Welch's Grape Juice Wine

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I wouldn't think it would hold up well to oaking.

Thanks! :D

One more question. (This is my first attempt at brewing wine, although I've been making beer for just over a year.)

Since I'm not adding anything in secondary fermentation, and assuming I won't do any backsweetening, is there a reason I shouldn't bottle it immediately after the 30 days in primary is complete?

EDIT: Wait, I think I answered my own question; the month of secondary time is to allow more lees to fall out of the wine before bottling, isn't it?
 
89 pages seriously took some effort, 5 hrs, 10 cigs, and three cups of coffee later am now ready to ask a few questions. sorry but after reading through 89 pages and not having a clue what I am doing I may have missed my answers although I don't think so. Figure I will try a batch of cheap wine before I blow 75 bucks on a mistake.

First off what is OG and how can u tell if u need to add sugar to affect it and when do u add it? I think SG is specific gravity and FG humm maybe I did or didn't see that one. IF I did what is it also?

Secondly, can I just sprinkle the yeast on top or should I mix some in water or something or other first before adding it after the 12 hr. mark?

Lastly, if I want to save some of the bottle to age at different intervals I will need to add sulfate, or sulfite, what is the full name of it and how do I go about adding it?

Yooper (hopefully that's spelled right) kudos to u and the other diehard members here who continue to keep us newbies in the know, way to stick with a thread!

Thanks in advance for any answers.
 
89 pages seriously took some effort, 5 hrs, 10 cigs, and three cups of coffee later am now ready to ask a few questions. sorry but after reading through 89 pages and not having a clue what I am doing I may have missed my answers although I don't think so. Figure I will try a batch of cheap wine before I blow 75 bucks on a mistake.

First off what is OG and how can u tell if u need to add sugar to affect it and when do u add it? I think SG is specific gravity and FG humm maybe I did or didn't see that one. IF I did what is it also?

Secondly, can I just sprinkle the yeast on top or should I mix some in water or something or other first before adding it after the 12 hr. mark?

Lastly, if I want to save some of the bottle to age at different intervals I will need to add sulfate, or sulfite, what is the full name of it and how do I go about adding it?

Yooper (hopefully that's spelled right) kudos to u and the other diehard members here who continue to keep us newbies in the know, way to stick with a thread!

Thanks in advance for any answers.

I'll do my best here..
1. you need a hydrometer to test to find out what your original gravity is and add boiled sugar water to the mixture, and mix it all up evenly to get to the right amount. FG is the gravity that you want and the end or the final gravity.

2. yes you can do either sprinkle the dry yeast on top or re-hydrate it and pitch it.

3. when It comes time to bottle it or backsweeten it you'll want to add some crushed campden tablets and potassium sorbate to the mix.

lastly you are correct Yooper is a guiding lighting light help all of us who are lost find our way.
 
I started my first try at this the day before yesterday, pitched yeast yesterday. I have some bubbles, but not as active as Yooper was describing. Is keeping a napkin over it needed if its not bubbling over? Or should i go the safer route and just use an air lock or blow off...?
 
I started 3.5 gallons on Saturday, and there is no foam on top at all but if you look at the surface it is "fizzing". :) I put it in a carboy; it was well aerated but I put an airlock on it right away instead of using a primary for a bucket, and it's bubbling away. Don't know if that will hurt anything. It will pick up a little oxygen (and lose some of the dissolved CO2) when I rack it in about a week.
 
I started my first try at this the day before yesterday, pitched yeast yesterday. I have some bubbles, but not as active as Yooper was describing. Is keeping a napkin over it needed if its not bubbling over? Or should i go the safer route and just use an air lock or blow off...?

some people have used the napkin route for a week and then switch. I usually stir it like crazy to introduce oxygen then put an airlock on it. I've never had a wine blow up on me like beer, it's usually a steady ferment
 
I usually stir it like crazy to introduce oxygen then put an airlock on it.

I did this. did my best to stir it as its fermenting way happily. It foamed up and over the napkin, but once subsided i swapped for an air lock. How often are you shaking it up during the 'primary' fermentation? I'm on day three right now.

Its going well so far and i'm really excited for this batch!
 
I did this. did my best to stir it as its fermenting way happily. It foamed up and over the napkin, but once subsided i swapped for an air lock. How often are you shaking it up during the 'primary' fermentation? I'm on day three right now.

Its going well so far and i'm really excited for this batch!

usually just at the beginning, if you're on day 3 you're probably good. just air lock it and forget it for a while.
 
I started 3.3 gallons on Saturday, and there is no foam on top at all but if you look at the surface it is "fizzing". :) I put it in a [plastic] carboy; it was well aerated but I put an airlock on it right away instead of using a bucket for a primary, and it's bubbling away. Don't know if that will hurt anything. It will pick up a little oxygen (and lose some of the dissolved CO2) when I rack it in about a week.

I racked to a 3 gallon glass carboy a few days ago. It doesn't taste very good yet, but it's not bad. Not too tart, no nasty flavors from leaving it on the 71B lees too long. It's drinkable now. I'll probably prime and bottle it in champagne bottles around December 1 to be carbed by New Years. :ban:
I think I need to get a new hydrometer because the reading was off the scale, something like .95, and there's no way that's right. (I didn't take an OG reading with this hydrometer, I used a refractometer.)
 
Any recommendations on how long this stuff should stay in the bottle before drinking for best results? I'm planning to give out some of it as Christmas gifts, wanted to know if I should put a "Best after" date on the label :)

EDIT: I moved the wine to secondary today, and snuck a taste in the process. Seemed to have a very strong booze taste, which I hope will mellow out a bit by the time it's been in the bottle for a while, and kind of a rose colour.
 
Hi. I'd like to try out wine (I do a fair amount of beer), and this looks like a nice place to start out low-cost. Any suggestion on which one which wine yeast? Thanks!
 
71B will reduce the acidity (that's the one I'm using now.)
D47 is safer for leaving it on the lees (trub).
Epernay II (Red Star Côte des Blanc) might be interesting, but it's a slow fermenter and can stick. I have a couple of packets but haven't tried it yet.

These are all really cheap dried yeasts; I have no idea why there's such a price difference from beer years. So you can experiment w/o breaking the bank.

EC-1118 and Red Star Premier Cuvée are beasts. I've used them in cider and they ferment totally dry and then need to age a while to be drinkable. Your mileage may vary :)
 
Thanks. That's helpful as far as yeast selection. Now topping off after racking. This will be my first effort at wine, so I don't have some from a previous batch to top off with (Not that I couldn't go buy some...haha). I have read that topping off with water is not optimal. What should I use?
 
My boss is a winemaker, and he says they add glass marbles to raise the level instead of topping it off.

Maybe you could add more grape juice? (Yooper, will that work, or will it cause problems?) I assume you'll only be racking once. I racked mine from a 4 gallon plastic carboy to a 3 gallon glass, and had a little left over, which I drank. I will bottle in a couple of weeks.
 
I topped mine off with Carlo Rossi Paisano. It improved the taste tremendously, but I have to admit--I made 5 gallons and racked it off into a 6 gallon carboy that I thought was 5 gallons, so I had to add the entire 4 liter jug of Carlo Rossi to top it off. But that's the only way I'll make it in the future. Without that 4 liters of Paisano, the Welch's stuff isn't fit to drink.
 
71B will reduce the acidity (that's the one I'm using now.)
D47 is safer for leaving it on the lees (trub).
Epernay II (Red Star Côte des Blanc) might be interesting, but it's a slow fermenter and can stick. I have a couple of packets but haven't tried it yet.

These are all really cheap dried yeasts; I have no idea why there's such a price difference from beer years. So you can experiment w/o breaking the bank.

EC-1118 and Red Star Premier Cuvée are beasts. I've used them in cider and they ferment totally dry and then need to age a while to be drinkable. Your mileage may vary :)

I had good results from 1118, but it does need a few months to age out. I used more sugar in the recipe, so it ended up somewhere around 15%. Surprisingly, not a lot of alcohol burn in the flavor. The wine is dry, but that's to my liking. I don't want it to taste like Mogen David. It's a decent table wine, and a real crowd-pleaser with family and friends.

I might have to try 71B next time around.
 
My first attempt at this is ready to bottle; I think I must have made a mistake somewhere, because it tastes kind of awful :( I'll bottle it anyway, see if it gets better with age.
 
I *just* finished bottling mine. Maybe I have no taste, but I kinda like it. (drinking a glass right now) I put about a gallon in swing-top bottles and primed with sugar. I really hope they are carbed by New Years Eve. :)
 
The recipe provided was awesome. Thank you. I made a batch with grape juice concentrate and a batch with mango peach juice. wine.jpg Both batches taste delicious. They were stabilized and slightly back sweetened. They were ready to drink within 2 months. I sugared them up to an OG of 1.090. Both came out to be great table wines. I gifted them for the holidays. After buying the juice with coupons, yeast, nutrients, clarifying agent, corks, used bottles, a full corked bottled cost me about 40 cents. Sweet! :mug:
 
I *just* finished bottling mine. Maybe I have no taste, but I kinda like it. (drinking a glass right now) I put about a gallon in swing-top bottles and primed with sugar. I really hope they are carbed by New Years Eve. :)
As long as you didn't stabilize it, it should be primed in time for New Years.
 
My first attempt at this is ready to bottle; I think I must have made a mistake somewhere, because it tastes kind of awful :( I'll bottle it anyway, see if it gets better with age.

if it's too dry and tart tasting, you may want to stabilize it and back sweeten it to your liking before you bottle it.
 
As long as you didn't stabilize it, it should be primed in time for New Years.

It wasn't bubbly at all, but it tasted good so I'm not really disappointed. I think the yeast (71B) wasn't up to the task. EC-1118 or Premier Cuvee probably could have carbed it, but it also might have tasted like crap.

ETA: now that it missed New Year's Eve, the plastic tester bottles are getting hard.
 
For my primary stage I am going open-air. Homer bucket with a sanitized paint strainer bag secured around bucket opening and thin lowel laid across the strainer. I ferment in a secluded room in my house and leave the air vents closed so there's essentially no air movement(or curious pets) so the co2 should blanket nicely on top of the brew. I'm going to whisk it daily to introduce o2 and take gravity reading and once it's reached 1.03 I will rack to a secondary with an air-lock.

I'm experimenting with an open mind and cheap ingredients.
 
the first batch of this i made was good, really grapey but good enough for me to drink. so i started a 2nd batch today. well... i was all kinds of out of sorts this morning, and accidentally put some strawberry lemonade meant for hard lemonade into primary before i realized what i was doing. sooo this has 1 qt of strawberry lemonade in it i guess :) we'll see how it turns out. i suspect it'll be tart.
 
Started one by original recipe (minus acid). Went to whisk in some extra O2 after 24hrs and that nearly got it to foam over my fermenter. Must be doing fine. Can't wait to see this to the end, I love concord.
 
I'm new to brewing and this forum. I just found this thread. Unfortunately, I already had started my first fermentation...which involves Welch's grape juice...before seeing all the useful information in this thread. I am just making 1 gal of this wine/experiment. I have a FastFerment 7.9 Gallon Conical Fermentor with all the extras...even the sampling port, but I want to get a little experience before I use it to make a full 5-6 gal batch of something.

Anyway, in regard to the Welch's "experiment", I used two 64 fl oz containers of premade juice with 2 lbs of cane sugar. Besides sanitizing everything with Star San, I did not use any yeast nutrient, Pectic Enzyme, Acid Blend, etc. I just want to see what the yeast can do. The OG was 1.132

I pitched Red Star Premier Cuvee Wine Yeast on 04-07-2016. I only took a few hours to show CO2 production. Today, three days later, the airlock is bubbling about 2 or 3 bubbles per second.

It's I good thing it has an alcohol tolerance of 18% since it will be close to that with all the sugar I put into the mix. I don't know if the yeast can really do 18% but it's going to get a good workout for sure! I also like the wide temperature range of this yeast. If...and that's a BIG if...it's good tasting in the end, I will use Potassium Sorbate/ Potassium Metabisulfite before bottling.

I enjoy the learning process!!

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Been looking at making this one for some time now. The ingredients are taking up space in my freezer and I have an empty carboy beckoning for it.

Couple questions:

1) What kind of yeast? I have a bunch of varieties in my fridge I need to use up soon!

2) what about oaking? I was thinking about tossing some oak in there.

3) could one use more juice concentrate instead of sugar? (Like especially if you don't use the acid blend?.... I suspect there's a reason for this, but haven't found it)

4) regarding some people finding it to be "too tart" with the acid blend is there a certain range to shoot for if, say, you used a ph strip to measure?

I would probably make a 3 gal batch of this.
 
Been looking at making this one for some time now. The ingredients are taking up space in my freezer and I have an empty carboy beckoning for it.

Couple questions:

1) What kind of yeast? I have a bunch of varieties in my fridge I need to use up soon!
I used 71B-1122 for mine. It metabolized a bit of the malic acid and helped with the acid bite.

2) what about oaking? I was thinking about tossing some oak in there.
I used 2oz. of medium toast French oak chips in primary and 2oz. of French oak cubes in secondary with ML bacteria.

3) could one use more juice concentrate instead of sugar? (Like especially if you don't use the acid blend?.... I suspect there's a reason for this, but haven't found it)
I used more concentrate, but it bumped the acid a bit. You should most definitely use a acid metabolizing yeast and ML bacteria to decrease the malic acid content. It really helped with the tartness and increased mouthfeel.

4) regarding some people finding it to be "too tart" with the acid blend is there a certain range to shoot for if, say, you used a ph strip to measure?
I was able to adjust pH from 3.03 to 3.11. I was also able to adjust TA from 10.5 to 6.9.

Here's a link to my variation:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=6771295&postcount=844

I'll post a tasting update in the near future. I think I have one bottle left. My "lipstick on a pig concord" was a big hit.
 
So, here are some tasting notes:

Appearance - Good color, good legs. Fairly decent color permeation from edge to edge.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1461883443.774114.jpg
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1461883856.381744.jpg

Aroma - Faint sweet aroma reminiscent of cotton candy. Not super aromatic; need to struggle for a good bouquet. The acid may be killing other scents.

Body - On the thinner side of the body spectrum. It might feel thinner due to acidity. The 13.5% ABV helps boost the thin body and mouthfeel.

Taste - Nicer taste for a dry Concord, but very very tart. The acidity dominates the taste. I can taste a little oak, but it's overwhelmed by the acidity. The "foxiness" and "muskiness" of Concord is very noticeable. It has a grape soda flavor too--I attribute it to the Concord foxiness and muskiness.

Finish - Acidity dominates the finish. No off-flavors are present in the aftertaste and finish, just the acid bite from the concord.

Overall thought - Decent for a dry concord, but way too much acidity. The acidity dominates the whole wine. It detracts from the nose, body, taste, and finish.

When I make this one again I'll use
- 2 or 3 concentrate cans per gallon (and use no additional store-bought grape juice)
- boost OG with sucrose instead of dextrose
- adjust pH (to 3.5ish) with Acidex or chalk
- Use same amount of oak in secondary and hope it comes through without the acid bite.

Good luck!
 
...So I'm gonna try making this wine this evening using a glass gallon jug. Can I just put a blowoff tube in some sanitizer, or is the napkin, (I'm thinking an old CLEAN sock would fit nicely :p), the best bet for the first 5 days or so?
Thanks
:mug:
 
...So I'm gonna try making this wine this evening using a glass gallon jug. Can I just put a blowoff tube in some sanitizer, or is the napkin, (I'm thinking an old CLEAN sock would fit nicely :p), the best bet for the first 5 days or so?
Thanks
:mug:

What would be a okay substitute for "Grape Tannin"? MLHBS does not have grape tannin, only "Wine Tannin" containing chestnut extract. I'm not too sure about using it because of nut allergies in my family.

A couple of raisins,or a cup of strong tea? :confused:
 
What would be a okay substitute for "Grape Tannin"? MLHBS does not have grape tannin, only "Wine Tannin" containing chestnut extract. I'm not too sure about using it because of nut allergies in my family.

A couple of raisins,or a cup of strong tea? :confused:

...I made a strong cup of black tea, tossed in a dozen chopped raisins. Dumped the "tea" in with the water to boil the sugar, peptic acid, and yeast nutrient. When it cooled, I put it in the gal jug with the juice. Aerated, etc.;)
 
What would be a okay substitute for "Grape Tannin"? MLHBS does not have grape tannin, only "Wine Tannin" containing chestnut extract. I'm not too sure about using it because of nut allergies in my family.

A couple of raisins,or a cup of strong tea? :confused:

Ole,

As far as I understand, they are pretty processed and more or less tannic acid. I thought they were the same, though I am not an experienced winemaker.

According to this website, both "wine tannin" and "grape tannin" are both tannic acid: though it appears the "grape tannin" is a darker color and better for reds, the "wine tannin" is geared toward white and rose.

http://www.eckraus.com/2-oz-wine-tannin.html

Again, check with someone more experienced or read the website or call them and see what you think, but that's how I am reading it.

As for nut allergies, I guess that's one where you're better safe than sorry. Tannins are basically the "zest" of a grape if that makes sense, from the peels. One thing you could try is go to the grocery store and buy some concord grapes and smash them. (Again, purely an idea, not tried this, but seems logical).

Plums (the skins) are also high in tannins. I would think raisins would impart some, or maybe better yet Zante Currant (in the raisin section, available at most grocery stores). Apples also have tannins, I would guess going for the skins but the more grape-like the better. Black Tea does have tannins. Lots of people do this for meads.

I would suppose blueberries might have them, you could try that (I absolutely could not see that turning out bad unless it got infected).

In the end, I don't think a lack of tannin would be the end of the world if it's just a gallon, it's not like it will age forever anyway. I haven't made mine yet, but I would go ahead; just keep your expectations modest, relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew, and you'll be happy.
 
Ole,

As far as I understand, they are pretty processed and more or less tannic acid. I thought they were the same, though I am not an experienced winemaker.

According to this website, both "wine tannin" and "grape tannin" are both tannic acid: though it appears the "grape tannin" is a darker color and better for reds, the "wine tannin" is geared toward white and rose.

http://www.eckraus.com/2-oz-wine-tannin.html

Again, check with someone more experienced or read the website or call them and see what you think, but that's how I am reading it.

As for nut allergies, I guess that's one where you're better safe than sorry. Tannins are basically the "zest" of a grape if that makes sense, from the peels. One thing you could try is go to the grocery store and buy some concord grapes and smash them. (Again, purely an idea, not tried this, but seems logical).

Plums (the skins) are also high in tannins. I would think raisins would impart some, or maybe better yet Zante Currant (in the raisin section, available at most grocery stores). Apples also have tannins, I would guess going for the skins but the more grape-like the better. Black Tea does have tannins. Lots of people do this for meads.

I would suppose blueberries might have them, you could try that (I absolutely could not see that turning out bad unless it got infected).

In the end, I don't think a lack of tannin would be the end of the world if it's just a gallon, it's not like it will age forever anyway. I haven't made mine yet, but I would go ahead; just keep your expectations modest, relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew, and you'll be happy.

The two lhbs near me, (25 mi. radius), both carry the nut extract wine tannin: http://homebrew.voelckerbeverage.com/wine-tannin-p/ld6300a.htm
"...from European/Spanish Chestnut tree"

I'm not really worried about long term storage, I don't see this tasty beverage lasting too long...:D
 
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