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nafex - [NAFEX] Re: nafex Digest, Vol 18, Issue 26

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  • From: Rob Halgren <halgren@msu.edu>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Re: nafex Digest, Vol 18, Issue 26
  • Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 12:55:51 -0400

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.

Well, I started with beer about 15 years ago, but I've switched to making wine over time. It is more fun, I think. I've made several batches of wine (grape, apple, and honey/mead). Apple wine (or cider) is always good, so I try to make a batch of that every fall. Mead is not bad, but the best meads I've made have been flavored with fruit (raspberry ginger mead is excellent). I haven't had enough extra fruit yet for a pure fruit wine. Waiting for my elderberries to get to bearing size.

I'd say that the recipies you see on the internet are trying to stretch their juice to save money. Everything I've read about wine (grape or other fruit) would indicate that the pure juice is the way to go. Some people add grape juice concentrate (white or red, as appropriate). Or apple concentrate. I've never tried either one...

Of course, my taste is towards heavier wines. And I like my coffee black, with the spoon sticking straight up. Others may not like that... If you want a light bodied wine, then adding half water and more sugar is probably not a bad way to go. You still need to get to a suitable alcohol concentration for preservation purposes, but sugar won't give you much taste. Personally, I'd do what they used to do in times of old, ferment and store it strong and dilute it with water for serving.

If you like a dry wine, specify that to your purveyor of yeasts. The yeast strain probably has more to do with the final sweetness of the product than the amount of starting sugar. Some yeasts ferment to very high alcohol content. I've used champagne yeast for apple wines, which result in a very delightfully dry end product. You can get cider yeast in 'sweet' or 'dry' varieties, but I prefer the champagne. I don't like sweet wines, but I know people who have added various sweeteners after the fermentation is done (including non-fermentable things like nutra-sweet or saccharine - ick...).

That's just my opinion... I could be wrong.

Rob
--
Robert G. Halgren, Ph.D.
Bioinformatics Specialist
GTSF - Michigan State University
http://genomics.msu.edu
(517) 353-7236 - halgren@msu.edu



  • [NAFEX] Re: nafex Digest, Vol 18, Issue 26, Rob Halgren, 07/15/2004

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