Welch's Wine

[movement]

Was messing around with some extra stuff i had laying around yesterday.

Ingredients:

-1 Bottle Welch's 100% Grape Juice (not the canned concentrate stuff, the actual juice in the plastic bottle)

-1/2 cup honey

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-1 tablespoon Acid Blend

-1 teaspoon Gypsum

-pinch Irish Moss (for clarity)

-Some Kinda Dry Red Wine Yeast, I used lavlin 1116 (or something like that i had laying around)

Supplies:

-The bottle the grape juice came in

-airlock and cap to seal the bottle top with for the airlock (you can use the actual cap to the bottle if you'd like just by drilling a hole in it, just twist tops do let air leak on occasion)

-your usual brewing ****

______________Instructions____________

STERILIZE EVERYTHING THAT TOUCHES YOUR WORT


put WHOLE bottle of grape juice, honey, sugar, acid blend, gypsum, Irish Moss Into a pot, get that **** to a boil, let boil for like 5 Minutes (be careful, there is a lot less volume in this then most recipe's this **** will boil over, so watch the heat!)

Let Cool to about 100-105 Degrees (the bottle is plastic, don't want it to melt the bottle and/or get little plastic particles in it and ruin ****)

Funnel it in to about 3 inches to the top (make sure u leave a wee bit in the pot to wash the yeast down).

Rehydrate the yeast (ad a teaspoon of sugar to that boil for good luck if you wish)

Pour into bottle, then take the rest of the stuff in the pot and wash down that yeast.

Airlock with bottled water for the first 12 hours (until suck back has stopped) then replace water with Vodka (who evers Idea it was for the airlock With Vodka is a god damned genius Kodus to you my friend!)

THE BOTTLE IS PLASTIC TO DO SQUEEZE OR PUT TOO MUCH PRESSURE ON,
when you do this, it will force air through the air lock and then the airlock will suck the vodka back in.

I did this recipe yesterday, at 4:30 pm. i got home tonight/ early morning at 1:30am and **** is fermenting smoothly, just watch if your getting suck back.

I have no clue how this will turn out, as I said I was screwing around, hopefully it will be pretty =)

 

[movement]

Ohh my apologies about my foul language.

and when i say put it in the bottle... YES i mean the actual bottle the grape juice came in, ferments in there, takes up little room and looks cool. will post a picture in a little bit

 

[BigKahuna]

will post a picture in a little bit

My Guess is it'll be locked by then....Don't bother.

Man...Why would you call this Prison Hooch? You gotta know that's going to get the boot!

I'd think that after having boiled Grape Juice, your Irish Moss isn't going to help a lot...You're going to need Pectic Enzyme.


Maybe a Mod could change the name....just so we can continue to discuss this?

 

[movement]

lol, never made wine before. just got bored and wanted to ferment something in the bottle.


so ways to get rid of it:
so should i...
A: do 90 on the turnpike and release it out the window?
B: give it to a friend and tell him its really good
C: give it to a crack head in newark for money

 

[Toppers]

Why all the effort and ingredients just to boil it and make something disgusting? LOL

You'd be better of with Welchs juice and just sugar.

 

[movement]

Yo BK, how come you're not a moderator?
someone should definitely make you one, i mean from what ive read around here, your like the master.

 

[EvilTOJ]

Just because he's calling it prison hooch, doesn't mean it actually IS. This actually does look like a great recipe that shouldn't taste that bad. I've made Welch's wine before, and although it's rather bland, it's still better than Box O' WIne.

Actual hooch is more like "I'm putting sugar and bay leaves and bread yeast in a bottle under my bed to get F'd up"

 

[Pogo]

How much of your mixture was left over when you funneled it back into the original jug?

It seems that when juice is shipped in plastic bottles, as opposed to glass, there is zero headspace!

Adding sugar, etc., will give you more volume than the jug can handle if you didn't drink a couple of cups or so to handle the additions and create a headspace for the foam.

Depending on the yeast used, you may have foam in the airlock by now if you didn't allow it enough room to work.

I've done several experiments with variations to Apfelwein using the original containers, which are #1 PET, too, BTW, and have had to catch, and ferment, the overflow in another bottle, 16 ounce Gatorade, which is #1 PET, also!

Actually, the extra bottle of juice comes in handy for topping off after taking gravity samples!

Rather than drill the plastic cap, I've found that the same tapered stopper that fits my 6-gallon glass carboys, also fit 1-gallon glass jugs and all plastic juice jugs, and all sport drink bottles from 1-gallon down to 16 ounce.

So...I now make sure to keep plenty of extra stoppers and airlocks around.

Cheers!

Pogo

 

[BigKahuna]

Yo BK, how come you're not a moderator?
someone should definitely make you one, i mean from what ive read around here, your like the master.

First of all...I am a master of NOTHING! I just try and help when I can, and learn when I can't. I BOW DOWN to the fine folks that act as the mod Squad on this forum. They have had some really tough issues to deal with of late, and I think they've done a great job taking care of them. I could only hope that someday I might be worthy of Mod Status.

Just because he's calling it prison hooch, doesn't mean it actually IS. This actually does look like a great recipe that shouldn't taste that bad.

That's what I'm saying. This should be pretty interesting. I will definitely look forward to seeing how this progresses.

 

[the_bird]

If the recipe includes Irish Moss and Acid Blend, I'm going to assume the poster actually knows a little bit about brewing.

Yooper's got a recipe for Welch's Wine that she likes. We were at a winery in the Finger Lakes, one of the places we went to had a wine that they were proud used the same grapes as Welch's. After tasting that koolaid-esque concoction (WAY over-sweetened).... ugh, not our taste .

 

[CBBaron]

Despite the attitude and language used in the OP (hooch??!) this recipe is close to being a decent wine.
First as BK mentioned don't boil the juice. That is something needed by beer but only drives off flavor from juice and honey and sets pectins in fruit. This will require pectin enzyme if you expect it to clear.
Second, while a plastic container is OK for primary fermentation, it needs to be transferred to a glass or other impermeable container for longer term aging.
This wine will take some time to mellow and I think it would probably be best stabilized and back sweetened.

Craig

 

[BigKahuna]

This wine will take some time to mellow and I think it would probably be best stabilized and back sweetened.

Craig

What if it's just stabilized and sweetened then bottled? He's only going to get what....3 bottles?
I'm guessing a flavor similar to Mogan David Concord Grape Wine?

 

[Yooper]

What if it's just stabilized and sweetened then bottled? He's only going to get what....3 bottles?
I'm guessing a flavor similar to Mogan David Concord Grape Wine?

Yep, sweetened it will taste very much like Mogan David. Unsweetened, it's a tart table wine. I have never used gypsum in wines (I have hard water as it is), or Irish Moss (won't help if not boiled), but the rest looks ok to me!

 

[movement]

well when i boiled it all together alot evaporated so i have a good inch or 2 of head room, the yeast i used is montrachet yeast, so it wasnt very foamy.

as for knowing what to use irish moss and acid blend wise, i read a book, and watched my friends make some cool stuff. i just researched what the basic ingredients they used and i put it together to what i had available, i figured if theres no preservatives in welchs, and people are making some good looking apple wine with apple juice, figured i could do something with grape juice lol.

i didn't have any yeast nutrient so recipes ive looked at that didn't require yeast nutrient used honey, so i figured that would substitute for it.

its fermenting, and the smell coming off the airlock isnt half bad.

i just called it prison hooch cause it was soo barebone that i could picture someone making it in their toilet in their cell lol.

but i have heard of something called whitelighting which is, sugar, water and yeast fermented, distilled and filtered, but because its more than 80 proof it would be highly illegal to make and would blind you had u made it incorrectly, but this confuses me on some levels because say u were to make a vodka with like a very carbohydrate/starchy mash and u ferment and distill it and it comes out to be 45% alcohol, would you have to throw it away, would 45% alcohol be too much, because everclear is like 60% and thats store bought.

im taking a picture of the welchs wine now, my apologies for the bad quality, its with my cell phone

 

[Yooper]

well when i boiled it all together alot evaporated so i have a good inch or 2 of head room, the yeast i used is montrachet yeast, so it wasnt very foamy.

as for knowing what to use irish moss and acid blend wise, i read a book, and watched my friends make some cool stuff. i just researched what the basic ingredients they used and i put it together to what i had available, i figured if theres no preservatives in welchs, and people are making some good looking apple wine with apple juice, figured i could do something with grape juice lol.

i didn't have any yeast nutrient so recipes ive looked at that didn't require yeast nutrient used honey, so i figured that would substitute for it.

its fermenting, and the smell coming off the airlock isnt half bad.

i just called it prison hooch cause it was soo barebone that i could picture someone making it in their toilet in their cell lol.

but i have heard of something called whitelighting which is, sugar, water and yeast fermented, distilled and filtered, but because its more than 80 proof it would be highly illegal to make and would blind you had u made it incorrectly, but this confuses me on some levels because say u were to make a vodka with like a very carbohydrate/starchy mash and u ferment and distill it and it comes out to be 45% alcohol, would you have to throw it away, would 45% alcohol be too much, because everclear is like 60% and thats store bought.

Well, next time, DON'T BOIL! You shouldn't ever boil juice- you'll set the pectins (think grape jelly), and no recipe should ever instruct you to boil juice. I recommend looking at some recipes and doing some reading (our wine recipe database has many easy juice recipes) so that you know what you're doing and not just throwing things in willy-nilly.

Distilling is illegal, and we won't discuss it here. High alcohol beverages are not illegal to buy but they are illegal to make at home. I'm sure there are websites out there that can be more helpful with that. If you would like to continue to talk about winemaking, though, this is the place for it.

 

[beerthirty]

Go Yooper! this thread was getting a bit underage sounding, although the OP probably isn't. Maybe just unaware of our self policing and love of quality not quantity.

 

[movement]

ohh, ok, I didn't even know it was illegal to distill stuff.

and now i know i will never boil juice again, so even though you don't boil the juice, you would still have to rehydrate the yeast right?

sorry if I'm a pain, just started with wine and mead making so I thank you guys very much for clearing all of this up for me, if the name of this thread still angers you just delete it.

 

[BigKahuna]

That's partially why I initially sugguested changing the name. We have a few rules here.
#1 No Hooch Threads
#2 No Speak of concentration of alcohol (Distilling and Freezing Included)

You are on track to have a drinkable batch here, and your n00b Questions can help others that come behind you. Your next batch will be better, and the batch after that will be better yet.

Welcome to the forum, Keep your questions honest, and your wine home made.