Question about watermelon wine (spoilage and campden)

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I'm looking to start a batch of watermelon wine in the next day or so. I made a batch a few years ago and suffice to say it did not turn out...at all. Awful doesn't really begin to describe it.

Anyway, I did more research after the fact and found that watermelon is hard to do, mostly because of the spoilage issue. After reading a few posts from various sources (mostly Jack Keller), I came to a few conclusions:
1) Don't add water, use pure watermelon juice
2) Don't allow the juice to spoil
3) Pitch enough yeast to get an active fermentation started ASAP

So here's my proposed approach
1) Get a strong starter going 12-24 hours before pitching (I read on a forum somewhere that Jack added two packets of Montrachet to his starter)
2)Cube watermelon and run it through a straining bag to get as much juice as possible.
3) Add the following to the juice (based off of Keller's recipe, scaled to 5 gallons)

• 
  5 tsp Acid Blend
  5 tsp Yeast Nutrient
  1 Box of golden raisins (added for body)
  12.5 lbs sugar

4) Pitch the souped up starter
5) Leave covered with a cheesecloth overnight
6) Wake up the next morning with a happy, healthy, nonspoiled fermentation. Rack to carboy and attach airlock

Now for a few questions (because I just love lists)
1) If I understand the purpose of campden tablets, they're meant to inhibit any wild yeast from the fruit. Given how easily watermelon spoils, and how strong I hope my starter to be, it seems that the risk of not using campden is minimal when weighed against the risk of spoilage. Keller recommends refrigerating the juice while the campden does it's thing, but that doesn't seem necessary. Does that seem logical or am I missing a piece of the equation?
2) I'm not sure if watermelon juice can withstand enough heat to make a decent (adding sugar) syrup. Would I be better off taking my chances and using watermelon juice for this, or should I make a heavy simple syrup with a low ratio or water to sugar?
3) I've got some corn sugar (maybe 7 pounds) on hand. Should I use all of that and supplement with table sugar, or is there no disadvantage to using all table sugar?

Sorry for the long post. Thanks for reading!

 

[bernardsmith]

I have never made watermelon wine so take what I am about to say with that in mind. Strikes me that watermelon juice is almost tasteless apart from its sweetness, so I cannot see how it would make a wine with any flavor. Diluting the juice further with water would be like fermenting sugar water, IMO.

What I would do is freeze the juice (not cool it) and then allow the juice to thaw. That is to say, I would invert the container I had frozen the juice in and allow the juice that thaws to slowly drip and collect into a sanitized container. I would collect only the early thawed juice which will contain much more of the sugars and fruit than the later thawed juice. You can expect to double the concentration of flavor and fermentable sugars but you can also expect to lose about half or more of your juice. I sometimes use this technique when making cider to increase the gravity from about 1.040 to about 1.080 without adding any sugar.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

That's a really good thought, thanks for the input.

I purposely got really green watermelons, hoping they would be right at the point where they're more flavorful (even though, as you pointed out, it's mostly water).
I would be interested on trying the freezing method on a smaller volume of wine, but unfortunately I just don't have the freezer space (yet) to give something like that a try.

 

[oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer]

Why will the first to thaw contain more of anything. Not sure I buy this. If it were a wine or something with alcohol it will make a difference. But I don't believe it will work the same trying to reduce water volume from fruit juice.

 

[bernardsmith]

Why will the first to thaw contain more of anything. Not sure I buy this. If it were a wine or something with alcohol it will make a difference. But I don't believe it will work the same trying to reduce water volume from fruit juice.

This works with apple juice. The first liquid to thaw is the liquid with the most sugar because presumably the freezing point is lower (water freezes at 0 but water with sugar might freeze at say minus 10 (think about adding salt to roads to prevent them freezing) so it will thaw first leaving as frozen more of the water content. I have frozen apple juice with a gravity of about 1.040 and collected the thawed flow and measured the gravity at 1.080. It's the equivalent of taking a pint of apple juice and boiling off the liquid so you are left with a reduction of concentrated flavors and sugars, but rather than add heat - which will set the pectins you remove heat by freezing and then allow the juice to slowly approach room temperature while continuously removing all the liquid that collects soonest. Try it. Don't take what I say on faith. Test my claim. That's science. The down side is that you might start with 1 gallon of apple juice but you are left with about 1/3 so you need about 3 gallons of juice to make 1 gallon, but that gallon has far more concentrated sweetness and apple flavor.