HELP! I added too much watwr to my wine kit!

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Mgoldy

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I'm making a 6 gallon kit (2 gals juice/4 gals water) and mistakenly added 5 gallons of water! After 9 days of fermentation, it's at .996 Sg, but doesn't taste right. Any ideas how to fix it?
Thx!
 
The kit is designed to dilute to 6 gallons / 23 liters, which produces grape juice similar to fresh grape juice in sugar, taste, etc. When you dilute it too much, everything is reduced. My best advice is to add additional fruit to bring the concentration back to the normal value.

The best choice to keep the original flavor is to add 1 quart/liter of grape concentrate. Do not rehydrate the concentrate as per directions, add it to the wine and mix in well. This will restart the fermentation.

Another choice is to add a non-grape fruit that is strongly flavored, e.g. 5-8 lbs of cherries. Note -- this will alter the flavor of the wine. Dried fruit can work if it has not been treated with sorbate (preservative that can stop a fermentation from starting) or sulfite.
 
Follow up question: since I added 1 gallon too much, do I just add enough grape juice concentrate to make 3.8 liters (1 gal) of juice?
Nope! You already added a gallon too much water -- the added grape concentrate reverses that. If you dilute the concentrate, you're adding yet more water, which doesn't help.

When I get a new primary fermenter, I add water, gallon by gallon, marking the level of each gallon. Probably a good idea to do it by half-gallons.

When rehydrating a kit, I don't measure the water -- I add the grape bag, then fill the fermenter to the 6 gallon line. This eliminates mistakes.
 
Yeah... that's what I meant... I was trying to ask how much concentrate to add because of the extra gallon of water. I ended up adding 3.6 cans of concentrate, which is how much it takes to make 1 gallon of grape juice. But I didn't add anymore water. Haha.
Thx for the tip on marking my new 6 gal fermentor!
 
Those of us who make country wines deal with the thin wine question all the time. The basic issue is that fresh grape is the “ideal” ratio of sugar (alcohol yield), acid (fresh flavor), and fruity flavors, ,, and water has none of these.
Acid blend and bags of sugar can fix part of the problem. Extracts (Virginia Dare) or making a F-pack can build up fruity flavors, ,, and some add oak for missing body

welcome to WineMakingTalk, the good news is wine is forgiving and there are several ways to produce a pleasing drink.
 

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