Questions about Fruit Wines

[SassyBoots]

Good Morning!!

I've just started my first ever batch of wine from a kit, and everything seems to be going as it should. Very excited to get this bottled up.

However, I would like to start a second batch now, out of the rhubarb in my backyard. This is where I am getting confused.

I can't seem to find the yields for fresh fruit wines. I am wondering how many bottles of wine I will get out of a standard recipe. Most of the recipes I have seem only ask for about a gallon of water to be used in the initial stage, and I don't see instructions for adding water to create a large yield....does that make sense?

With the kit wine, i have a large carboy FILLED with water and the other ingredients which will give me around 25 or 30 bottles of wine.

Sooooooooo........do I simply double all the ingredients in the wine recipe to create a larger yield, or am I to top up the glass carboy to the top with water at secondary fermentation as one does with a kit wine? None of the instructions mention this, and I'd like to have more than a few bottles of wine produced out of a batch than four or five...I'd like to be able to make as much as possible. HELP. Of course I would like to have this knowledge now so I pick up all the ingredients at the get go. I have more than enough fruit, but am not finding alot of detailed instructions for producing a large batch of fresh fruit wine. Thanks!!

 

[djrockinsteve]

Don't add water unless the juice is too strong. Rhubarb can be juiced and if blended 90% rhubarb 10% raspberry it's phenomenal.

You could expect to use 5 pounds of fruit per gallon (pineapple is less). 1 gallon finished gives you five 750ml bottles.

3 gallons finished needs @ 3 1/2 gallons to start. 5 gallons finished needs close to 6 gallons to start.

Generally doubling or prorating the recipe is fine except for yeast. One packet will ferment 10 gallons. Your sugar you need to watch as doubling may be a bit too much. Add 3/4's of your sugar (inverted), check gravity then add what you need.

 

[salcoco]

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/ check on this web sire for a great many fruit wine recipes plus other data.

 

[BernardSmith]

I'd be a little careful with rhubarb. It can be very acidic. There is a post on this forum that was sent a couple of years ago that explains how to reduce the acidity of the rhubarb.
http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f2/evil-looking-rhubarb-3045/
It is post #10 by Luc
and by a couple of years ago I meant five years...

 

[SassyBoots]

Ok.....so I'm still working on the Rhubarb, not sure if it is going as it should or not.

I initally did not add the campden(I know, pan to the head)and wound up adding it after the fermentation in the carboy had stopped actively bubbling and the wine was a nice medium pink color and clearing. I was told to go ahead and do this on the advice of the lady where I pick up my supplies, and she seems very knowledgeable.

The second I added the campden tablets, the wine went from a nicely clearing medium pink to a horrendous pinky white.....with a tinge of orange. At the time it smelled very "chemical-ly" but has since settle down and now smells like wine.

It also doesn't taste or smell nearly as strong as it did before I added the campden. It is starting to clear again, but the color is so light now that its harder to see the difference in the color near the top of the carboy as opposed to the bottom where all the gunk is heading, and it still looks quite milky.

I have a hard time understanding how to read a hydrometer still, but from what I can tell its still moving up.....when I tested it last week it was at approx -20(?) or just below the red band at the top of the hyrdrometer which, as far as I can tell is where I want it to be to ferment to dry.....right now it is about in the middle of that red band. I considered my white wine done when it hit the very top of that red band(was at the limits of fermenting out to 1.00...i think. All I know is I added my last ingredients then and let it sit and have been sampling it and its wonderful).

SO..the rhubarb has not hit that on the hydrometer just yet, but is slowly making its way there. According to the recipe, I should be ready to rack into a clean carboy in a few weeks, and am assuming that that is when I will add sweetner and stabilizer and then let it age for awhile before bottling.

After all that, here are a couple of questions....

-since the wine seems to taste so weak(I'm a fan of white as opposed to red, but I like it to have SOME body)can I add something now to give it a bit more "oomph"?

-will it develop a stronger flavor the longer I leave it on the lees? If that is the case I'll just forget I have it for a couple of months before I rack it off. The recipe did not state to squeeze the fruit so I didn't.....I just strained it through a colander to get all the fruit bits out of the juice. Even so, it was a nice medium-dark color without a lot of tang.

-I still have the left over rhubarb downstairs in the freezer, thinking it was a damned shame to toss it and that I could probably use it in pies or something. There is twenty pounds of rhubarb down there lol. What would happen at this point if I went back, thawed the rhubarb, extracted more juice, and added that to the carboy? Would it wreck the wine? Its been in the carboy for about two weeks already and no longer strongly fizzing or bubbling. although when I test the wine with the hydrometer, I can see a bit of bubbling going on in the glass cylinder I test with.

Wow, super long post, but I'd like to have sucess with this and at this point I'm not sure if I should give up on it or not.....although I have heard plenty of stories where someone thought they had completely screwed up a batch of something only to have it work out in the long run with some patience.

I just read something about "back sweetening" a finished wine and it almost sounds like what I want to do with the remaining fruit.....pressing out the juice and adding it, so I think it will be ok, and as long as the fermentation seems done, I'm not sure it will hurt anything.....but want to double check.

I'm really tempted to add the juice from the remaining rhubarb to give it more rhubarb flavor but wanted to check here before I tried that. Hope someone can help me.

Thanks all!!

 

[Turock]

If it's slow to finish to the dry stage, this can be due to not enough nutrient, but if I understand what you're saying, it's very close to the dry stage so you're fine. It may very well finish up in the secondary as you let it age.

Sulfite can mess with the color of some wines, but you have to use it or else you have no preservation. You suggested adding back some fruit at the end to help the color--yes, you could do that. The bubbling you see is normal--it is the CO2 coming off the wine. CO2 is a yeast by-product. You don't want to bottle until the CO2 is off the wine. Just bulk age it in the carboy with an airlock--rack as needed--let it age so the flavor firms up. It's kind of hard to taste the wine at this point and say it needs more of anything. As wine ages, the flavor improves dramatically. You could even wait to taste this 6 months from now and if it needs the additional fruit , you can do it then. You'd just have to let it sit longer to clarify.

Don't add any sugar at this time because you need to add sorbate with it and you can't use sorbate when the wine is cloudy. It has to be clear with most of the yeast cells off the wine for sorbate to work.