Jack's recipes are low in flavor and high in alcohol. Personally I would not use them and here's why.
He does NOT tell you what the starting gravity s/b. Just add sugar blindly.
He does NOT tell you to ck the TA.. Just add acid blend
just t name a few.
Always know what gravity you want. For fruit wines no higher than 1.085. ALL of his are 12%+. Using that the alcohol will over power the fruit.
Ck here 1st and you will make a great Fruit wine.
Raisins will help in body but you need more than 3#'s of Strawberry per gal. In fact Strawberry I suggest 6-8# per gal as its light in flavor and high in water.. You will also want to make a F-Pac. ( do a search here for that) and back sweeten. Both or which Jack does not mention.
I agree with most of this statement but not all.
I am not here to defend jack, as he is quite capable of doing that himself. However....
The point is that people just go to jack's site and scavenge recipes and do not read the rest of his site.
That is the same reason why I don't want my recipes be placed on this and any other forums.
Jack (just like me) has a method for winemaking. And if you do not follow that method and just take out the recipe, the wine will not be like it was meant to be.
Jack's wines are high in alcohol (12% up) if you just examine the recipe. However on his website he advocated racking each wine at least 4 times. When filling up this will lower the alcohol to the meant 11%.
On my site I always give you the recipe AND the way it was made and calculated so you can adjust it to your own fruit quality.
If you just take out the recipe, my wines could also disappoint you easily.
About the amount of fruit used: I can concur with that.
In my opinion most wines are made with a too low fruit count.
Think cider made from pressed apples and not dilluted. Think grapewine. No winery in his good mind will water down grapejuice.
Take your fruit. Sample the pure juice and adjust with water, acid and sugar in function of the quality of the juice.
Remember most recipes water down and then have to add acid to bring the acid level up.
I advocate to measure the pure juice and then water down as much as needed to bring acid to an acceptable level. That will give you a more full bodied wine and you will not have to add raisins to create the body.
My next web-log story will for example be on blackberries. My blackberry juice measured an acidity of 8.
You just have to water the amount of juice down with a quart of the volume to get an acidity of 6.
That will give you a far better wine as when just taking a volume of berries and water down and then add acid again.
Take your pick.
Luc