Fruit juices for WOW wines

[Lightman]

This year I have started with making my own wow wines with the traditional mix of grape and orange juice. However, with current shortages, I am finding it harder and harder to get hold of grape juice. While technically not a wow wine, can I make a wine from a mix of other juices? For example, A mix of orange and apple juice - then the usual wow ingredients.

Before I make up a batch of this, does anyone know if it will actually work? My understanding is that the term 'wine' applies to any fermented fruit juice, but is most commonly applied to grape juice.

 

[marshbrewer]

@Chippy_Tea will be disgusted, but I regularly make up a passable white wine from 1L pineapple + 2L of Apple + 5-600g of sugar plus the usual WOW additions. It's not at all pineapple tasting, in my opinion, more Chardonnay like. Worth a go.

 

[Mr_S_Jerusalem]

@Chippy_Tea will be disgusted, but I regularly make up a passable white wine from 1L pineapple + 2L of Apple + 5-600g of sugar plus the usual WOW additions. It's not at all pineapple tasting, in my opinion, more Chardonnay like. Worth a go.

No raisins? Just the usual chemical suspects?
Any tannin?
Any Citric acid?

 

[marshbrewer]

Yeast nutrient, tannin or tea, citric acid and a half teaspoon of glycerine are my usual WOW additions.

 

[Mr_S_Jerusalem]

What is the glycerine for?

 

[marshbrewer]

Mouth feel, apparently. I'm not entirely sure I always remember to put it in, so it's probably not essential.

 

[Mr_S_Jerusalem]

Ah I’ll skip that then lol.

Thanks man.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Mouth feel, apparently. I'm not entirely sure I always remember to put it in, so it's probably not essential.

I stopped using glycerine soon after starting making juice wines and we never noticed the difference same with citric acid.

 

[Mr_S_Jerusalem]

They say a banana is good for that as well

 

[johncrobinson]

I have been making wows for years,Allmost any fruit juice will give good results.
When I first started making these about 1987 there was no internet, and traditional winemaking books did not really cover the subject.
But i can still remember how supprised i was that they came out so good after only a week or two.
very,very drinkable.
If you can keep the target alcohol to under 12% there is a freshness of taste (like some German wines) that makes them really nice.

 

[marshbrewer]

I'm just about to try a batch with a proper wine yeast rather than Young's general purpose yeast to see if that will improve things. I'll report back!

 

[Brizer]

I have just started my first WOW's ever, both using RGJ one with squeezed orange juice 1.5 ltrs and one with apple and mango both 1 ltr RGJ and 1.5 ltrs juice 100%. All other parts as wow recipe and juice of 1 lemon in each.
Think the sugar content may hav been a bit high 1100 + gms total as hydrometer readings were 1.14 and 1.20 will these be ok? They are both bubling away like crazy!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Looking good.

If you've used 1100g total then you'll get around 13% ABV

 

[Brizer]

Many thanks, will let you know how it goes.