Frozen Fruit Dilemma

[uNoGotluck]

Hi! I apologize ahead of time for the long post. I recently started making fruity wine at home and just finished drinking all from my first batch. For my second batch, I tried my luck at making some Dragon Blood Skeeterpee, http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f68/dragon-blood-15-days-31996/[1] . Unfortunately the recipe tells me to cycle through 6lbs of frozen fruit during the fermentation using a mesh bag, but I only had a glass carboy with the thin bottlenecks and could not effectively make it work. (Cursed thing wouldn't fit!) The wine turned dry before i even use a third of the fruit and I've now already racked and added the K-meta, and potassium sorbate. Now i'm thinking of waiting a few days for the yeast to die out, adding the rest of the fruit, letting the juice soak with the wine, (essentially backsweetening it), rack it and add my clearing agent and maybe some sugar if needed?
Thoughts?

 

[dessertmaker]

My first thought is that if you're doing fruit wines you need to get a good brew bucket. There's no way you'll ever be able to do a primary mash fermentation with a thin necked carboy. And if you do you will regret it as the cleanup will be hell later.

As to the wine, if you racked and stabilized it, save the fruit for another batch. Especially if you want it done in 15 days.

 

[uNoGotluck]

Thanks for the reply!

Personally I don't mind waiting a few weeks longer for the wine to finish. I was only using the recipe on the above mentioned link.

Is there a reason why this might be a bad idea? Other than the mess it might make.

 

[jamesngalveston]

Unfortunately the recipe tells me to cycle through 6lbs of frozen fruit during the fermentation using a mesh bag, but I only had a glass carboy with the thin bottlenecks and could not effectively make it work. (Cursed thing wouldn't fit!) The wine turned dry before i even use a third of the fruit.

Not sure what this means...did it take you a week to add 6 llbs of fruit.
What does cycle through mean.

 

[Arne]

Get a food grade bucket or two and do the primary ferment in there. Easy to add, remove the fruit. Easy to stir. When it gets down to s.g. of 1.010 or so, you can transfer to the secondary carboy, or snap a lid on and finish to dry in the bucket. Put your fruit in some kind of a strainer bay, lots of people here use a paint strainer bag from the paint store. Removes fruit without trying to rack it off the solids. An idea for food safe buckets, go to your local bakery and get some there. Probably a small fee for them or they might give them to you. Good luck with it, Arne.

 

[dessertmaker]

Other than the mess and time, adding fruit after adding sorbate/sulfite shouldn't be an issue. The fruit will probably not ferment though. If it does it will probably be wild yeast fermenting it and not what you inoculated your batch with.

 

[uNoGotluck]

jamesgalveston- the recipe called to add 6 lbs of fruit in total over the fermentation period, replacing and adding some new fruit everyday. (Cycling the fruit) but my carboy didn't have space to put fruit in fast enough before the fermentation ended.

As for what to do now, I'll probably try to add the rest of the fruit into a open top food bucket, and add less sugar into the end product.

I suppose/hope that wild yeast will not grow due to the kmeta, sorbate, and alcohol level in the batch.

 

[jamesngalveston]

what recipe are you using...thats not the dragon blood recipe.

 

[CBell]

The recipe has you put 6 pounds of fruit in during primary, should be put in all at once, at the beginning, in bags, and every day you squeeze the bags, remove them, and stir, then put them back in.

I think you may have mis-understood the recipe, and I imagine that the combination of using almost no fruit during fermentation and fermenting the whole thing in a carboy, thus limiting oxygen supply, means you will have an extremely light flavor.

I second the advice that you need to get a fermentation bucket for primary.

I do also agree that pressing and adding the rest of your fruit now is a good idea, essentially adding an f pack and backsweetening. Kind of the best you can do at this point, I think, unless you want to dump your wine and start over.

 

[jamesngalveston]

cbell, i think you are correct..I think he was discarding and adding new fruit.
not removing and adding it back.
you add all the fruit add once...then remove and squeeze, then you put back into the fermenter along with the juice you squeezed out.

 

[uNoGotluck]

My mistake.

I did misread the recipe, I thought I was supposed to cycle the fruit but I guess I was wrong.

The batch itself is looking surprisingly really well even without the clearing agent. Not clear, but a dark red color without floating lees and co2 bubbles. I think the excess pectic enzymes really worked with the small amount of fruit that was put into the primary.

I think i will make a fruit pack and add it to the batch in a few days.

Thanks for all the help!