Boil the must, or use a campden tablet?

[soapy45]

I am totally new to home winemaking, hoping to start my first batch tomorrow. Almost as new to homebrewing, with two batches in bottles and planning to start a third tomorrow.
Home brewers boil the wort, home winemakers crush a campden tablet. If I were to boil my raspberry must, then chill to room temp before pitching yeast, would I lose something in the wine?

 

[Runningwolf]

Do not do either. Make a good yeast starter and pitch the yeast.

 

[soapy45]

You're saying don't boil the must AND don't add a campden tablet? I thought the purpose of the campden was to kill wild yeasts and other bacteria before adding yeast to the must.

 

[soapy45]

The recipe calls for 12 lbs of sugar,and I thought I would need to heat the water in order to dissolve that much sugar. I figured if I'm already heating the water (in a stock pot), why not bring it to a boil, dissolve the sugar, add the fruit (raspberries, in a grain bag) and boil to kill bacteria, then chill to room temp (like I would if I was making beer), skip the campden because I've already killed bacteria, add the must to the fermenter, top with water to 5 gal & pitch the yeast. Am I missing something?

 

[Runningwolf]

At the most I would heat some water and add your sugar to that to disolve. No need to heat the juice. Adding meta helps stop a wild yeast but a good yeast starter will do that. If adding it a day before you pitch your yeast makes you more comfortable, by all means do it. You won't hurt anything. AS far as the amount of sugar to add you should be using a hydrometer so you'll know what your beginning sg is.

 

[dessertmaker]

Boiling the must will give you pectic haze. The only time I ever attempt to sanitize fruit juice is if its an F-pack. Here's the easiest (in my opinion) way to make a starter. I don't know if raspberry is a hard ferment to kick off or not but I do this for skeeter pee (hard lemonade) which can be hard to start (or so I've heard, never experienced it because this stuff makes it take off like a rocket every time.)

Grab a small bottle of "simply apple" juice from the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Run it under hot water in the sink till its room temperature but no warmer.

Pour half of it out, add yeast packet and shake it up for a couple of seconds.

Cover with a clean towel so nothing falls in there.

Wait until the yeast works itself up to a full rolling boil with a nice foam head and then dump it into your must and stir it around for about a minute. Different people wait different amounts of time to pitch their yeast, I usually give it 6 hours or so and it works just fine.

I got lazy the other day and pitched some into a juice bottle (straight ocean spray cran-lemonade and yeast for a 5% lunchtime beverage LoL) after 3 hours and its fermenting away just fine so I don't think time makes a big difference, just as long as its "boiling."

If im making anything but grape wine or apple cider i stir again every 24 hours or so. Grapes and apples just don't seem to need any help at all. LoL

I say simply apple, but any apple juice in which the ONLY ingredient is "pasteurized apple juice" will work. 8 oz seems to work great for me.

Do it this way and the yeast starter should crowd out any other wild yeast or bacteria.

 

[YourCaptain]

Are you using juice or fresh fruit?

If you use fresh fruit, I always use a sterilizer (either k-meta or camden), the last thing you want is anything other than your wine yeast growing in there.

I know many home wine makers who don't use it, saying that they have seldom have a problem. And if something does grow, it's only 4 liters (1 gallon) of waste. But I don't ever want to throw away a batch.

In my opinion, if we can take the time to sterilize our equipment, we can take the time to sterilize our must. It's all for the same reason - we only want wine yeast growing in our wines.

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

Making beer and making wine two different overlapping arts. Beer folk boil their wort to extract sugar which also sterilizes it. Winemakers might or might not boil their fruit, depending on what kind of fruit it is. Some people steam their fruit to get the juice out, others just crush it and some just toss it in and let the yeast do all the work. A good example is all the different ways elderberries are treated. You can boil the fresh fruit to extract the juice, or steam it, or crush it and toss it in, or crush it and press it, or dry the berries and either just toss them in or boil them for a little while and add the juice. If you dont boil your fruit adding KM will knock the bugs back, but not sterilize the must, until your stronger yeast can take control. Some people even make wine from jam and that has been cooked a lot. Another option is to boil your sugar, put the fruit in your primary bucket and dump the boiling water on the fruit, some people claim it sets the color and knocks back the bad bugs at the same time.

The question you need to really ask is what is best for my fruit. Raspberries being of a delicate flavor are better off not being cooked in my opinion. Much better to just crush them and toss them into the must for a couple of days. Hot tap water or even just warm water will easily dissolve that much sugar, no need to even put it on a stove. You should also add pectinase to clear pectin hazes at the start and also get more juice out of your berries. You should also be tossing some kind of nutrients in there and balancing for acid levels. These steps are different than what beer folks have to consider.

WVMJ

 

[soapy45]

Thanks, everyone, for your input. We started the raspberry wine yesterday. Dissolved the sugar in warm water, then followed the recipe (yeast nutrient, pectin enzyme, wine tannin and 5 campden tablets). Finally added the raspberries into a grain bag in the fermenter. We did not boil the must. Dad's gonna pitch the yeast either today or tomorrow. Thanks again.