Grape juice wine

[fatjay]

I have been on a slight rampage of fermenting anything I can get my hands on.

Most recently, I bought some grape juice from costco, put it in a 1ga carboy, 2lb sugar, ec1118 yeast, nutrients on day 2-4-6. It's been a month now, fermentation is still hanging on but basically done. I haven't taken readings yet but taste test passed.

Anything else I should do to this before bottling?

 

[fluketamer]

i find bentonite helps my wines.

 

[SFC Rudy]

I made grape juice wine (grape juice and bread yeast) when I was in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield. Wasn’t the best but it worked!

 

[fatjay]

I haven't used bentonite. From what I read you're supposed to add it before fermentation?

I made grape juice wine (grape juice and bread yeast) when I was in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield. Wasn’t the best but it worked!

Did you have to add sugar? I'm trying to make something a step above prison hooch.

 

[fluketamer]

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/supermarket-juice-wine-how-to-guide-and-recipes.49462/

one of my favorite threads.


heres my take:

you arent going to make really great GRAPE wine from just juice , you need the skins. you have been used to drinking wines made from grapes and you can notice the difference IMO.

but,

find me a delicious smooth highly quafable bottle of blueberry, pineapple, mango, or forest fruit wine. almost impossible. and you wont have a previous image in your mind of what mango wine should taste like. so thats a great target. for me at least.

the above thread has hundreds of fruit juice wines that come out really good.

my favorite is bilberry:

2 liters of bilberry juice:

1 liter of white grape juice.
several hundred grams of sugar to bring SG to around 1100
1 cup of very strong black tea for tannin
juice of half of a lemon
tsp of nutrient
tsp pectinase
almost any wine yeast will work.

room temp always works for me.

almost any dark fruit juices will work. but some are tricky. blackberry is too strong and cranberry too sour and pure black cherry can taste like medicine.

sour cherry/ black cherry mix can be VERY good tho.

good luck
this is much better than prison hooch

i use bentonite very late after 1 month on lees. i rack off the lees. i add bentonite which is annoying like a cup of wet slurry clay with chunks. then rack after a few days to a bottling bucket. the wine is very clear then.

keep those lees!!!

simply pouring straight apple juice (and nothing else needed) onto used fruit wine lees makes the best fruit flavored ciders in my opinion.

similar to skeeter pee with lemon juice ( i havent tried this ) which works best with used wine lees.

 

[fatjay]

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/supermarket-juice-wine-how-to-guide-and-recipes.49462/

one of my favorite threads.


heres my take:

you arent going to make really great GRAPE wine from just juice , you need the skins. you have been used to drinking wines made from grapes and you can notice the difference IMO.

but,

find me a delicious smooth highly quafable bottle of blueberry, pineapple, mango, or forest fruit wine. almost impossible. and you wont have a previous image in your mind of what mango wine should taste like. so thats a great target. for me at least.

the above thread has hundreds of fruit juice wines that come out really good.

my favorite is bilberry:

2 liters of bilberry juice:

View attachment 872558
1 liter of white grape juice.
several hundred grams of sugar to bring SG to around 1100
1 cup of very strong black tea for tannin
juice of half of a lemon
tsp of nutrient
tsp pectinase
almost any wine yeast will work.

room temp always works for me.

almost any dark fruit juices will work. but some are tricky. blackberry is too strong and cranberry too sour and pure black cherry can taste like medicine.

sour cherry/ black cherry mix can be VERY good tho.

good luck
this is much better than prison hooch

i use bentonite very late after 1 month on lees. i rack off the lees. i add bentonite which is annoying like a cup of wet slurry clay with chunks. then rack after a few days to a bottling bucket. the wine is very clear then.

keep those lees!!!

simply pouring straight apple juice (and nothing else needed) onto used fruit wine lees makes the best fruit flavored ciders in my opinion.

similar to skeeter pee with lemon juice ( i havent tried this ) which works best with used wine lees.

Great advice but one question. What's a lee?

 

[Rish]

Lees are the wine equivalent of beer trub... what settles to the bottom of the FV (yeast, pulp, etc).

 

[fatjay]

How do you save it? How long is it good for?

 

[madscientist451]

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/supermarket-juice-wine-how-to-guide-and-recipes.49462/

one of my favorite threads.


heres my take:

you arent going to make really great GRAPE wine from just juice , you need the skins. you have been used to drinking wines made from grapes and you can notice the difference IMO.

I’m thinking you could crush up table grapes from the supermarket, say 1-2 lbs/Gallon and add your grape juice and water to that. Note that the grapes will want to float on the top, so you need a wide top container you can take the lid off so you can punch down the floating grapes. After a week or so you would strain out the crushed grapes, but you could save them for another round. I suppose you could also use raisins.

 

[fatjay]

I’m thinking you could crush up table grapes from the supermarket, say 1-2 lbs/Gallon and add your grape juice and water to that. Note that the grapes will want to float on the top, so you need a wide top container you can take the lid off so you can punch down the floating grapes. After a week or so you would strain out the crushed grapes, but you could save them for another round. I suppose you could also use raisins.

I have 7x 5-6g carboys and 10x 1g carboys. The wines I do are just keeping the 1 gallon's busy/full.

 

[fluketamer]

I’m thinking you could crush up table grapes from the supermarket, say 1-2 lbs/Gallon and add your grape juice and water to that. Note that the grapes will want to float on the top, so you need a wide top container you can take the lid off so you can punch down the floating grapes. After a week or so you would strain out the crushed grapes, but you could save them for another round. I suppose you could also use raisins.

yes or you can start with juices and not have to worry about fruit (cleaning prepping cutting macerating +/- freezing dunking potentially molding straining.)

i have found that if you still need more fruit flavor after fermentation, you can backsweeten with syrups tinctures or extracts to bump it up a notch.

this is a very easy quick simple straightforward way to make quafable fruit wines

 

[z-bob]

I just started a rosé wine about a week ago using 2 gallons of red Concord grape juice and 1 gallon of white Niagara grape juice. Concord is a little too acid by itself unless you add chalk; Niagara is much less acid. And the resulting wine should be somewhere between pink and bronze, depending on how much the yeast strips out the color. In the carboy it still looks purple.

I added 18 ounces of sugar to get to 21 Brix, and 2 tsp of yeast nutrient. I'm doing this one with Cote des Blanc wine yeast. I really like CdB yeast for making cider but I haven't tried it with wine yet.

 

[Miraculix]

Passion fruit nectar fermented to wine with additional sugar really is stellar and dirt cheap. Cannot go wrong with that!

 

[fluketamer]

that sounds good i will try that.

2 liters of passion fruit with a liter of white grape sounds divine.

 

[Miraculix]

that sounds good i will try that.

2 liters of passion fruit with a liter of white grape sounds divine.

I would just use the passion fruit nectar. Nothing else except maybe some nutrients.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

No expert here, but I have made gallons and gallons of grape juice wine; have some working right now. Also have some cranberry juice working, which makes a delicious wine; sparkling or still.
I just read the label, add enough cane sugar to get me to 2#/gallon, add yeast nutrient and ferment with Premier Classique wine yeast. I have added bentonite,but not always. I just let it go until it stops fermenting and clears.
I like kegging it. I add about 1 tsp of ascorbic acid and ¼ tsp of tannin to a 5 gallon batch. I push it out of the keg with nitrogen. It’s like a five gallon bottle that you can take as much or as little as you want without having to worry about the rest oxidizing.
It probably wouldn’t suit a real wine connoisseur, but it’s well received around here.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

Anything else I should do to this before bottling?

If you don’t do anything else, consider adding ascorbic acid. It’s great at preserving your wine’s color and flavor by preventing oxidation. Besides, you can tell the wife when you go for another glass that you’re just making sure that you are getting your daily dose of vitamin C!

Adding Ascorbic Acid

 

[fatjay]

14 mango bottles, 15 mango bottles. Mango is 8/10, grape is 6/10. Not to say it tastes bad, it's just not as refined. I dropped carbonation tablets in 12 bottles each, into the boxes, taped up and dated. Will check back in a month. Remaining 5 bottles are on the shelf for enjoyment.

I may have over-sampled. I had 500ml left in the carboy that went into my tasting glass.

 

[fatjay]

I sell eggs from my chickens. I had a regular come by today and I gave her a glass of the grape to try. She tried it and said it it was excellent. I don't know how her standards are, but I gotta say, at least I'm not the only one that thinks it's half decent. I gave her a bottle to take home and asked her to report back.

 

[fluketamer]

thats very good. i have a tough time judging anything i make because i think its all good. positive feedback (as well as negative) is very constructive.

especially wine. i used to grade my wine as terrible, passable, or deccent. but never good. lol

terrible went down the drain.
passable usually got better with age.
and decent never lasted long enough to get good.

i have learned if you clean ferment most fruit juices (especially with a third of apple of white grape) with a decent ph like 3.8 ish, using DAP and keeping it under 70 degrees , to a FG of 1.000;

then you can back sweeten with enough sugar (or equivalent) to make anything taste really good.

still with an abv of 10 ish or so
or carbed with an abv of 4 - 6

is super drinkable.

 

[fatjay]

My daughter is coming home next weekend and she asked me to save a bottle of mango for her, she missed the last batch and was upset. Honestly the mango has been my favorite so far.