topping off Dandelion wine

[termini]

I need the advice of a Dandelion wine expert. And topping it off
I only have two volumes of carboys available to me for my two 4.5 gallon batches of Dandelion wine.( stupidly, I chose two different yeasts )
Right now, they have been racked to both of my 6.5 gallon carboys because I wasn’t worried about head space and air problems yet because they were still fermenting a little so I figured that the CO2 would displace the ox
But now that I will be racking again, I will be going into two 5 gallon carboys that I borrowed one and found at a garage sale. I will still be short on the volume side, and I know that you can top off the Box wine kits with water because they are designed to take that into account.
But I am worried that if I top off this home made stuff with boiled, cooled water, that it might dilute it too much ( about a half to ¾ gallon)
I have also seen sometimes to top off with a” like” wine:
If So should I:
1)Top off with a like wine of the forum’s suggestion what would be O.K. to use?
2) top off with water?
3) how about a juice with sorbate—pineapple, or orange or something?
4) Diluted Grand Marnais?
Any suggestions before I rack?
<?amespace prefix = o ns = "urnchemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

 

[bj4271]

Termini,


First - I know nothing about dendelion wine. But, for a headspace problem after racking here's something I found out be experimenting.


I had a batch of blackberry &amp; got careless &amp; quite a bit spilled. After my wife was through laughing, I found a lot of headspace after racking. I tried marbles &amp; that still left quite a bit of space to make up. I didn't have any wine I wanted to use (didn't want to dilute the blackberry) so I tried something out of the blue.


I took this doohickey George sells (I forget what it's called but you put a rubber stopper in place of a cork &amp; put a plastic hand pump thingy on it &amp; pump. It removes the air - I had a Better Bottle with a bung &amp; airlock &amp; put the stopper in top of the airlock &amp; it sucked in several inches on the sides &amp; it stayed that way until the next racking).


Worked fine for me. The problem would be in knowing when to stop pumping - with a plastic bottle you can obviously see when the air is out, I wouldn't know about a carboy, but to draw the air out of the Better Bottle it only took a copule of dozen pumps. Whether the suction will hold may be a matter of luck, but it worked for me.

 

[Joanie]

Use marbles for now...or it's a great excise for buying different sized carboys!

 

[Wade E]

Or you can go to a wine store and get a can of wine saver which is a gas that will displace the air with gas and then bung it.
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[termini]

I think I will try the inert gas stuff. I thought about using the inert gas from my welding set up, but I cannot be sure what Argon may do to the wine --even though it is inert--- it may not be the correct gas to use so I will play it safe.
HOWEVER, A local wine shop guy suggested that I could use REISLING wing to top off the Dandelion wine as it would be the closest to Dandelion. ANY feed back on this???


----GET THIS----when I suggested that I could use some of the WE Limited Edition Reisling to do that, He almost came through the phone and choked me!! saying that the WE wine is" far too high in quality to waste doing that!"-- Kind of a testimony to the kit wines, don't you think!Edited by: termini

 

[Wade E]

That or a Gewürztraminer.

 

[termini]

Gewürztraminer?

Riesling?
Liebfraumilch?
Which do you think might come closest to complementing the Dandelion?

 

[Wade E]

What was the fin. SG? If it is very sweet then a Gewurtz. would be better. If its a little drier then the Riesling would be the better choice. I think the Riesling is a good choice for either though.

 

[termini]

The S.G.'s are .993 and .994
so does that mean with the starting S.G. of 1.095 minus .993 = .102----does that mean it is approx. 10.20% abv. at this time?, And is that dry?

 

[MO-WINEAUX]

more like 12.7% by my chart. sounds dry or darn close to me.
JC

 

[grapeman]

termini take the ABV reading off the scale on the hydrometer using the starting SG of 1.095. That is the amount of alcohol down to 0- but then there is a bit more when you go past 0. You add that amount then to the other - read the amount of ABV at .993. Add that to the starting SG and it gives you the approximate ABV. I don't have a hydrometer handy right now, but Mo's reading sounds right. Now go practice...

 

[PeterZ]

Termini, argon is fine to top off the wine with an inert gas. In fact, that is what is often in those cans.

 

[Wade E]

I like this equation for abv.
Starting SG 1.095 - .993= .102 x 131.4= 13.4% abv