Welchs Concord Black Cherry - Any have experience?

[tgoose55]

My local Wal-Mart has 64oz bottles of Welchs Concord Black Cherry juice for $2.97 per bottle. I have a bunch of coupons for $1.00 off each 64oz bottle.

I was thinking about using this juice for a wine making base/must. Does anyone have any experience with this specific juice for winemaking? I search the forums, but found limited information.

Based upon my experience. I like to make wine using frozen concentrate at a rate of 3 to 4 cans per gallon of wine. Will this wine lack body, because it is already diluted?

Also how would you back sweeten this wine? I know many people will say just add sugar in the form of simple syrup (2c sugar to 1c water). However when I make wine from concentrate. I like to use the concentrate for backsweetening. I don't believe welchs makes a frozen Concord Black Cherry concentrate.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[BobF]

I've made this a few times. It's a big hit with SWMBO. In fact, I have a 6g batch in a carboy now, and a 6g made with Welch's concord + Knudsen's "Just Black Cherry".

You could use Concord concentrate to backsweeten, or draw out some of the wine and use it to make your syrup with.

I use a modest amount of powdered tannin in mine up front. I added oak to the last batch, but it's not ready to drink yet.

IME, this is ready to drink about 9 mos after bottling.

 

[Julie]

Hi Rob,

Welcome to winemakingtalk. I used Ocean Spray Blueberry/Pomegrante and made a 5 gal batch of wine. The same method would apply.

I used nothing but juice, do not add any water and yes buy extra juice, boil that down to half and use that for backsweetening, depending on how sweet you want it, you could boil the juice down and some sugar to that for extra sweetness.

If you are intersted in my recipe let me know.

 

[tgoose55]

If you are intersted in my recipe let me know.

Julie,

Thanks for the welcome to this forum. I would be interested in reading your recipe.

Rob

 

[Angelina]

I would be interested in this recipe as well Julie. I was also wondering if it would be better to simmer the juice down that would be used for the must to make it richer in flavor.

 

[Julie]

ok, like I said I used Ocean Spray Blueberry/Pomegrante but any juice that does not have sorbate in it would follow the same procedure.

For 5g:

10 - 64 oz juice
8 c. sugar (or whatever you need to get an sg between 1.070 and 1.080) my sg was 1.074
2 1/2 tsp peptic enzyme
5 tsp yeast nutrient
1/4 tsp k-meta

combine everything, let it sit for 24 yours before adding yeast starter. ferment dry, rack, add k-meta and sorbate. I took two 64 oz. of the same juice, boiled it down to half, added that, then took some of the wine, warmed that up and added 5 cups of sugar, I went with a final hydrometer reading of 1.020. Normally I don't go over 1.010 on fruit wines but blueberry is a dry fruit so sweetening it up to 1.020 seem to make it better. When backsweetening, I would add the boiled down fruit juice, taste it, take a reading and go slowly from this point, if it needs to be sweeter, take out about 2 cups of wine and add 2 cups of sugar, dislove that, then add and taste, repeat but with one cup if needed.

If you two have any questions, let me know.

 

[Angelina]

Thanks Julie, I appreciate your help.

 

[timber]

Welcome tgoose55,
Bookmarked, thank you Julie!