Possible Recipe

I got my first WOW on the go a few weeks back and now i fancy trying making something different. Heres what i am proposing.


1 x 440ml bottle Lowicz cherry syrup.
2ltr red/purple grape juice( cartoned from supermarket ).
Sugar*.
water topped up to 4.5l.

*once i obtain specific cartons of grape juice i can note the sugar content ( and from the Lowicz ) and calculate how much sugar i need to add.


I know this is most certainly a basic recipe on the grand scheme of things, but wanted to know, as a beginner to the winemaking world, if the seasoned winemakers in the house think this is worth having a pop at. Or could tell me if its a no-no.


RE Lowicz syrup. I wouldn't of known this stuff existed if it wasn't for a thread on this forum which i cant find, well done that man/woman for discovering it. :thumb:

brizleciderarmy said:

RE Lowicz syrup. I wouldn't have known this stuff existed if it wasn't for a thread on this forum which i cant find, well done that man/woman for discovering it. :thumb:

Click to expand...

Here it is.

I fully agree, excellent syrups with no preservatives.

Go for it :thumb:

If you want to retain more of the cherry flavour, add the syrup later in the fermentation.

Moley said:

If you want to retain more of the cherry flavour, add the syrup later in the fermentation.

Click to expand...

Duly noted. Looking forward to this one.

Finally got this recipe on the go albeit slightly modified from the original plan. Ingredients are as below:

Yeast: 5g Young's All Purpose Red.
2.5L Red grape juice. Not concentrate.
440ml Towicz Wisnia cherry syrup.
830g sugar ( 696g in the juice ). 1525g total.
2.5ml yeast nutrient.
5ml pectolase.
1/4 cup of black tea.






The maths worked it out to have an OG of 1.110 ( for the full 5 litres ) so hopefully nice and strong at the end of it all. For reasons beyond me i forgot to dunk the hydrometer in so i have to trust the formulas.

I made a yeast starter in a soft drink bottle the day before the brew with 500ml of the grape juice and added the nutrient in at that stage. The next day i added the syrup, 1.5L of grape juice followed by the sugar dissolved in 1L of boiling water to the demijohn. While that was cooling off for 20 minutes or so i made the tea and dissolved the pectolase in with it, before adding it to the rest of the mix and giving it a good shake. By now it had cooled of enough for me to add the starter and top up to 4.5L with cold water.

I topped up the jar to 5L once the wine had finished spewing out the airlock the next afternoon :)


This was but 3 hours after topping up the jar and giving it the final shake. Ignore the bottles of syrup, it is in my nature to create mess and they shouldn't be there. There was a 3rd bottle but the misses opened the fridge too fast and it committed Hara-Kiri. Made a right mess. :x




Turned out to be a wise move putting that casserole dish underneath looking at the mess the next morning. No picture of that I'm afraid. I will be making a batch over the next few days with identical ingredients. On Moley's advice i will be adding the syrup later on through the process.

Be interesting comparing the two together 6 months on.

Sounds great. I also have plans to make use of Polish fruit syrup. The limited literature on home winemaking using currently available ingredients needs a lot of updating. I recently zapped up a Young's Brewbuddy cabernet sauvignon with cheap supermarket red grape juice and frozen raspberries, which after a couple of weeks produced a really nice, full bodied, deeply coloured, fruity, smooth and rich wine which bears no resemblance to cabernet sauvignon, more like a Californian with added gut, sweetness without the sugary taste in an actually medium dry wine.

Its been a while since i got this one started. I racked into a second jar after a month to take the wine off the sediment that it had thrown. The fermentation was going at a snails pace, there was no airlock activity but a few bubbles creeping to the surface of the wine. I took a hydro reading and got 1.014 which i thought was a bit concerning. So instead of stabilizing and adding finings i decided to let fermentation continue.

Now 10 days later all activity has ceased, theres not a bubble in sight and the wine has started to clear indoors. I took a hydro reading and it is still at 1.014.

With the OG being around 1.110 i make the wine about 13%abv at this stage. This brings me to the million pound question. Could the yeast i used have already reached its alcohol tolerance and died? Should i have used a more specialized yeast rather than an all purpose?

I was hoping for this to ferment out to the .990 - .995 region. nice and dry. Instead i have something which resembles Sherry.

To add more pressure, were all getting together for a family barbecue at the end of August and the muppett i am i let slip i was making this. so now they are expecting to try it lol. I wanted to age it for at least 6 months first.