Using Grape Concentrate

[hill1649]

Hi,

I am about to start a rosehip wine and a rose petal wine and I want to use some grape juice concentrate in both (red in the rose hip and white in the rose petal) - 200mls per gallon. In the past I have not adjusted the amount of sugar that I've added (1 kilo per gallon) and this has led to some of my wines having a ridiculously high SG and ending up very sweet - personally, I prefer my wines dry. Is there a magic formula for calculating how much less sugar to add when using concentrate? The basic recipe I work to requires fruit, concentrate and sugar all to be added with boiling water and then left to cool before adding yeast, nutrient etc but this doesn't enable me to reduce the sugar if the SG is too high. Any advice please?

 

[ScottM]

Hi,

I am about to start a rosehip wine and a rose petal wine and I want to use some grape juice concentrate in both (red in the rose hip and white in the rose petal) - 200mls per gallon. In the past I have not adjusted the amount of sugar that I've added (1 kilo per gallon) and this has led to some of my wines having a ridiculously high SG and ending up very sweet - personally, I prefer my wines dry. Is there a magic formula for calculating how much less sugar to add when using concentrate? The basic recipe I work to requires fruit, concentrate and sugar all to be added with boiling water and then left to cool before adding yeast, nutrient etc but this doesn't enable me to reduce the sugar if the SG is too high. Any advice please?

Subtract the amount of sugar that's in the concentrate from the sugar you add... job done :)

 

[hill1649]

But how do you know how much sugar is in the grape concentrate? It doesn't say on the container.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Think of it as about 70% sugar, at most.