Simplest Grape Wine

[Beerfant]

Hi!

Okay guys, I am trying to make my first grape wine with the bare basics.

I've got 5 liters red grape juice (no preservatives or sugar added)

I do not have any yeast nutrients or special additives.

Last time I made apfelwein with bakers yeast and it worked fine and fermented it completely dry. I'll be using the same packet of dry yeast.

Any suggestions like how much sugar I should add and how to go about it? I would like my wine to be around 14% abv. and I don't want it completely dry.

Some people add a banana to give some body to the wine. How do I do that? What is 'body' anyway?

The temperature here is in between 70s and 80s, and it will drop down further to around 60 in the next 30-60 days

Thanks!

 

[Evan_]

Hi!

Okay guys, I am trying to make my first grape wine with the bare basics.

I've got 5 liters red grape juice (no preservatives or sugar added)

I do not have any yeast nutrients or special additives.

Last time I made apfelwein with bakers yeast and it worked fine and fermented it completely dry. I'll be using the same packet of dry yeast.

Any suggestions like how much sugar I should add and how to go about it? I would like my wine to be around 14% abv. and I don't want it completely dry.

Some people add a banana to give some body to the wine. How do I do that? What is 'body' anyway?

The temperature here is in between 70s and 80s, and it will drop down further to around 60 in the next 30-60 days

Thanks!

The simplest way to hit your target abv is to use a hydrometer and keep adding sugar until you get to 14% potential alcohol. However I prefer to do the calculations, figuring the starting brix and target brix, then calculating how much sugar to add based on that. I actually never use my hydrometer instead I use my kitchen scale.

About the adding a banana, why not? Why not add whatever your heart desires? It will give you good experience just make sure you write down the recipe because it could come out really good! Just keep in mind things taste very different when the sugar is stripped from them.

And if you're really worried about the temperature drop you should consider using a different yeast strain that is more tolerant to colder temperatures.