Cornucopia Raspberry Merlot Fruit Wine

[tonyhibbett]

Got this a while back from Amazon when it was dirt cheap. It is now £63! Ought to get the trades description people onto this. It comes with a bag of grape concentrate/invert liquid sugar and another marked raspberry, plus corks, caps and labels, plus the usual bits, but no oak chips. You are supposed to ferment the first bag with water to 21 litres, then add the second bag after stabilising, producing a sweet, low strength (below 8%) alcoholic beverage. I don't know of any commercial wine this low.
So I have put the 2 bags in together and reduced the water to get sg 1085. The 'raspberry' tastes artificial, and I note that the ingredients say 'natural and/or artificial flavours'. No fruit, then. Thankfully it does not mention artificial sweeteners. Some of the concentrate may be merlot, but unlikely purely.
It may turn out fine, but the artificial raspberry flavour worries me. I once worked in a factory which made ice lollies. 4 ingredients: Colour, flavouring concentrate, sugar, citric acid and water. Feeling thirsty, I mixed some concentrate with water. Without the sugar, it tasted horrible!

 

[brews-brothers]

Hi tony,

I have made this kit up.

I made it to 20L rather than 21L

It is low in alcohol but is a summer mist type of wine. I can imagine drinking it at an afternoon BBQ.

The Raspberry flavour is fairly strong and it is also sweet. I have another kit to make up for when this one is finished, I had thought I would only add half of the raspberry flavour at the end. But you have given me the idea of doing it half and half. Adding half during the fermentation stage and half at the end. Making it a bit stronger and still getting some raspberry flavor.

I would think adding it all at the fermenting stage will leave it quite dry so you might have to add sweeness at the end.

I would say it is worth the money at £14 that I paid. No way would I spend £63 on the kit. It just aint worth it!

Oh and also it does taste of merlot underneath the rasp flavor.

 

[tonyhibbett]

That's encouraging!

 

[tonyhibbett]

Having tasted some genuine raspberry concentrate, the stuff in this kit is **** chemical fake stuff. Worse still, it is packed with preservative which killed the yeast. A nasty piece of kit which is bound for the drain.
Objectively speaking, the barolo is somewhat watery too. I won't be buying anything else from Paklabs.

 

[tonyhibbett]

I am attempting to drive off the preservatives by simmering for 10 minutes. House smells of someone making cheap jelly!

 

[brews-brothers]

good point about the second bag being full of preservatives. So unless we boil the juice the idea of fermenting the second bag is not such a great idea.

Maybe too much bother!

 

[tonyhibbett]

Seems to have worked. I have made up a starter bottle of some rather old Young's active yeast and sugar with tepid water. Once that got going, I added some of the treated juice, and it is still fermenting. Meanwhile, I read that bread yeast not only tolerates sorbate, it apparantly consumes it. It has rather low alcohol tolerance, so you add it to your preserved juice and when it stops fermenting, you rack it, as bakers yeast confers an unsuitable flavour. Then introduce a wine yeast to finish the job off.
Out of interest, I bought some Hovis fast acting bread yeast and made up another starter bottle and added some juice, as a back up strategy. Within minutes, it was frothing away, overtaking the other bottle, so I added some Youngs yeast from a fresh pack and it soon caught up. So I added more juice to it, which stopped it in its tracks, but slowly recovered, which leads me to suspect that some sorbate may still be present. Unfortunately, the bread yeast didn't take too kindly to more juice either!

 

[tonyhibbett]

The original starter bottle is now 2 litres in a bucket. By doubling the volume every hour with juice, the yeast colony is optimised. Wouldn't normally bother, but this is an exceptional case!

 

[tonyhibbett]

Alas, the sorbate and sulphite have defeated the wine yeast. No choice but to send in the bread yeast. Once more into the breach!

 

[brews-brothers]

I do hope the finished product is worth all of that effort for you Tony!

 

[tonyhibbett]

Hopefully! Simmering seems to have driven out some of the unpleasant fake raspberry flavour.
The bread yeast recovered, so I carried on doubling up until I had 2 gallons of must, but it has been stunned into submission. The answer must be to add smaller amounts of juice at longer intervals. This is going to take some time!

 

[alanwh]

I admire your tanacity Tony, I think I would have thrown it down the drain and added a summer fruits concentrate or similar.

 

[tonyhibbett]

The thought had crossed my mind, but I hate waste and like a challenge. More interesting that way.
Tough stuff, this bread yeast. Down, but not out. I went off to the vineyard for a couple of hours, which was encouraging after yesterday's rain, and came back to find the yeast bubbling away, albeit quietly, again. Strictly speaking, this is not a primary fermentation but a treatment. Sorbate and sulphite don't necessarily kill wine yeast, they just stun it into inactivity. Only heat will kill it. Fining and filtering removes the yeast, but that sediment is re-usable as active, highly alcohol tolerant yeast which we buy in sachets. I once opened a carton of grape juice, used some and returned it to the fridge. That brief exposure to air was enough to expose it to spores and it started fermenting at 5 c.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Before adding the last of the juice to the must, I compared the two. There was considerably more sulphur dioxide in the juice than in the must, so the bread yeast clearly was neutralising it most effectively. I have no test for sorbate. The juice had an sg of 1010, having lost about 3 litres of water during simmering. Starting yeast with this high concentration of sugar is unhelpful, so I have diluted the whole lot back down to 1085 and added a normal dose of nutrient. Hopefully that's that!

 

[tonyhibbett]

Looks and smells like a normal fermentation and tastes good too, but never again!

 

[aneray]

Objectively speaking, the barolo is somewhat watery too. I won't be buying anything else from Paklabs.

Now thats not good, I have the same kit ready to make up. How far down would you shortbrew it in order to end up with a non watery brew.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Make it up to 18-20 litres instead of 23.

 

[tonyhibbett]

After all that bother and 2 weeks fermentation, the raspberry merlot is still pretty much stuck at 1015, exactly where it would have been if I had followed the original recipe! However, some more nutrient seems to have revived the yeast.

 

[alanwh]

The battle continues :!:

 

[tonyhibbett]

The nutrient did the trick. Down to 1010 and still bubbling!