Friut juice wine maths

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sddingman

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OK fellow vinonauts..... Input please:

I am considering making a black cherry wine from 100% organic juice. I have a 32 oz container of juice, 33g/sugar per serving so probably don't need starter. Making a 1 gallon batch total was thinking about 2.5 lbs sugar, my favorite cuvee yeast and water to make up.

When I make wine from whole fruit I usually use 3-4 lbs fruit to 1 gal water, these wines come out great. According to several sources 4 lbs of cherries should yield about 32 oz pure juice, hence my procuring the 32 oz jug of cherry juice. It should yield about the same concentration of cherry goodness in the wine as I would get if I mushed my own cherries...right???

However in doing research, I am reading all these posts from folks making juice wine (mostly grape) and they are either making it from 2 cans of concentrate (which should make 96 oz or 3/4 gal of juice) or a whole gallon of juice. Too each their own but this seems like juice overkill a bit. I am not sure what I am missing, if anything.

Sean
 
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A starting gravity of 1.102 gets you a ABV of 14% if you ferment dry (0.995) which most wine yeasts will tolerate (especially with good nutrition, but that's a separate discussion).

Your juice has a starting SG of 1.057 (ish? there's a lot of conversions and math to make that guess. I would measure it...) Pure sugar is 46 ppg so if you had a gallon of your juice, you would need to add about 1 pound of sugar to the juice to hit your ABV target. (lower Starting Gravity will obviously reduce your alcohol potential.)

Hope that's helpful.
 
You could start there, and when you rack, add more juice to top off in secondary. Try a sample of the juice. if the flavor is too intense, and you would normally water it down 3:1 to make it palatable then I would dilute. Remember when you ferment that you will lose a little bit of the flavor, but all of the sugar. Obviously if you choose to go down this path, you will need to add additional sugar to make up for the water that you add.

If I was making a melomel (mead) with that juice, I would probably use 100% juice and honey to make my must going for that intense flavor.

The alternative is to blend that juice with a (mostly) flavorless juice like white grape, pear, or even a light apple juice. to make it more complex, you could add some tart cherry or cranberry, blueberry or mixed berry to complement the sweet cherry flavor.
 
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