Why?

[BlueRidgeBilly]

In Mr. Berry's book on Winemaking he makes the following comment when he talks about going from the fermenter to racking the first time into the carboy. He says that if you come up short you need to add water or additional must to top up the carboy after the first racking. He said that he second time you rack that you need to top up with similar wine and not anything else. My question is why can't you top up the carboy with wine the first time you rack if you are short and need to top it off?

 

[Runningwolf]

This is only my take on it but maybe he is thinking it's just not neccesary to go through the expense of a finished wine going from a primary to secondary. The nearly fermented must is already being protected with C02 being released. Just ensure you are under airlock at this time.

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

You can also top off with a little simple sugar syrup, just do it SLOWLY or you will be sorry, and give it a little boost. As RW said, why add finished wine to a cloudy wine, but if that is what you want to do go ahead, nothing wrong with it at all either way. CC

 

[Wade E]

I would say it mainly depends on how much topping off is needed. By adding a wine at first racking and its not done fermenting uou may be upping the abv too much and exhausting thd yeasts abv tolerance and also you need to be sure there is no sorbate in that topping off wine.

 

[BlueRidgeBilly]

I was about 1/2 gallon short Wade. I added one quart of water and the rest I added strawberry wine that I bought. I was scared to add more then a quart of water. After I did it, I started thinking about the Sorbate that might have been in the wine I added but it was too late to do anything about it. The wine is still slowly fermenting.

 

[JohnT]

IMHO, you should NEVER top off with water. Use wine instead.

 

[Jeff180]

The author's recipes might start off a little strong (ie, more sugar, more fruit) with the expectation that you'll be topping off with water to balance it out.

 

[jswordy]

Oh boy oh boy, I get to be a contrarian again!

If you get out your calculator and figure out how much volume of water you add over say 3 rackings to a wine, even if it is a quart total, that is not much of the total liquid volume by percentage. That's 5% of total volume in a 5 gallon carboy. So a 15% abv wine drops to 14.25%. Less than one percent. Hardly discernable in a wine that finished dry.

The only issue I could see where .75% alcohol dilution might be a problem is if you are right on a 9% wine and the drop could cause preservation issues if you don't sulfite enough before bottling. I have never bottled a wine under 13%.

I have never done this, but I'll bet that if you use a hydrometer with a potential alcohol scale on it and find out the abv by subtracting initial potential from finished potential, then test again after all water topping has been accomplished, it will bear out the math above.

Tastewise, 5% would be the tops for dilution I would think. (This is why so many forum winemakers correctly urge people to get mega-volumes of fruit into the initial must formulation.) That issue can be addressed on the back end with an f-pac or juice addition. Still, that is a lot of water to top off with, and the vintner would be wise to plan initially to make enough wine volume to fill the carboys at first racking, or provide for a separate gallon jug to top off from. That solves a lot of later trouble, if you can get off to a good start with full carboys on first racking.

Billy, you did the right thing by topping the rest of the way with wine, though. It sounds like the initial wine volume was way off from carboy capacity, and I would be leery myself to go over 5% total water in the racking process as a whole.

I have dealt with all these issues and worried (mostly needlessly) over them. I am relating all this from my own experiences FWIW to the forum.

 

[Runningwolf]

Holy Math batman, you lost me. You must be a math teacher! LOL Really Jim, good information. Another option is racking down to the next smallest carboy and a few 1/2 gallon and 1.5 jugs or wine bottles.

 

[SBWs]

I would guess the first time you rack to carboy the wine is still fermenting and if you topped off with wine, the wine may have sulfite and sorbate in it and you could end up with a stuck ferment. I may be wrong, but that's the only reason I can come up with.