Supermarket juice wine and Wurzels orange wine

paulbrrtt said:

ok i got that now its 10.5 of which 10 .2 sugars, so am i right in thinking 120 grams?

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Or even 102g

Pretty similar to the orange juice, so you can't have split your sugar or concentrate equally. I think I would be inclined to make up a drop of sugar syrup and use that to top up after a few days.

you hit the nail on the head there, as I used my measuring jug to pitch the yeast and didnt have another one so i just poured me syrup in on a guesstamate. lesson learned get another jug lol

i was just wondering if i used demarara sugar instead of white sugar (to top up) what the difference would be, anyone tried this?

You might notice a difference if you use 3lbs or so of demerara, for example in something like a wheat & raisin, but it's not going to matter a damn what you use for topping up, unless you go for something radical like black treacle.

Today I realised I havnt got any spare DJs, so killed 2 birds with one stone by buying the coopers lager kit and 4 big bottles of water, made the kit up using the bottled water and used 2 of the empty bottles (one for a TC the other for another wurzels, leaves me with 2 spare bottles). For some reason though the TC doesnt seem to be doing to well there is a head forming but no bubbling yet at all, also there is a very small piece of plastic from the bottle top which has fallen in should i unscrew and get it out or leave it till its finished its a tiny slither must have been left on when I drilled the hole for the airlock

Nice going Paul, that sounds quite a productive day :thumb:

I can't comment on the TC, I've only made 2 small batches and probably won't bother again but I don't remember how quickly things got going. However, nothing compares to a Wurzel, I started 4 gallons yesterday and it's storming away in the kitchen, currently 3 pops per second.

I wouldn't worry about the little sliver of plastic, fair enough if you can reach it with some sanitised tweezers, but I don't suppose it will do any harm to leave it.

Good Evening!!

Last week i made my first wine kit in 7 years and i am so happy! Forgot how nice it is watching the airlock ploop away and, finding loads of help on the forum, i was inspired to fill my other DJ with blueberry friut tea and white grape. Got everything done yesterday and was chuffed to see the must bubbling away today. But a small problemo. Forgot to put any citric acid (lemon juice) in it. Can i put any in now or will it kill every thing? I don't mind striking this one down to bad luck (and getting all over keen) but i want a drink that i can be proud to offer around, not one to cook with!!

Any ideas chaps? :wha: :wha:

Add it now or tomorrow or when fermentation has finished or to taste when you bottle, it doesn't matter

thank you, have just taken it out of the fridge whilst i was gettinng a cider. Fingers crossed

Hi all,

I have been getting rather carried away with my homebrewing reincarnation, three Young's wine buddy kits and a 'brew by an idiot' Wurzel concoction, but tonight I prepared a measured, by the book, juice wine with numbers to make it repeatable. So here is the recipe.....

2L Aldi Red Grape juice - 160g/l sugar
1L Aldi White Grape juice - 151g/l sugar
1.25Kg sugar in 800ml boiling water
1 tsp pectolase
1 tsp citric acid
1 tsp glycerine
1 tsp Young's Super Yeast (includes nutrient)

This all seemed to work out at 4.5 litres and made an SG at 1142. I know this is quite high but I wanted it this way so I get a high ABV, this is for Christmas after all, I want people to know they have had a drink!

The Young's yeast seems to be able to take a very high SG, the concoction Moley advised me (the idiot) on was 1156 SG and although slow to start has already fermented out to 1004 and has had sugar added to make it up to 1038 and is nearly finished again. I give all my brews a shake at least twice a day unless they are clearing.

I also made a pure white grape brew, with an SG of 1154 from 4 litres WGJ and approx 1.8 kg sugar + standard supplements which seems to have taken 4 days to get going but is flying now.

The Morrisons 5L mineral water bottles are very good DJ replacements, especially with a 25mm reamer bit to hole the screw top. I am becoming a big fan of these as you can put on many brews with varying characteristics.

Anyhow I hope my maths adds up with you Moley, if not please let me know what you think.

TTFN,

Diesel1.

You've obviously sussed the theory and your numbers make sense now I understand your objectives, even if those are radically different to mine. The best of luck.

Moley
Thank you very much for this post.
It has been yet another eye opener for me since joining the Forum, along with TC’s, CFC’s and yeast ranching.
All of these I have achieved from reading the relevant posts.
I’ve been growing my own grapes for wine making for nearly 30 years, the major problem at my latitude (53 degs N) is the acid content of the must.
This I have to measure and try to adjust accordingly.
I just thought that the supermarket juices, designed for drinking, may be a little low in acid.
Do you measure or do you just adjust to taste after filtering/fining.
Once again an excellent post!

Thanks evanvine.

To be honest, I have never measured acidity, the grape juice may be low in acid so I've just used what I hope is common sense about any other ingredients, and may have added 1/2 or 1 tsp of citric if I thought it was necessary.

I mostly seem to have got it right, although grapefruit is a definite :nono:
One bottle of that could be useful for blending with one gallon of something acid deficient.

Hey Moley
If it works it's right!
With grapes there several different acids and you can only strip out the malic acid with chalk.
Try and do them all with chalk and you get nasty results happening.
The ideal acid level is 0.4 to 0.5% sulphuric.
Supermarket apple juice comes out at 0.4% and therefore will stand being fairly dry.
Just thought I'd give that little bit of trivia!

Just reading this topic -abit technical for me though being a newbie! spose i dont need anything else to fry my brain but beings im a enquiring mind type of person just wondered what the acid actually does in wine? and why some home made wines dont need it added? as the wurzels wine does not call for any acid being added does it? Hope not anyway as i never added any to mine!!

Citric acid does exactly what is says on the tin.
Adds a more acidic taste to the finished wine.

The Wurzels doesn't need it because it's already got a load of citric from the orange juice in it.

If the wine/cider does not have enough acid it will taste flat and lifeless.
Too much acid and it will taste sharp and sour.

Hi evanvine didn't think I could glean much more from this thread but how wrong can you be now learnt a lot about acid levels thanks for that. Is this thread going to be everlasting. Picked up 2 litres of Cherry and Apple Juice in Tesco going to try it in a demi john with white grape and one with red grape.
Picked up some more 5 litre water bottles of water in Lidle @ 59p each great demi johns.

Please keep the advice and results of your supermarket juice wine coming. We have one bottle of our first Wurzels orange left we really enjoyed it, must admit didn't put stabiliser in only campden tablet really nice taste and even though OG and SG suggested it was 12.6% we would argue with that as it certainly affected my walking .

Currently waiting for Cranberry and red grape and Blueberry and red grape to finish. :whistle: :whistle:

Also Mr Witch pressed some of our pears and he had two litres spare so he has put 1 litre each in a demijohn and added 1 litre of red grape and 1 with white grape, may be **** but didn't cost much so nothing to loose and a lot to gain. :grin: :grin:

Glad to have been of service.
If you want to know how to measure acid levels (not pH) thats a whole post on it's own!

Tesco's near me have started stocking a new juice, it is White grape mango and coconut, sound crazy, I think ill pick up a couple of litres of that later and give it a whirl.