Topping Up

[mgonbrewlab]

Sorry if this has been discussed before - the filter on the mobile app isn't great.

With white fruit wines that are lighter in body, would it be beneficial to top up after racking with white grape juice? Any issues/concerns I should be aware of?

The juice I have has K Meta in it, but I can't imagine it would be on high enough concentration to disrupt ongoing fermentation, could it?

 

[DoctorCAD]

How far along is the ferment?

 

[mgonbrewlab]

I would probably only do this with a wine when first transferring to a carboy (after coming off the fruit) or if I lost more than 6 oz per gallon racking off the less (before it has started to clear).

IE - I don't have a wine I am about to do this to. Trying to learn for future reference

 

[DoctorCAD]

If this is your first racking, no worries, leave it alone.
If this is your second racking, might need to top up, but juice has sugar in it and could (WILL) cause refermentation.
If this is a later racking, and you have stabilized with sorbate/k meta, juice will do just fine to sweeten the wine. If you want it dry, use a dry wine, not juice.

 

[mgonbrewlab]

Would the grape juice help to add extra body after refermentation? This is my primary reasoning for wanting to use juice vs. sterilized water.

 

[Yooper]

Would the grape juice help to add extra body after refermentation? This is my primary reasoning for wanting to use juice vs. sterilized water.

No. It will ferment out, making more lees and then require another racking to get it off the lees. It will need to be topped up. If you top up with juice, fermentation will restart, etc.

I top up with either a similar homemade wine or a commercial wine to avoid diluting the wine if necessary. I generally make a larger batch than needed (scaling up) and keeping the extra wine in a growler or something just for topping up later on.

For a white grape wine, something like sauvignon blanc would be a good topping up wine. It can be a cheap wine- Little Penguin is $3 at my local grocery, and it's fine for topping up something like that.

 

[mgonbrewlab]

Thanks Yooper. Same idea for white country fruit wines (dry white commercial wine) if I don't have something similar on hand to use? I have tried upping my batch size slightly to accommodate for process losses, but I am still ending up short after my 2nd racking and am worried that I am thinning my wine too much with sterilized water.