugar. The resulting beverages have alcohol and are sometimes palatable, but I find the strong "rocket fuel" character from the added sugar just doesn't suit my taste. Also, fermented fruit juice doesn't taste anything like the original once its fermented out, its usually too acidic and generally not balanced. So now I only use the best wine grapes and fruit I can find. Its just not worth the effort to me to make crappy wine/cider. Your results/taste may be different, maybe you'll like it, good luck!

PS If you are just starting out, try using "Simply Apple" apple juice found in the cold juice area at your local store. Get 2 containers of it, put it in a gallon jug with 1/2 pack of white wine yeast and you can make some pretty decent cider for not much money. Try to ferment it slowly, rack it off when its done and keep in your fridge. Its best if you let it age a little, but it can be consumed "young". Its not a high ABV, get drunk fast beverage, but it will taste much better than Welch's with added sugar.

 

[Jokester]

Yes adding sugar pretty much makes it taste like corn liquor. I don't really want that.

I have fermented apple juice and have 3 of that going on now. It makes an awesome mixer with cheapo vodka.

I have a local brewing store that has yeast that can live in 49% alcohol, and they even said they have yeast that can live in 100% alcohol. I wanted to ask before trying it in case someone has used that yeast.

 

[Jokester]

I don't think there is a 100% alcohol yeast. I think that guy isn't aware of what he has.

 

[z-bob]

I have fermented cheap red grape juice (Concord) and white grape juice (Niagara), and both made decent wine if I didn't add too much sugar.

The last wine experiment that I did was a half gallon of red and a half gallon of white, no sugar, and bread yeast. It was surprisingly good. I want to try mixing Concord and Niagara juice again, but add a little sugar to get it to about 9.5% and use a real wine yeast.

If you try to ferment over about 14% ABV, there are yeasts that will get you there (Premier Cuvee is one) but the wine will taste like ass. 20% is about the top if you don't care how it tastes.

 

[MaxStout]

Yooper has a recipe for Welch's grape juice wine. I made a 3 gal batch of it once, turned out well.

 

[mredge73]

You will want to aim your OG at 1.08 - 1.10 to achieve 10-14%
To keep it from tasting like rocket fuel, aim for the lower end.

Freeze concentrating and distillation is still illegal stateside, so you won't find much information on this topic on this forum.
However this is the only way you will be able to get it up to 40%.
There is no such thing as a yeast that can function in 50% ABV.

 

[A_McG]

I've hit 18% with incremental sugar and nutrient adding on a grape wine. Took a full year before it was drinkable, and definitely not one of my best wines.

And there's no way a yeast can survive to 49% let alone 100%. Thats why distilleries exist, to push the abv up to those numbers.

Make wine for fun and for it to taste good. If you want to get hammered for cheap, buy a $10 gal of vodka and mix it with the juice of your choice. (Not actually recommending this)

 

[Jokester]

I'm doing it for fun only. I've got very nice results fermenting apple and grape juice, both without added sugar. I think I'll stay with that. Maybe ferment strawberry juice or something.

 

[mredge73]

I'm doing it for fun only. I've got very nice results fermenting apple and grape juice, both without added sugar. I think I'll stay with that. Maybe ferment strawberry juice or something.

You can use concentrate as your sugar addition. This has worked well for me on cider. For something like a sparkling wine cooler, start with you favorite juice and add concentrate until you get about 1.05-1.06 OG. Ferment and bottle like beer. Works great with apple juice to make a sparkling cider ready to drink in 3 weeks. With apple juice the ratio is about 1 can of concentrate per 1 gallon of juice to get around 1.056-1.058. Ferment using an ale yeast (I like Nottingham) to keep some of the fruit character. Good luck and have fun.

 

[Jokester]

Does freeze concentrate method yield a drinkable apple jack style drink ? I actually really really like apple juice based fermented drinks, except its barely 5-6% and I use it as a mixer with vodka or some other tasteless cheapo alcohol. I do a 40/40/20 - 40gm vodka, 40 gm apple juice fermented to dryness, 20gm lemon juice and a tiny squirt of sucralose (I am a recovering diabetic). I'd skip that whole vodka cycle and do a concentrate if that is good, or I'll try an 18% first by fermenting the concentrate with the EC-1118.

 

[z-bob]

Take regular apple juice, boost it with just a little sugar and nutrient, and ferment with Cotes de Blanc yeast. Bottle it like beer when it's finished. You get a very nice dry beverage with about 7% alcohol. Even better if you add a little sucralose to your glass. If 7% is not strong enough for you, drink 2

I have one fermenting now with Vintners Harvest AW4 yeast - 4 gallons of Aldi's juice and one pound of sugar. It's almost ready to bottle but it's taking its sweet time fermenting that last little bit.

 

[mredge73]

You will have to read up some of the freeze concentrate method. It can be dangerous as it concentrates all alcohol in the beverage indiscriminately.
Methanol is among those alcohols, it is what gives you splitting headaches from cheap liquor and is responsible for many deaths and blindness during prohibition.

 

[Jokester]

It concentrates everything, there would be just as much of all the alcohols (except the alcohols that freeze closer to the temperature of water). So longer chain alcohols are likely to be less. But methanol and ethanol are likely to be in the same amount - if its a 1:3 concentrate.

 

[Jokester]

OK I've freeze concentrated apple juice and sugar to something like 25% but past that my house freezer wont do it.
I've still got a sp gr of 1.15 so it has a ton of sugar in it still. Very sweet but very nice to drink, the trick is to not add the whole pack of yeast to it. Its meant for 5 gal but in 3l I only added a few grains. Still not worth it IMHO.

 

[wedayne715]

Yes adding sugar pretty much makes it taste like corn liquor. I don't really want that.

I have fermented apple juice and have 3 of that going on now. It makes an awesome mixer with cheapo vodka.

I have a local brewing store that has yeast that can live in 49% alcohol, and they even said they have yeast that can live in 100% alcohol. I wanted to ask before trying it in case someone has used that yeast.

I'd do more research on that!! I've not heard of any yeast living past the high 20's. Like distillers turbo yeast but that's not for beer or wine.

 

[Jokester]

I'd do more research on that!! I've not heard of any yeast living past the high 20's. Like distillers turbo yeast but that's not for beer or wine.

I do use turbo yeast, however I only "ferment" to between 6 and 10% alcohol, the rest of the increase is from freeze concentrating it. BTW I am not going near apple juice and apple jacks any more, the pectinase etc etc to methanol is scary and freeze concentrating keeps them from getting separated as opposed to true distilling.

Cool.
Srinath.

 

[Michael L Collins]

I added grape concentrate to grape juice with just one cup of sugar, taking my must to 1.100, and after five days, it's still thumping away.

 

[Blacksmith1]

I have about 6 gallons of fgjc/grape juice bottled recently. Wife loves it and at 4 months from pitch, it's already tasty. We call it the "Concord Ice". I forget my exact mix, and lost the tablet my brew log was on, so back to the drawing board for the next batch.