Wine Juice

[Andrew Hodgson]

Hello wine maker friends!

So I need some advice, I came into a 6 gallon pail of South Africa Savignon Blanc juice from my LHBS and now I have it sitting in the house. It is in a sealed bucket with one of those tiny airlocks to allow pressure out. A few days and I have already had some sputtering activity in the airlock.

Now I am just using the wine to experiment in sours/brut IPA's but my question is how long will the juice keep just sitting there and am I being a stubborn about not thinking I will need a malolactic culture to process some of the mallic acid the wine will hold?

My plan was to taste the juice and probably add 1/2 - 1 gallon to a sour beer and the same amount to a Brut IPA and then mess around with the rest. I was planning on using a Chardonnay yeast for both of the beers as this Bootleg yeast can work for wine and beer and just pitching the yeast into the stand-alone beer, then a week into primary adding the gallon of wine juice with some yeast nute into the FV.

Any thoughts from people who know how to handle wine would be appreciated. Cheers.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Any idea about how much acidity is in the grapes you got? (i.e. did you measure a TA or did they give you the specs?)

 

[madscientist451]

I came into a 6 gallon pail of South Africa Savignon Blanc juice A few days and I have already had some sputtering activity in the airlock.

my question is how long will the juice keep just sitting there and am I being a stubborn about not thinking I will need a malolactic culture to process some of the mallic acid the wine will hold?



Any thoughts from people who know how to handle wine would be appreciated. Cheers.

Your wine juice is fermenting now. I'd get a 5 gallon carboy and dump half the bucket in that, let it make itself into wine.
You can add more yeast or let the natural yeast go at it it. You can add campden tablets or not. I'd skip the campden and add some white wine yeast.
A cool ferment is best for white wine.
Use the rest for experiments ASAP or freeze it. If you have enough freezer space you could freeze the whole thing.
I don't know why you would want to use malolactic culture in a beer.
Malic acid is the predominant acid in apples. Grape juice has mostly tartaric acid but does contain some malic. Some juice is more acidic than others.
Tasting the unfermented juice to figure out how you are going to use it in a beer recipe is pointless, because fermented wine juice doesn't taste anything like the unfermented juice.
Commercial breweries that use wine juice have to add the juice to the beer wort pre-fermentation, they can't make wine if they have a beer license. Homebrewers don't have this restriction so you can ferment the wine and beer separately and blend after fermentation.
White wine usually tastes much better after about 6-9 months of aging.
Many commercial beers with grape juice added are aged in barrels for 9 months or longer.
So that's why I would use half your bucket to make wine and the rest in some beer experiments.

 

[Andrew Hodgson]

I have no specs on the grapes used for the juice, just that they are South African Savignon Blanc grapes.

That sounds like a plan Mad Scientist. I will throw the juice into a bucket and let it ferment as wine.

I have the Chard yeast already so I reckon I'll use that.

I read about making wine yeast starters and it seems the preferred technique for this would be:

Pull a pint of juice while transferring to the carboy. Add a 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient and 1tsp of sugar and pitch yeast into starter.

Continue stepping up the starter with nute/sugar (I have seen as frequent as every 2 hours listed on some sites), decant and pitch. I'll save some of the yeast as well for future use.

Seem like a good plan?

 

[madscientist451]

I just re-hydrate and toss it in, I've heard that adding yeast nutrient when
re-hydrating is counter productive. Use go-ferm protect instead. Add the nutrient 24-48 hours after pitching the yeast, but I never add any nutrient to wine juice and it works out fine. Wine yeast is pretty cheap and I usually add 2-3 packs for 5 gallons. When fermentation is done, let it sit for a few weeks or a month, then rack it off to a carboy and fill it all the way up. I use cheap wine that comes in gallon jugs to fill up any head space after racking. Let it sit about 6-9 months in a cool place and it should be ready to drink.
I don't usually add finings, it seems to clear by itself.
Making wine with juice is really easy. If I get a bucket of juice for about $50, it works out to about $2 a bottle.
If you want to get test equipment, and play around with additives and tweak the wine this way or that, go for it. I keep it simple and let the wine be what it is.