How much wine makes 5 gallons?

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

arcticsid

Arctic Contributor
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
4,203
Reaction score
65
If I want to eventually end up with 25 bottles(5 gallons), howm much should I start with? Realize there probably nu set answer, but if I rack it a couple times, I will continue to lose volume. Would you start with., let's say 7 gallons, and expect you'll get 5? How much would this loss be different from using a kit, fruit juice, or whole fruit?
I'd be interested to hear what you think.
Troy
 
Depends.. If you are making a fruit wine you may need to start 5 1/2+. Fruit wines have more pulp (solids) then kits.
Almost all kit wines will produce 6 gallons _ maybe one bottle (29)
Then again if you have patience, alot of the solids will stay on the bottom (racking less often and using clairifiers).
Why 5 gallons?
 
As Tom said, start out with 5 1/2-5 3/4 gallons and if, after racking, you're still off the mark just top off with water or a similar type wine.
 
as a long time beer maker, 5.5 gallons going into primary should yield 5 gallons to bottles with two rackings (primary to secondary, secondary to bottle bucket)

Fruit will change that, but with good racking you should only lose 1/4 gallon per racking to the sediment/lees.
 
I start with 5 gallon and a 3L and it is plenty for topping off. I end up drinking excess. Darn shame too ha ha.:h I only rack 3 times to bottling stage and then add flavor and some simple syrup which increases volume by a liter or so. Then let it sit and one more racking into a bottling bucket. 27 bottles out of the last 2 batches of 5 gallons. How is your mom doing Troy?? Dont forget the blue berries!!
 
Last edited:
If you tilt the carboy and let the lees sit and solidify a bit more.. like beer lees do.. I find you can rack pretty much all the clear wine away from the sediment. I'm never worried if I scoop up a little of the less on the first racking now.. it'll settle out anyway.

I used to stress about it.. but wine is very forgiving and with our local gallon averaging 4.5 litres ( my gallon jugs are actually 5 litres).. losing a litre of wine at every racking would be unacceptable for me.

Allie
 

Latest posts

Back
Top