Supermarket Juice Wine How To guide and Recipes.

Cheers Chippy and Matt, I plan on racking them tomorrow night!

Bottled the wow..it finished at .998 after back sweetened.. had a sneaky glass and love the taste.. its a bit strong (alcohol)
Do you put less sugar in to make it a bit weaker?

Do you put less sugar in to make it a bit weaker?

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Yes but tasking it too low stops its preservative effect, if you plan to drink it fairly soon its not a problem but if you plan on ageing it for a long period it could be.

There is a calculator (third one down) that allows you to enter an amount of sugar and it tells you the % ABV. http://www.brewhaus.com/Calculators-C108.aspx

So tonight I racked my WOW, this is the first time I have done this and you'll see from the pic I lost a bit in the process I added a campden tablet to each PET and also added in the potassium sorbate, I'm just about to add the finings. The only thing is...should I top these up with water? they look a little on the low side

If you have degassed you can top up.

I've had good success recently with pink grapefruit wine:

1 litre Sainsburys red grape juice
3/4 litre Tescos pink grapefruit juice
(both currently available 3 litres for £2.50)
750g sugar
1/3 tspn pectolase
1tspn nutrient
Allinsons bread yeast (YMMV!)

Result is a dry pink wine with strong but pleasant grapefruit taste (assuming you like grapefruit juice!. If using bread yeast, allow 7-10 days after end of fermentation for weird odour to dissipate before bottling.

I had previously tried 1L white grapefruit juice but result was too acid, whilst 1/2 L was too bland. Chossing an in between amount worked, though I think the switch to pink juice also helped because it seems generally less acid though it actually has slightly less sugar content. Also, I think the new Sainsbury's red grape juice is better than the Tescos white juice I'd used previously, which seemed to make a more bland but acidic wine.

I shook the living daylights out of them :), but there is a possibility of some gas still in there! Can I continue degassing if I have added finings, and potassium sorbate? because I added them in without thinking of the gas :?

acott said:

I shook the living daylights out of them :), but there is a possibility of some gas still in there! Can I continue degassing if I have added finings, and potassium sorbate? because I added them in without thinking of the gas :?

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If you shake the DJ then release your hand the hiss you hear will get less every time you do it, keep going until you are happy most of it has gone, i use a degassing wand in a drill that i made from a plastic coat hanger, it makes degassing a couple of minute job and there is no lifting involved.

Here is a video on how to make one if you are interested - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMwq3TpkqCE

1 litre Sainsburys red grape juice
3/4 litre Tescos pink grapefruit juice
(both currently available 3 litres for £2.50)
750g sugar
1/3 tspn pectolase
1tspn nutrient
Allinsons bread yeast (YMMV!)

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I bet that would benefit from some tannin and glycerine, i use youngs super wine yeast compound as i have read many times in the forum bread yeast is not the best thing to use when making wine.

Every so often we run across someone who is trying to make wine using bread yeast or baker's yeast. Yes, I'm talking about the plain ole' yeast you pick up in the baking aisle of your local grocery store. And every time I hear of someone using this yeast, the question that always screams at me is, "why?"

There are so many advantages to using wine yeast and so many disadvantages to using bread yeast that I can't imagine why anyone would want to use it. The only conclusion I can come up with is that there is a strong misunderstanding about what yeast really are and what they do.

Yeast are what turn sugar into alcohol. They are living organisms that consume and digest the sugars. As a result, they excrete alcohol and CO2 gas. Along with these two compounds also come various trace amounts of enzymes, oils, acid, etc. These are the things that give different alcohols their different characters.

The thing to understand here is that all yeast are not the same. How one strain responds to the sugars varies from the next. There are literally thousands of different strains that have been identified or developed as hybrids, all with varying characteristics that make them suitable or not-so-suitable for performing a particular task.

This brings us back to the bread yeast. Most bread yeast will ferment alcohol up to about 8% with ease, but when trying to produce alcohol beyond this level, the bread yeast begin to struggle, very often stopping around 9% or 10%. This is short of what we'd like to obtain for almost any wine.

Bread yeast do not clear out very readily or settle very firmly, either. They typically will form a low layer of hazy wine in the bottom of the fermenter that will never completely clear out.

Even more importantly, bread yeast produce alcohol that is plagued with a lot of off-flavors. The bread yeast have to work so hard to produce the alcohol that off-flavored enzymes and fatty acids are produced along with the alcohol.

There are several other issues with using bread yeast, but these are the big ones: the alcohol, the clearing, and the flavor.

There are many, many different strains of wine yeast. These yeasts are bred over time to produce something of a 'super' wine yeast. Each one becoming the ultimate choice for tackling the particular task at hand.

Some ferment to total dryness better than others. Some have better alcohol tolerance than others. Some put off fruitier aromas than others. Some pack more firmly to the bottom of the fermenter than others. Some wine yeast even have flavor qualities that make them ideal for fermenting one type of fruit over another. The list goes on and on. And it goes without say, they do it all better than bread yeast.

On our website, we have a wine yeast profile charts listed for each line of wine yeast we carry: Red Star, Lalvin and Vintner's Harvest Wine Yeast. You can view these profile charts from a link on the product page for each of these wine yeasts.

The last thing I'd like to point out is that buying actual wine yeast is not that expensive. Currently, you can purchase wine yeast for as little as $1.55. I haven't priced bread yeast recently, but there can't be that much difference in price. So if you value your time and effort at all go with the wine yeast not bread yeast.

Sorry just to make double sure, it is ok to degas after adding the finings?

I always degas, stabilise and add finings in that order, it wont harm if you have already added finings. :thumb:

My 25 litre batch of white wow goes like this:
6 litres WGJ
2 litres apple juice
2 litres pineapple juice
2 litres grapefruit juice
(All standard supermarket own brand)
12.5 litres of tap water
0.5 litres strong tea (8 bags)
2 heaped t spoons Citric acid
1 heaped t spoon Yeast nutrient
4 kg granulated sugar

Chuck it all in (dissolve the sugar in some of the water)
Pitch the yeast at 20c and leave for three weeks
Original gravity should be 1100 ish and final gravity shoud get down to 990 or a little lower.

Add stabiliser and campdem (Leave a couple of days)

Add finings (leave five days)

Transfer to secondary FV with 3 litres of welch's white grape and peach juice (leave for three weeks)

You should end up with a nice clear 13.5% wow.

I can't honestly vouch for it as I'm neither a wine drinker or the consumer of it.
The wife drinks it with lemonade and she likes it.

Tonight i have stabilised and degassed 3 DJ's of apple/raspberry + WGJ.

In the 3 DJ's i racked from i have started one DJ of Apple/raspberry + WGJ and in the other two apple/mango + WGJ.

You will have probably noticed these two WOW variants are high on my list of favourites. :lol:

Hi guys
Can you help me, I have a 25litre bucket
7litres vitafit RGJ lidl
3litres solevita cranberry juice lidl
Yeast nutrient
Wine yeast
Pectolase
Citric acid
Camden tabs
2kg of sugar
How much water do I need to add to this? If any?
I dnt want a watered down solution.
Is there a ratio of how much water for WOWs you need?
Any comments will be appreciated.
The aim is for a redish rose type wine.

I use 1 litre of the main juice (the one i want it to taste of) and 1 litre of WGJ in each DJ then top up to thee neck when i have degassed and finished it.

You have enough juice for a 22.5 litres so bung it all in and top up to that level with water.

You need to add 5 teaspoons of -

Yeast nutrient
Pectolase
Citric acid

You only need to add 1 tsp of yeast (bung two in if you are worried it may fail)

You need to make the total sugar content (including cartons) to 5500g if you want the finished wine to be around 13%

Brilliant thanks chippy
Well 1litre of vitafit rgj is 16.1g per 100ml
So 1litre equals 161g,
1litre of cranberry equals 11g per 100ml
so 1litre equals 110g

7x 161=1127
+3x 110=330
+2kg packs sugar
Total sugar=3457g

I am 2kg short, will buy and let you all know the results.
Thanks again.
P.s. I will brew tea to act as tanning.

I use 3 bags in a mug of water for one DJ, for a 5 gallon brew you will need a lot more, i would use a pan and put plenty of bags in.

Let us know how you get on. :thumb:

My recent Wows had a lot of gunge at the neck of the Demijohn, what's the best way to get rid before racking, tried to manoeuvre the tube through it, but had no luck, and quite a bit went through the tube, maybe with Wows this is something you cant do much about.
Any ideas, what do you Lads do?

Its a wow thing, some juices cause this others dont, a little aways gets into the DJ but it doesn't matter as when you clear the wine there is always sediment left just a lot less, its easy to avoid when you bottle it..

wino2012 said:

Without doubt my favourite white is Marlborough Sav Blanc. The best I have tasted comes it at around £12.99 a bottle

I have been fiddling around for yonks trying to replicate it, and this is the closest I have got to to it yet:

1 ltr WGJ
1ltr Pineapple - not from concentrate
1 ltr apple juice
700g sugar
pectolase
cup of strong tea
juice of 1 lemon
nutrient
GV9 Champagne Yeast
Juice (no pips) of 3 passion fruits

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Can i ask why the Pineapple juice is not from concentrate? i have a bottle sitting in the cupboard about to go out of date but it's the from concentrate variety, can i use it?