Low-alcohol fruit wine

[Bourniplus]

Greetings everyone,
I'm making blueberry wine with my own blueberries. Most recipes call for what I would say is a considerable amount of sugar; around 10-15 lbs for a 4-gallon batch. This year the harvest was pretty good and I started 4 batches. Adding that much sugar somehow doesn't seem right, so for the last three batches I added only 4 pounds.
In the past I've made a dozen batches of Apfelwein / cider, gradually decreasing the amount of sugar to the point of adding almost none, and this is the way I prefer it.
I was wondering if anyone else makes their fruit wines this way. Is this still called "wine" when you have around 5% ABV?
Given that I'm ok with making a wine that will be consumed in the coming year, what should be taken in consideration in the process?
I took gravity readings of the different batches and tasted the samples. When they're around 1,005 after a couple weeks of fermentation it tastes really good. If I could have that taste in the bottle, with the light fizz, I think it would be a really nice refreshing beverage. However if I let it ferment to complete dryness and backsweeten a little, it seems that it won't give that same taste. I've always used wine yeast, maybe I should try a beer yeast?
Thanks in advance for any comment or suggestion.
Martin

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

I don't know if 5% will work, but I think you could get away with 7-8% without any problems of spoilage. For that I would use ale yeast. In fact, I have been thinking about doing the same thing with my bronze muscadine harvest, and using Nottingham ale yeast. It makes a really nice 7-8% cider, so I think it would do nicely for a low alcohol wine.

 

[jonereb]

Using a lower ABV supposedly helps preserve the fruity flavor, or so I've read. I may try it with my next batch of red muscadine wine, and then back-sweeten to help with the acidity.

 

[bernardsmith]

Two and a half pounds of sugar dissolved in water to make 1 gallon , absent any sugar from the fruit/fruit juice would raise the gravity of water by 100 points and 100 points in this context has a potential ABV of about 13%. I imagine the fruit might add another 40 points so you are talking about a wine with an ABV of 18%. - and that is at the lower end of the "recipes" you see. While that is probably at the limit of most wine yeasts, an 18% berry wine sounds (at least to me) as incredibly out of any balance. Twelve to 13% ABV allows the fruit some space to compete with the ethanol. Bottom line: much more effective to allow the yeast to ferment any sugar brut dry, then stabilize and if you want more sweetness then simply back sweeten.

 

[Bourniplus]

Well, the 15 lbs figure might have been for a 5-gallon batch, and it's pretty extreme. I think many of the recipes that can be found online call for around two pounds of sugar per gallon of finished product, and it seems that the expected OG is 1,090 on average. Basically what I'm talking about is decreasing the OG to somewhere around 1,040.

On a side note, when I started my batches I tried to take gravity readings before fermentation but couldn't figure out a good way to do so. With all the fruit in the must, the hydrometer could float at any level you'd place it. And then if you take a reading of the liquid only, it seems to me that it would be a reading of water and sugar mostly, and it wouldn't take into account everything that's in the fruit. A week after fermentation has started and I remove the pulp, then it's very easy to take a reading.

 

[bernardsmith]

A refractometer is perhaps the best way to determine the amount of sugar in fruit. A drop or two of juice from a single berry is enough to provide all the material you need for the refractometer to give you a meaningful reading (though you may want to take separate samples from two or three berries to know whether the sample you took was from an outlier or an average berry). With sugar (or honey) we "know" what the SG reading is likely to be (1 lb of sugar dissolved in water to make 1 US gallon will raise the gravity of the water from 1.000 to 1.040. Honey on average will raise the gravity on the same volume of water by 35 points.

 

[Yooper]

I use S04 in some apple ciders, and it stops around 1.004 pretty dependably. It would probably do the same with other fruit juices as they'd have about the same amount of fermentables in it.

If you start at 1.045 or so, that would make a very light and drinkable fruit wine.

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

Using a lower ABV supposedly helps preserve the fruity flavor, or so I've read. I may try it with my next batch of red muscadine wine, and then back-sweeten to help with the acidity.

I back sweetened a batch of 15% black muscadine wine last year. I used 2 cups of leftover must in 1 gal of stabilized wine. The result came out around 14% abv. If you like fruity, sweet desert wines, it is amazing! I plan to make another 2 gal of the same this year.

 

[jonereb]

If you start at 1.045 or so, that would make a very light and drinkable fruit wine.

My initial hydrometer reading for red muscadines is usually 1.050 before adding any sugar. That would produce a very low alcohol level, perhaps not enough for preservation. Since I like to let my wine age for at least 2 years, would that present storage problems?

 

[Yooper]

My initial hydrometer reading for red muscadines is usually 1.050 before adding any sugar. That would produce a very low alcohol level, perhaps not enough for preservation. Since I like to let my wine age for at least 2 years, would that present storage problems?

No, probably not. You could use sulfites at bottling to help out there. I've aged lower ABV drinks like hard lemonade, but nothing below 5.5%.

 

[jonereb]

Another concern: low ABV means low brix, right? Do you try to adjust? If so how?