Endure 25% head space or a very watery top-up ?

Blackberry wine... comming on 3 wks now... will be racking soon, but the vessel is a wide mouth 8 L. jar,and there is about 6L in there now, even less afterr racking.

So, should I...
rack and leave it with a huge 25~33% head space?

top up with water?

top up with juice from thawed frozen blackberrys

top up with a small amt (100=200ml?) of the juice...
wh. sits atop the first racking,
which has been kept under air lock?

or top up with unfermented SEWEETENED juice from the same harvest but refridgerated rather than added 3 wks ago.

???

If you plan on backsweetening your batch and the fermentation has stopped, you can just add unfermented juice (with or without additional sugar to your own taste). It will not only eliminate headspace, but will add fruity aroma to your wine and sweeten it, if you like. Don't forget to rack and clarify before adding the juice. Then finish with the dose of K-metabisulphite and potassium sorbate to prevent further yeast growth and subsequent bottle bombs. Also note, you will be diluting alcohol content, so figure out how much of it you are willing to trade off for flavor/diminished headspace.

If this strategy doesn't work for you, the next best thing you could do is transfer the wine into smaller 1 and/or 0.5 gallon vessels.

Thanks for you ideas.
This is my first batch;
So I don't know what I prefer!
I could indeed add the unsweetened juice now, but I was planning on aging in the same 8L Jars for 3~6 months before bottling, & so I guess I could juice now then sweeten at bottling time.

Any suggestion as to how long to wait before bottling?
And... when and when not to re-sulfite?

I have a 3 month old blackberry from a Homewinery concentrate plus a few pounds of frozen and fresh blackberries. It's still dropping a bunch of sediment, so I imagine at least 6 months if not longer before bottling. Many on this site make much more fruit wine than I do, and I think most of them go a full year. I'd rack and add 50 ppm Kmeta every three months, depending on your pH.

Bramble said:

Thanks for you ideas.
This is my first batch;
So I don't know what I prefer!
I could indeed add the unsweetened juice now, but I was planning on aging in the same 8L Jars for 3~6 months before bottling, & so I guess I could juice now then sweeten at bottling time.

Any suggestion as to how long to wait before bottling?
And... when and when not to re-sulfite?

Click to expand...

If you want to add juice now and sweeten later, you are pretty much better off fermenting this additional juice first (same sugar concentration as in the original batch). It should only take a few days anyway, then rack it off from the sediment and top off the original batch with it.

As far as sulfite goes, it is definitely better to sulfite the wine that is "idle", or in other words, the wine in which you don't expect anything to happen, except aging. Typically, regular sulfite doses should be added (every 3 months or so) following the alcoholic fermentation in most fruit/white wines, and after malolactic fermentation in red grape wines, to keep the free SO2 levels in wine at appropriate levels that protect your wine while it ages over many months. What appropriate free SO2 levels are? Well, for this it is helpful to know your wine's pH, because at lower pH (more acidic wine) you need much less sulfite to reach the same level of SO2 protection against bacteria and oxidation as in wine whose pH is very high (low acidity). See this chart (disregard the molarity of SO2 for now).

Then use this calculator to determine the required dosage
https://winemakermag.com/1301-sulfite-calculator

Always best to have on hand containers of various sizes so you can put it into a smaller topped up vessel to avoid headspace and dilution.

Or maybe top up with a dry red such as Merlot then later back sweeten and flavor with a fpak

Or get the Headspace Eliminator form Allinone wine pump.

Mine held its vacuum for a month.

The wine was NOT oxidized even a little bit.

DoctorCAD said:

Or get the Headspace Eliminator form Allinone wine pump.

Mine held its vacuum for a month.

The wine was NOT oxidized even a little bit.

Click to expand...

My thought too. I've been running one this season and seems to be working well. I pull vacuum on it once a week, just to be sure.