A question about the recipes.

[myakkagldwngr]

I been reading the receipes and got to wondering. Take the rose for example. It calls for using 5 quarts of water. Then after sitting in the primary, moved to a carboy.
The instructions say top off the carboy.
Is that a small carboy, say gallon or two gallon size and the five quarts is all the water used? Or is that a 6 gallon and that much more water is being added?
So what I guess I'm asking is if it says 1 gallon of water, that's it except for the small amount to top off.

 

[Tom]

No. When it says add so much water that is the quantity it will make. Even though you have add 5 quarts of water there will be alot of LEES when transferring. Sometimes you may get a little over 1 gallon and sometimes you will not. That all depends on how compacted the lees are and time. If you have a little less than 1 gallon thats when you top it off. If you have more add it to a bottle that will fit the excess.

 

[Wade E]

Thats one thing I hate about most recipes and always ask for that person to note what size batch this is. Most of the time you can tell by how many campden tablets are listed. If it says 1 then its usually a one gallon batch and so on but also look atthe amount of water and fruit aand use your judgement!!! No one uses 3 gallons of water with 1 campden tablet and calls it a 1 gallon batch.

 

[Midwest Vintner]

Thats one thing I hate about most recipes and always ask for that person to note what size batch this is. Most of the time you can tell by how many campden tablets are listed. If it says 1 then its usually a one gallon batch and so on but also look atthe amount of water and fruit aand use your judgement!!! No one uses 3 gallons of water with 1 campden tablet and calls it a 1 gallon batch.

good call.

topping it off isn't always the best method, IMO. we always keep some extra jugs around to split wine into. get a bunch of different toppers and you're golden.

it's also good to have smaller jugs for blends. gotta mix it up sometimes!