Packlab Cornucopia Pear/Chard....

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anthony

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Hi Everyone,

I picked myself up a cheapo Cornucopia Pear/Chardonnay to make some table wine for next summer and had a question about the "pear" juice that comes with the kit along with the wine concentrate.

I'm not interested in making a sweet wine so I will NOT be following the instructions and adding the pear juice after the fermentation period. Ideally, I would just like to add ALL the juice together for the fermentation, tweak it a bit with bananas for body, and ferment it out to a dry wine. BUT, my concern is that there might be some sort of sorbate in the pear juice additive that would hinder the initial fermentation since it is a "post-fermentation additive".

Long story short, does anyone know if the companies usually add sorbates or any sort of inhibitor to the additive juices?

Thanks for any info or advice....
 
Thank you sir! Were you able to get a "serviceable" wine out of this? Did it have much "kit taste"?
 
I doubt the F-pack has sorbate in it as the kit should include its own pack of sorbate. There should be an ingredient label that lists what's in it separately from the rest of the kit. You might find you have to add some sugar to the must to get the alcohol level up to the level of a table wine...I'm not sure if the F-pack alone would be enough as these kits are intended to be more the equivalent of wine coolers than wines. Just don't expect much of a quality chardonnay taste to it when it's all done.
 
I have bottled this kit in the past 6 weeks. I added 5lbs of sugar (SS) to the primary and 2Tbls of wine tannins. It's very sweet, but I made it for friends that don't drink wine.

I do not think the wine is high enough quality to support all the F-pack in the primary. I believe if you want a cheep summer wine you may be better off with something like a Vino Italiano Chardonnay. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001ELJK4Q/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
:se
 
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Thanks for the tips everyone. I'm stuck with this kit for now and will probably ferment everything together along with 6-7 bananas in a straining bag and a combination of supermarket juice concentrates and sugar to get the S.G. up to around 1.080. After fermenting it dry, I might even put it on light oak for a month just to try and make it a respectable (if not worthy) addition to next summer's picnics.... :h
 
what if you just add the fpack a couple days before the sorbate...give it a chance to ferment but probably not all the way
 
I have bottled this kit in the past 6 weeks. I added 5lbs of sugar (SS) to the primary and 2Tbls of wine tannins. It's very sweet, but I made it for friends that don't drink wine.

I do not think the wine is high enough quality to support all the F-pack in the primary. I believe if you want a cheep summer wine you may be better off with something like a Vino Italiano Chardonnay. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001ELJK4Q/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
:se

you think that kit would be good to keg and serve sparkling?
 
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you think that kit would be good to keg and serve sparkling?

Chardonnay would make a good sparkling wine base. Ditto for any other white that has good acidity and strong, fruity flavors. I would avoid anything intended to be oaked. Apparently oak tastes awful in sparkling wine, and that's one thing I've seen people say to consistently avoid.

Also, one other thing people do is add half the f-pack at the beginning of fermentation and use the rest to backsweeten the wine. You end up with a less sweet end product with higher alcohol.
 
Anthony:

I have not done this so have no personal experience. I'm pretty sure that the mist kits from other brands have sorbate in the F-pack. However, the amount of sorbate is to prevent the litre or so of F-pack from starting to ferment. It is not enough to stop the 23 litre (6 US gallon) batch from fermenting. I know that some other people have added the F-pack after a couple of days, ie once the ferment is vigourous. I would suggest not waiting too long though.

Steve
 

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