Recipe volume question.

[WineYooper]

I am not sure if this is the correct area but I have a question on a recipe. For the blackberry recipe submitted by Tom It calls for 36# of blackberries for a 6 gal batch. I have that much but wonder with the 5 3/4 gals of water it would be much more than 6 gals. Does this recipe take into account the mass from the berries and actually how much will I end up with at the start? I made this last winter and did something wrong and just dumped out the 7 gals of juice I had going and do not want to mess this up again. I followed the recipe and had approx 9 gals of mix. Is there something wrong with my thinking here? I think it either had a disease/corruption or got yeast stressed from the brew belt high temp. This is the last of my berries in the freezer from last year I and I do not want to waste more. I have the berries thawing at this time and will be proceeding with this.

 

[Wade E]

This most likely included a little extra for topping off later so probably will at first racking work out to about 6 1/2 gallons or so. Most of us do this so that we dont have to worry about finding a like wine or rack down to a 5 gallon carboy.

 

[djrockinsteve]

Technically you shouldn't add any water at all. When they press grapes they don't add water. With that being said if we did that we would have spent alot on fruit for little wine.

Basically you are making fruit flavored sugar water. As Wade said, most recipes account for you starting off with 6 or so gallons so after racking you will wind up with enough to fill a 5 gallon carboy and a little extra to sample.

You can never get it exact since there are so many variables with the amount of sediment and yeast cells falling out.

 

[Tom]

Not true comparing grape wine to fruit wine. You can not crush enough fruit to get 6 gallons of juice. The Brix level is much lower than grapes. This is why you will never use 6 gal of fruit juice without adding sugar. The reason Wade and I use 6 +#'s of fruit per gal is for body & flavor. The other thing you need to watch is the acid and other chemicals in wine (like bensorate...or something) .. well so much for now hic hic ...