Spiced apple wine

[kipoley]

Does any one have the book Making Wild Wines and Meads by Patty Vargus and Rich Gulling? There is a recipe in there I would like to try but it seems a little strange to me. It is for one gallon as follows

2 1/2 lbs clover honey
36 oz apple juice concentrate
wine yeast
yn
pectic enzyme
1/4 t tannin
cloves,nutmeg cinnamon stick, allspice an a vanilla bean added to secondary


My question is the apple juice concentrate. Mixed according to package instructions (3 containers of water) it has a gravity of 1.049 (low huh?). If I used it diluted with 1/2 gallon water and honey boiled and cooled as directions say wouldn't that give me a SG way off the chart? Does anyone have a way to balance this out and make it make sense? Or even another recipe involving apple juice? I have lots of it right now.
Kip

 

[Janx]

I'd try mixing the apple juice to the concentration you'd want to drink. Then dissolve the honey in boiled water (I don't like to boil honey...it destroys a lot of delicate flavor). Mix the honey and apple juice about half and half. You could probably do the apple juice a little more concentrated than normal, but I agree...the way the recipe is written would make one strong gallon of cyser

 

[kipoley]

Yeah, I wanted to make a three gallon batch. I put together only one gallon today to see where it stood. It came up to 1.145 So I ended up using only 36oz in the whole three gallon batch with eight pounds honey and two and half gallons water. It ended up a little more than three gallons and the OG was 1.101. I'll still secondary it on the spices. It looks really ugly right now, probably from the proteins breaking and falling out??? I hope it turns out. In the meantime I just wont look at it
Kip