Question about Jack Keller's recipes and the racking process...

[noondi34]

I have been experimenting with making fruit wines with and without added chemicals (Campden, pectic enzymes, etc.). After lots of taste testing, I've determined that the late Jack Keller's recipes are the best. With his recipes, he mentions racking multiple times, but they all only start with one gallon of water. So, what and how are you supposed to top off these wines when racking if you only use one gallon of water from the start? Can I simply just add a bit more water and sugar so there is extra for topping off later?

 

[Yooper]

What I do is to increase the recipe by .25 or so, and start it in a bigger bucket. Then when I rack, I put the excess in a smaller vessel (like a wine bottle or a beer growler) with a bung and airlock, and use that for topping up. Alternatively, you can use a similar wine, either commercial or homemade. For example, for dandelion wine, I’ve topped up with sauvignon blanc. For chokecherry, I’ve used pinot noir if I don’t happen to have that wine from the year before.

 

[Mallerstang]

I do the same as Yooper - I have a large collection of glass jugs and bottles of various sizes and bungs to fit, and I make extensive notes that I use to plan subsequent batches.

Jack Keller had an excellent blog post called "How to Use Recipes" that included "How Much Wine Do Recipes Make?" and "Topping Up." He explained why his recipes were all for one US gallon, difficulty predicting end volume due to racking loss, and strategies for topping up (using successively smaller additional vessels, using finished wine, using water, using glass marbles).

You might be able to find it online somwhere. I printed it years ago.