Red wine and water

[derevo]

If u add water to your must when u do this and why?
What im lost if im add 30% of water to must and put some extra sugar?

Thanks alot!

 

[Tom_S]

Only time I do is when I'm making wine from concentrate and haven't added all the water for a full batch yet. I would do this, for instance, if making wine with a high foaming yeast and want to leave some room for the foam so it doesn't blow over. Once the foam goes down then I'll add the rest of the water.

But if your wine has already fermented, it's OK to add a little water to top up. If you add 30% of water you're going to water down your wine, making it thin bodied and lose a lot of the taste.

 

[wyntheef]

If u add water to your must when u do this and why?
What im lost if im add 30% of water to must and put some extra sugar?

Thanks alot!

what is lost? 30% of the flavor, body, aroma. however, if you are trying to spend less and get more, you can do it.

 

[olusteebus]

How much juice do you have and how much wine are you producing? Also, is your juice a concentrate of straight juice?

 

[derevo]

How much juice do you have and how much wine are you producing? Also, is your juice a concentrate of straight juice?

I just want make many experiment and clearly understand whats happend, for this test im want use. aprox. 35 liters of Red Grape Juice, in my location we have only ALPHONSE LAVALLEE Grape, it natural sugar concentration around 14-14 Brix, but i can improved it to 17-19 by heat treatment.

Some one add water to change the acidity?

 

[Runningwolf]

What do you mean by heat treatment. Please explain.

I would shoot for 21 brix. If you're adding water, is this sugar water? If not you'll dilute everything mentioned above plus your alcohol content. Yes adding sugar water can reduce acid.

My advice to you would be to go ahead and do whatever you chose based off the comments given here and see how it works for you. Based off the results, make adjustments on your next batch.

With you being from Viet Nam it's interesting to hear what others need to do to make wine.

 

[Turock]

I'm a little confused as to what this juice is. Is this juice that was pressed from grapes or is it a concentrate bought in cans? Concentrate always has to have water added to it, but a juice bucket does not.

There are times when water plays a role in winemaking. One is if you have such high acid grapes that you can't bring the PH up with calcium carbonate alone. Mustang grapes are one of those grapes. The other purpose is when you have high brix grapes---water is added to get the brix under control so you don't get such a high alcohol wine. Other than that, water only dilutes the wine and makes the result too thin and not flavorful.

The beginning brix on you're juice is very similar to our local Concord grapes. The way to get the brix up is with a proper amount of sugar---I'm not sure what you mean by heat treatment, but too much heat can drive the volatiles off the juice and affect nose and flavor. We set our brix so that our ABV is around 12-12 1/2% We adjust our PH to about 3.4 using calcium carbonate to bring the PH up---not water.

Does any of this address your problems correctly?

 

[derevo]

thanks all to replies

by "heat treatment" i mean increase the sugar content by (curing, thermal processing). If its interesting fore some one i can translate it from one my book. Im attache images where u can see the idea and some results, please ask if u need some explanation

 

[Tom_S]

Unfortunately, I don't read Russian.

 

[derevo]

Im translate it a bit later for u

 

[Turock]

You're best bet is to just add enough sugar to the juice to get the brix up to the desired ABV. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be because you may only encounter other problems.