North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[mIEKAL aND <dtv@mwt.net>]

Rob:

Have you made fruit wines?  My real question is about using pure juice 
to make the wine or adding water to it.  The majority of recipes that 
I'm finding online call for equal amounts of juice to water.  I'm 
assuming adding water will increase the amount of sugar needed to be 
added to get to a specific gravity of 1.090.  (I usually am happy with 
1.085...)  Adding water also seems to me that it'll create a lighter 
body wine.


On Thursday, July 15, 2004, at 10:01 AM, Rob Halgren wrote:

>

> I would, however, go out of my way to get a good quality wine yeast. 
> Any homebrew store and a number of internet vendors would carry 
> several  different varieties.  Yeast strains are quite different.  
> Using bread or beer yeast is a good way to get a product that tastes 
> 'bready' or 'beery'.  In addition to producing wine that tastes more 
> like wine, wine yeasts also usually ferment to a higher alcohol 
> content, which is what you want.  A couple bucks extra for good yeast 
> is well worth it.


I've read in numerous places that yeast is the single most important 
factor in the kind of wine that is created.  I've been using Wyeast 
liquid yeasts & found that they give outstanding characteristic to the 
wine made.   http://www.wyeastlab.com/   Since Im not a big fan of 
country wines & sweet wines, Im looking for something that is on the 
dry side.  Last years elderberry that I made was remarkably similar to 
a merlot.

mIEKAL