Non alcoholic wine

[TerryB56]

Hi, I made some gooseberry wine in the summer using a recipe found on the Home Brew Answers website. I have just put it into bottles and tested it using a newly aqquired hydrometer. It shows a reading between 80 and 90 which surely means there is no alcohol in it. Can I rescue it or will I have to drink it as gooseberry juice. This is my first attempt at making wine. I don`t know if it makes any diffference but I used red gooseberries. Thanks for any help.

Terry Baldwin
Inverness
Scotland

 

[sour_grapes]

Can you tell us what you did to it, i.e., what was the recipe? Does it taste very sweet right now? And what does the scale on your hydrometer look like? Are the numbers 80 and 90 near the top or the bottom of it?

 

[Scooter68]

Given your location it is likely that your hydrometer is marked in the Oechsle scale. Quick and dirty conversion for comparing US traditional Hydrometer reading is to take the number you have (85?) move the decimal point 3 places to the left (85 becomes .085) and then add 1.000 to that. So a reading of 85 becomes 1.085. That would mean that your wine has probably never fermented but has a potential ABV of 12.47% So no yeast has been added or it has never met conditions for the yeast to start fermentation. The yeast by this point is likely dead. If you can provide the recipe you used perhaps we can provide some assistance. Remember that room temperatures are also very important.

the following link provides a manual reference chart that you can use to convert from the Oechsle scale to the reading US hydrometers render. http://www.enotecnochimica.it/tabelle/hydrometer-scale.htm

A popular online conversion tool many often use is here: https://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/
(We usually assume a final reading of .990 for our fermentations. that's how I figured the potential ABV of 12.47 % for your Gooseberry juice)

 

[TerryB56]

Hi, I found the recipe on Home Brew Answers.

.In a pan heat 2 litres of water and add the sugar, bring to a boil for a few minutes then remove from the heat.

1. Meanwhile take the washed and prepared gooseberries and place them in the straining bag, put the straining bag in a sanitised fermenting bucket and begin to crush all the berries to break them up.
2. Pour the hot sugar solution over the gooseberries and mix thoroughly, add the remaining 2.2 litres of water which will bring the temperature down in the rest of the must, add the yeast nutrient and a 3-4 hours later when the must has cooled further add the campden tablet and mix thoroughly
3. 12 hours after adding the campden tablet add the pectolase which will aid juice and flavour extraction. Mix and leave for a further 24 hours.
4. After the 24 hours sprinkle the yeast on the surface of the must. Allow the wine to ferment for around a week and then lift out the bag with the remainder of the gooseberries. Allow fermentation to continue for a further week.
5. After the two weeks rack the wine to a carboy, you can check the gravity at this point should you wish, fermetation should be pretty much complete at around 1.000 or lower. Once racked into a demijohn seal with a bung and airlock.
6. You can wait for the gooseberry wine to completely clear before racking to a new vessel. Leave the wine for at least 4 months before bottling.
   Do you think I can restart the fermentation, assuming it ever started?

Terry
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[TerryB56]

Sorry, didn`t mean to add all that on the end, not very good at cutting and pasting either!
Terry

 

[Scooter68]

Not a problem withe "Extras."

What variety of yeast did you use? And what was the approximate temperature in the room during the fermentation time?

Missing info and/or additions to the wine must would be:
What was the pH at the start of the fermentation
Did you add any acid/acid blend to it and if so how much
How much yeast nutrient did you add?

One additional point - Any references to time for a fermentation process are just guesstimates. Measuring the SG with the hydromenter is the only way to know for certain if a fermentation process is working and how far it has progressed. Some fermentations can finish in less than week and other may take two - three weeks. Rarely do they take much longer than 3 weeks but it can happen it temperatures are low.
Removing the bag with the berries is normally done about 3./4 of the way through fermentation with SG readings around 1.020 - 1.010.

 

[TerryB56]

Hi, yeast used is called Lalvin EC-1118, Used 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient. The temperature in our house would have been about 20 degrees centigrade, apart from a couple of hours each morning when my wife likes to leave the windows open. The wine was stored in a cupboard. I didn`t do anything as professional as testing PH, I just assumed that if I followed the recipe nothing could go wrong.

Terry

 

[Scooter68]

Good yeast and nutrient and temp seems fine. A little warmer (24) for a few days might help get it started but by now the yeast is probably died off but ... I would never bet on that. Acidity is about the only thing I can think of that might be off. Without testing it's hard to tell.

 

[TerryB56]

Hi, I will test for ph when I get back this evening, thanks

Terry

 

[TerryB56]

Hi, I have a PH testing fork. I put the end in a sample of the wine and the needle was right over at the alkaline end.

Terry

 

[TerryB56]

Hi, I just did the test again using a test strip I use for my fish tank. The colour corresponds to about 6.4.

Terry

 

[Scooter68]

6.4 Would be extremely off VERY aklaline. You should be getting something in the 3.4 to 3.6 range. If that reading is correct then that's probably why the wine never fermented. If the juice hasn't spoiled you could adjust the acidity and go from there but again that reading is so high that I have to wonder if the test strips are working. For about 25-50 dollars (US) (Don't know Amazon prices for Scotland but still should be relatively inexpensive to get reliable results.) you can get a decent digital pH tester. ALL pH tester will need calibration periodically so the price you pay isn't going to reduce how often you need to check it. Many of the units come with an initial calibration powder or liquid to set it up. Test strips are iffy at best with red or dark colored wines even those made specifically for wine testing. T/A testing requires that you dispose of the tested sample (fairly small amounts but...) So many beginning wine makers use a digital tester and then if you want to do a T/A test you only have to buy one test chemical and use you pH meter to get very accurate T/A readings.

So if you are going to start wine making as a hobby, even on a small scale a pH meter is a pretty valuable tool to have. I tried test strips made for wine and found them very difficult to get a definitive reading.