Top off aging wine with water

[MJ VBMadison]

Hi all,

I have a batch of Frontenac that I made last year from a vine in my backyard. This is my first ever wine, I’m certainly an experimentalist. It was transferred into a 4gal glass carboy on March 3rd and has been there ever since. The batch size is 3gal, so there is a large head of empty space, that’s all the wine I had so didn’t really have much of a choice, I airlocked it and added 50ppm KMBS about a month ago.

At the time I put it in the glass carboy I tasted it and it was extremely dry with a heavy alcohol scent. I figured I would see if it mellowed out but when I opened it to add the sulfite the heavy alcohol smell was still there.

My question is this: should I add water to the wine to fill it to the top of the glass carboy? I’m thinking this would reduce the alcohol content and keep it from any further oxidation due to the large empty header?

here is what I measured when I put it in the glass carboy:

* Temperature: ~60F
* Ph: 5
* Sg: 0.992
* Brix: 6

Initial SG was 1.105 before fermentation, 1.00 just after heart was pitched.

thanks for any thoughts, sorry in advance for being a total noob!!

MJ

 

[ShadesManna]

Congratulations on your first batch! Every, single batch we make is a learning process; from the first to the thousandth. The key is to retain that knowledge, and use it on future batches.

That would be a lot of water to add to the wine. Almost a whole gallon! @_@ I'm not an expert - but adding that much water will most definitely dilute the alcohol content significantly. I'm an artist, not a mathematician, so I don't have the exact numbers. However, you are correct in your concern with so much air in the carboy; ideally, you want a tiny bit of headspace for your wine, and that's it. The more air that's in there, the higher the risk of mold, oxidation, and other maladies.

Similarly, we need to be prudent in what water we add to our wines (and musts). Some folks use distilled water, in small doses, as it's "cleanest." However, you should not drink distilled water on a regular basis for health reasons. Other folks use bottled water, as it's been filtered, is generally not "hard" water, and is for the most part, clean. The last option is to use tap water - which really depends on your tap water. Mine is really "hard" water (lots of lime), so it effects the pH a lot. Also, sometimes folks boil said tap water to sterilize it, and then wait until it's cool enough to add to the wine without killing off the yeast / alcohol.

If you dilute the wine, it will not have as long a shelf life, as it needs to be at least 10% for stable aging. If you plan on drinking it within a year, that's not really a big deal. In the end, it's up to you. Good luck, and most importantly, keep having fun making wine!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi MJ - and welcome. No need to apologize for being new to wine making. Everyone here was a total newbie once.
Anytime you add unplanned water to a planned batch of wine you are diluting the flavors as well as the alcohol. Your call, of course but the last thing I would want to do is dilute flavors I had aimed for. A better solution might be to purchase or use smaller containers. But let's say that finding a 3 gallon carboy is not possible at this time - unlikely but for the sake of argument let's agree that you cannot find a 3 gallon carboy or 3 one gallon carboys or ??? If you are to dilute this 3 gallon wine by adding 1 gallon of water I would take a small sample of the wine (say 30 ml and add 10 ml of water and taste it. If it still tastes OK then add the gallon of water.
If when you dilute this sample you feel that the addition of so much water will ruin the batch then ask yourself how were you planning to "package" this batch of wine? If you have the 15 or so wine bottles at hand then why not bottle and cork the wine today. After a year of aging it is unlikely that the wine is still going to drop in gravity a few points so you can press home the corks. In other words, age the wine in bottles.