Muscadine juice or whole muscadines

[Julie]

Defrost your grapes, add pectic enzyme, let it set 12 to 24 hours, crush, take a stainless steel strainer, push down on the grapes to get some juice, take an acid test and adjust with water unntil you have your acid where it needs to be. I like mine a little high on the acid. I would go with .80% TA, now take a hydrometer reading, this will give you a good idea on how much sugar you need to add to bring your sg up to 1.085, take some of the juice, warm it up, do not boil, add sugar stir until dissolved. 1 cup of sugar will raise sg .018 per gallon. Once you have your sg where it needs to be, add k-,meta, wait 12 to 24 hours and add your yeast. I use Lavlin 71B 1122, ferment to dry, rack every 3 months and add k-meta. If you want to backsweeten, wait until clear, and add sorbate along with k-meta. I would backsweeten it to 1.008

 

[jamesngalveston]

I love muscadines...I use about 9 are 10 lbs in mine, and I let the fruit sit in the pectin for a day to break down, before I ever add sugar...
I use my hydrometer and add sugar about 2 cups at a time until i get to my sg...(i start mine out at 1.100)...not advising others to do so.
I like a higher abv.

 

[rita36]

How much does the 9-10 lbs make ?

 

[rita36]

Lol ! I'm making a shopping list. I need a ph meter, k-meta and sorbate so far. I have most of the basic stuff but these are new things I haven't heard about.

 

[rita36]

This is great I'm so excited. My first batch was from field and steam which was good and I enjoyed it. my second batch was ok but it has a certain Bitter taste to it that I don't really like. After reading these comments I believe boiling those muscadines caused them to have a bitter taste . Now for my third batch I'm hoping to get the taste I want so that this coming muscadine season I will have good directions to folow

 

[garymc]

Muscadines have a lot of healthy phytochemicals in them, but these things don't necessarily taste good. Boiling the grapes probably drives more of that out of the skins and seeds and into the wine. But I'd be concerned about oxidation and turning the color brown with boiling also. I think keeping the skins and seeds in the must for a long time also gets you more of that stuff. I've been trying to get my crushed grapes out of the wine sooner rather than later. I put them in a mesh bag and try to remove it after 3 days or so of fermentation. When I've gone a week, I've had harsh tasting wine. Unfortunately, the shorter time means squeezing the bag on one day and then waiting a few more days for the sg to get low enough to transfer from the bucket to the carboy. Most wine recipes allow you to do both at the same time and only have one cleanup session. Also, I'm probably leaving some small amount of sugar in the pulp if the sg is only down to 1.020 or higher when I squeeze the bag and remove it. Oh, and as far as letting the bag drain, no, I squeeze it by hand until my forearms ache.
This is just my speculation and experimentation about these things. Others may have different opinions and experience.

 

[jamesngalveston]

gary I dont know what kind of muscadines you are getting, but I can eat mine by the handsfull, there excellent to eat...sweeter then grapes by far.
But i get the wild ones, not cultivated.
Seriously, I hardly have to add sugar to them.

 

[firejohn03]

Just use your juice. The winery I work for produces about 15,000 cases of Muscadine wine a year. We press our grapes and ferment juice. Maceration of Noble Muscadine (red grapes) is hard, due to the fact that most of the pigment falls out and you end up with a rose colored wine. I have been making muscadine wine for many years at home and as a flavor profile, using the skins, to me, tends to make the wine way more acidic than it should be. The Brix on muscadine is much lower than vinifera as well. Usually running only 10-12 Brix vs. 20-25.

 

[jamesngalveston]

What is the closest cultivated compared to the wild...The wild ones I pick are sweet as sugar and just bursting with flavor....
THere about the size of a quarter, and black skins, and very dark purple inside.

 

[Julie]

I have been making muscadine wine for a long time as well and I none of my muscadine wine has been too acidic. And my muscadine wine has a strong muscadine flavor than store bought.

 

[dralarms]

Julie, ive only made 3 batches, all noble and I fermented on the skins and everyone raves about how good mine is. Even had someone compare mine and duplin winery in NC and mine came out on top..

 

[firejohn03]

What is the closest cultivated compared to the wild...The wild ones I pick are sweet as sugar and just bursting with flavor....
THere about the size of a quarter, and black skins, and very dark purple inside.

The Carlos grape is an awesome muscadine ,or scuppernong , as we called them growing up because of their bronze color. The Noble is a deep dark purple grape like those we picked next to the creek as a kid.

 

[jamesngalveston]

Julie what kind of muscadines do you get....what is equal to the wild ones...I would like to know, what compares to the wild..I have to drive about 100 miles to get cultivated. And about 200 to get the wild ones.

 

[jamesngalveston]

Noble...I will check into that one ,,.,would like to get some started this year.
We have a member here in La..that has acres of the noble..Plan to purchase 500 lbs from him this year.

 

[Julie]

I have gotten the Red, which is a big dark colorgrape, I have had Bronse, Carlos, and Noble. I just bottled a Bronse/Carlos that I aged for a year before bottling and I have a Noble that just finish fermentation and a Carlos that is currently coming to the end of a fermentation.

Dralarms I, too have had mine compared to commercial. Actually we had a blind test and mine was picked as the commercial because it tasted better.

 

[dralarms]

It feels gooooooddd to have our home made stuff beat out the professionals.

 

[Julie]

It feels gooooooddd to have our home made stuff beat out the professionals.

Yes it does especially when I had people argue with me that I filtered my Carlos/Bronse because it had a better sparkle than the commercial. Lol, I don't filter.

 

[dralarms]

My brother in law went to a winery in Sevierville, tn and pick up a bottle of theirs and shook it and told my sister in law that mine didn't have the crap floating in it theirs did.

 

[garymc]

James, I grow table varieties. I don't have any noble or carlos. My best tasting white (bronze) is Tara, which is used for winemaking at some wineries. I have 2 friends who grow muscadines. One only has domesticated varieties from Isons and the other has both domestic and wild vines. Most of the wild vines don't produce grapes, so it's not easy for me to compare. My best tasting purple varieties are Ison, Eudora, and delicious. I have some other vines that are too young to bear. I recently dug up some cowart vines because they didn't taste good.

 

[reefman]

I wish the manufacturers realized how many of us love Muscadine and make a kit.
I started my own vines this year, because I can't get the grapes in Maryland.
...and this is the coldest winter we have had in 18 years I think....so I'm hoping the vines survive.