Concord Grape Recipe - Some help needed

[Windchill]

Greetings All!

I need some help. My lone vine of Concord Grapes are perfectly sweet to taste and ready to be picked. It is a real shame the yield is only about 25% of normal due to the weather!

My problem is I need help with a good recipe.

I'm trying to get some clear answers on do I press them, put them in a bag and squish them or what's the best method.

I will only have enough for a 1 gallon batch this year and want to make sure I don't spend a year lamenting what I did wrong.

Any recipe / technique suggestions would be appreciated!!

 

[Rocky]

David, you will want to press them eventually but for starters, just crush them using a potato masher. Don't be too rough on them, you don't want to crush the seeds. After primary fermentation, i.e. when the SG is about 1.010-1.020, drain the wine from the skins and press the skins as best you can. For small batches I have used a collander and pressed the skins with a round mixing bowel against the collander.

I made a Concord wine last year that I augmented with frozen berries from Sam's club (I believe the bags contained blueberry, blackberry and red raspberry). I am sure you can find a recipe or two on the forum, but I would just see how much juice and skins I ended up with in my primary fermenter, kill the wild yeast with a crushed campden tablet per gallon, wait about a day and then make up simple syrup (two parts sugar dissolved in one part water) and add it to bring the SG up to 1.090-1.095, pitch some fresh wine yeast and let her rip.

 

[Turock]

Don't forget to use a little pectic enzyme the first day along with a little meta. If you have a PH meter, test the PH and adjust to about 3.4. Do the PH on the second day, after you have stirred up and squeezed the grapes so that you have some of the broken down fruit present in your sample. Then set the brix and pitch the yeast. We like Montrachet on our concord--if you use this culture, cut back on the meta by half because Montrachet makes a lot of its own H2S.

Also, put a touch of grape tannin in the primary--concords are very low on tannin and this will help stabilize the color to prevent it plating out in the bottles, later on. You can bag the grapes--makes it easier to squeeze all the broken down pulp out of the grapes as the ferment goes on and makes pressing lots easier. You can do a warm ferment if you like---about 80 degrees. This will give you very dark color to your concord. Ours is so dark you can't see thru it.