using bottled juice?

I have made a couple batches of fruit wine (blackberry, apple blackberry) and read about people using bottled white grape juice and adding yeast and sugar. I was at Costco and picked up some apple, peach, passion fruit juice. the question is what in the list of ingredients will prevent me from turning to wine? and what would I have to add to it to make it into wine?

ilv4xn, what is in the ingredients? They usually contant some type of preservative. Hopefully, yours does not contains sorbate. If it has Vitamin C, you should be okay.

You should also be looking for 100% juice. Others can be flavored sugar water.

The ones I use are pasteurized and 100% juice.

100% juice blend
pasteurized
ingredients:
water, apple juice concentrate, peach juice concentrate, passion fruit juice concentrate, natural flavors, citric acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin C)

Sooo the next question is what's the recipe??
add sugar until desired SG
add yeast
wait

Sounds like there is nothing in the ingredients that will cause you a problem. I would put the juice in a fermenter, check the SG and add simple syrup (1 part water, 2 parts sugar, totally dissolved) until the SG gets to about 1.085 and add the yeast. Fully fermented, that should give you a dry wine around 12% ABV which you could back-sweeten to taste.

I've made a few custom batches based primarily on bottled juices. From what I've learned, try to get 100% juice if possible and try to use products where you know (and can pronounce) what all the ingredients are. If you can't get 100%, you may need to find some other flavor enhancers as end result will tend to be weak without 100% juice. Even with 100% juice, I've sometimes had to add additional flavor post fermentation to get the batch tasting like something other that "blah". Haven't noticed a difference between pasteurized or non-pasteurized. I did make one batch that did contain some preservatives, but I didn't have any issues getting it to ferment. Just get your must ready, stir it up real good with a drill-mounted stirring rod and let it sit 24 hours before pitching the yeast. Give it a good dousing of yeast energizer and watch it take off. The various acids and Vitamin C don't seem to affect my results either.

ilv4xn, On my BLOG I have step by step procedures I use for making wine from steamed juice. You could follow these direction except you will be using store bought juice instead of steamed juice. The BLOG address is on my profile. These steps work very well for me. Good Luck!

I am tempted to ferment in the container. Any guess on how much sugar it will take to get it up to 1.085?

While I agree that it is optimum to use 100% juice, I'll say it isn't absolutely neccesary. I've made passion fruit wine from concentrate containing 15% juice, using 4 cans per gallon, and it turned out great.

i make lots and lots (and lots) of wine from store bought juice. usually 2 jugs fill my 1 gallon carboys perfectly. if you are going to ferment in the container, you'll have to pour some juice out to make room for the sugar and the bubbliness of active fermentation. save the extra juice and add it back after 3 or 4 days when the bubbling is not quite so overactive. if you are not doing a whole gallon, you'll probably have to cut these numbers in half, but here are the amounts of sugar that i use:

grape juice: 1.15 cups sugar/gallon
apple juice: 2.25 cups sugar/gallon
white grape peach: 1.1 cups sugar/gallon
cranberry juice: 1.7 cups sugar/gallon
cranberry pomegranate juice: 1.7 cups sugar/gallon
pomegranate cocktail: 2.25 cups sugar/gallon

they are fermented to dry in a couple of weeks, but you're sure to make a pirate face after the first sip. in my opinion, these are positively drinkable after 3 months, and absolutely delicious after a year. i dont backsweeten either, they're perfectly dry to my taste.

ilv4xn said:

I am tempted to ferment in the container. Any guess on how much sugar it will take to get it up to 1.085?

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Check the S.G. of the juice first and it is known that 1 cup of sugar raises the S.G. of 1 gallon by 0.020. Quite simple to adjust the S.G. knowing that.

saramc said:

Check the S.G. of the juice first and it is known that 1 cup of sugar raises the S.G. of 1 gallon by 0.020. Quite simple to adjust the S.G. knowing that.

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That's a great, useful formula I hadn't heard before

As you noticed listing the ingredients, 100% juice doesn't mean it is 100% (or even primarily) the juice you think you're buying. Lots of tropical and specialty juices have grape, apple, pear, or aicaiai berry juice as its primary ingrediant. These make solid daily drinker/table wine options, but the cheaper juices can definitely be a bit underwhelming once fermented. Mixing two juices can help (a cheap 100% juice + a juice that is 100% what it is supposed to be).

Has anyone tried using thawed, but not rehydrated, juice concentrate in place of some of that sugar? Curious if that would give better body on the finished product.

Ocean Spray and a couple of others have 100% juice drinks in 1/2 gal containers. I drink them watered down because they are very sweet.

Most have a combination of Apple Juice (From concentrate),Cranberry Juice (From concentrate) and another Juice or two also....From concentrate Not sure if anyone has tried these.
Contents From the Mango Cranberry(In order - from greatest content to least):
Apple Juice (Water & Apple Juice concentrate)
Grape Juice (Water & Grape Juice concentrate)
Cranberry Juice (Water & Cranberry Juice concentrate)
Mango Juice (Water & Mange Juice concentrate)
Natural Flavors
Fumaric Acid
Ascorbic Acid Vegetable concentrate for color
Gum Arabic
Ester Gum

Several of the other varieties of this brand and series (Cranberry and XXX) don't have the Fumaric, Gum Aribic or Ester Gum
Going on the assumption that avoiding all things not normally part of a wine process this particular might work but have some issues along the way.
I just tested the SG of some Ocean Spray Cranberry Cherry and it came in at 1.060. Wouldn't take a lot of sugar additional to get that up to fermentable starting point. Locally those run about $3.00/half gallon unless you catch a sale. I've caught some on sale between $2.00 & $2.50 /Half gallon

You can occasionally catch BOGOs on them, which is sweet. I also consistently find Indian Summer apple juice and apple cider on sale in the summer months, and that makes for a pretty good wine base and back sweetener.

Otherwise Old Orchard concentrate, 4 cans per gal w no added sugar (depending on the juice and your target OG and PA) is reputed to make a very full and tasty wine. I typically do 2-3 cans per gal and add sugar to hit my target OG depending on style, which works very well most of the time.

I've heard lots of good things about the juices and Jumex nectars people get at the Dollar Tree and fermenting those - try it out!