First time making wine today

[wsmith1625]

I've been brewing beer for many years and got my wife a 1 gallon WineXpert Classic Cabernet Sauvignon kit for Christmas. Today we started the kit and everything went well and seemed simple enough. We took a gravity sample before adding the yeast and got a reading of 1.061 (1.062 adjusted for temp). The kit says we should have a starting gravity of 1.080 - 1.097. Why would we miss the starting gravity so badly? The only think I can think of is that we didn't mix immediately before taking our sample, but we did mix we'll after adding the concentrated juice. Any ideas what could have gone wrong?

 

[wsmith1625]

I figured out my mistake. After adding the concentrate to the fermenter, I added 1 gal of water rather than topping up to 1 gal. My new question is, will this yield a drinkable wine, or should I dump it?

 

[Raptor99]

Here are four possible solutions:

SG around 1.060 will result in a wine with an ABV about 8%. One solution would be to add enough sugar to raise the SG to about 1.090. That would give you a final ABV of around 12.5%. But the grape flavor would be diluted due to the extra water.

A better solution would be to get some grape juice concentrate, or frozen grape juice concentrate, and use that to raise the SG and add back some grape flavor. If the concentrate is from a different type of grape it will affect the flavor, but I think it would be an improvement.

Or you could get a second kit, and combine them and top off to 2 gallons total. That would give you the correct balance of flavors.

Or You could also just let this ferment as is, and make an 8% alcohol wine ("grape cider"??). It won't be exactly what you were hoping for, but it will be drinkable. At a lower ABV, it won't store as well, but since you have only about 1 gallon you will probably drink it within a year anyway.

 

[wsmith1625]

Here are four possible solutions:

SG around 1.060 will result in a wine with an ABV about 8%. One solution would be to add enough sugar to raise the SG to about 1.090. That would give you a final ABV of around 12.5%. But the grape flavor would be diluted due to the extra water.

A better solution would be to get some grape juice concentrate, or frozen grape juice concentrate, and use that to raise the SG and add back some grape flavor. If the concentrate is from a different type of grape it will affect the flavor, but I think it would be an improvement.

Or you could get a second kit, and combine them and top off to 2 gallons total. That would give you the correct balance of flavors.

Or You could also just let this ferment as is, and make an 8% alcohol wine ("grape cider"??). It won't be exactly what you were hoping for, but it will be drinkable. At a lower ABV, it won't store as well, but since you have only about 1 gallon you will probably drink it within a year anyway.

I think I'm gonna ride it out and see what 8% wine taste like. I already bought another kit so I can make a proper batch next time. Thanks