Hello! Can you confrm im doing everything right?

[alchomist]

Hello,
Im new to this forum (although i have used the great advice posted here for my past brews ) and have so far only got experience with 'kits'. Today i want to make wine and would love if someone could read over my recipe and check that i,m not doing anything stupid!!

ill be making 5 gall of strawberry rosé (hopefully!)

2 bottles of strawberry ribena diluting juice (boiled for 15mins then skimmed)
5kg brewers sugar
2 ltrs of pressed white grape juice
1 cup of strong tea (2 bags?)
Wine or Champagne yeast made into a starter (which would be better?)
juice of one lemon
yeast nutrient (is there anything i can use from my cupboard? i've seen people use tomato puree!)
then topped up with water.

im assuming i would use campden tablets in the completed mixture and leave for at least 24hrs before adding the yeast starter and nutrient?

So, whaddaya'll think? :wha:

 

[alchomist]

oh, i forgot to mention, i like drier wine than sweet, is the consensus to leave till its as dry as bone then backsweeten with more strawb ribena if needed?

 

[oldbloke]

Since it's all out of bottles or packets (apart from the lemon), you don't need Campden to suppress wild nasties, just get the yeast straight in.
Haven't followed the threads on ribena wines so can't comment on the actual recipe, except it looks maybe a little heavy on sugars.

 

[calumscott]

Moved here as more appropriate. :thumb:

 

[alchomist]

excellent, thank you! yeah i wasn't sure of the sugar amount myself, one recipe i looked at had 7kg of sugar (http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewt ... 48&t=11225), and others as little as 1kg, so i thought i'd aim for 5!! ill maybe try 3 or 4 kg then, i guess because im not using an exact recipe it will be guess work (or is there a sugar percentage of total volume i should aim for?)

also

should the addition of the white grape accomplish the rosé effect?

sorry to be a pain!!!!!! :)

 

[wilsoa1111]

well, im no expert on the juice wines (done a few experimental batches but beers more my thing) but i reckon adding a campden certainly wont do any harm, but the ribenas probably got plenty of preservatives in their anyway,

if u want to make a starter u could just ferment the grape juice first plus some of the water and suagr (about half of each),

saving the ribena component till thats going along nicely
(the preservatives in their can be v bothersome to yeasts just starting up, but wont touch a proper colony)

 

[ScottM]

Sugar is a bit much IMO. Also, do you mean 1L bottles of ribena or 660ml bottles? Sugar doesn't need to be brewing sugar, normal white sugar is fine :)

This is your recipe as you have it...

 

[ScottM]

This is what I would go with....

Notice the cost difference when not using brewing sugar :)

 

[alchomist]

ok, i never thought of doing a starter like that! thanks wilsoa1111! i will def try this as i have been told to be wary of the preservatives in ribena, awesome :thumb:

ScottM: that is awesome, ive never seen that chart before! that is brilliant, yeah, i think 4kg looks better, i dont want to end up with 5galls of undrinkable wine!! (glad i didnt go with the 7kg!!!!) so is generic granulated just fine then? happy days! i have a brewshop near me and its prices are great, but, you cant beat lidls!! great! i think im good to start then!


funny story: the very first brew i tried was back when i was 18. i tried to make a honey and ginger mead in my flat in dundee. i was had djs and airlocks but accidentally made too much, and being the thrifty scot that i am, didnt want to waste any. so i commandeered some 1 ltr juice bottles, filled them halfway and squeezed out all the rest of the air. the plan was to squeeze out the air every hour untill i could get more djs and airlocks the next day, but, yours truly fell asleep on the couch instead.
My flatmate woke me to ask what the bulbous bottles in the kitchen were. they were indeed bulbous, 99% ready to explode!!! i tried to let the pressure off gently with one by slowly unscrewing the cap, BANG! im on the floor and theres mead dripping off the roof onto my face and a huge welt on the hand that was unscrewing the cap.
so, plan B for the other bottle, ill throw it out the window into the garden, let it pop, and clean up the mess.
i really didnt expect the weight of the liquid to carry the bottle so far, i really didnt!! it flew across to the next block and hit a windowframe on the stairwell, then blew the entire pane of glass into the stairwell!!
Lesson learned, beer will explode without air venting!!!!!!!

(the mead came out like fire, i added far too much ginger!)

 

[bobsbeer]

I would up your white grape juice to nearer 4 or 5 lt and drop your sugar by about 500g. That will give the wine more vinosity and mouthfeel. It should come out a nice pink with the ribenna.

 

[alchomist]

mmm, pink strawberry ribena wine, im salivating!!! thanks bobsbeer, i really do want this to be a light rosé as im not the biggest fan of reds, thus not following the standard strawberry ribena and cranberry/red grape juice route. More white grape it is then! im going to use that handy tool on the homebrewbuddy site that i just saw once my account is activated to edit the sugar and grape amount to my liking. thank you so much everyone for the advice!! i will keep posting to let you all know how it turns out, and ill post the completed recipe soon :)

cheers to you all! :

 

[ScottM]

Just activated you :)

The norm for a juice wine is 1L of grape and 1L of a-n-other for the flavour per gallon. With that in mind you want to be looking at 5L of grape juice and 5L of a-n-other.

I personally find the 5:2 ratio a little bit thin so I tend to go for a 5:3 ratio. With that in mind you want approx 1.5L of each juice per gallon, 5 gallons means 7.5L of each juice. Given the ingredients I would go with 7L grape juice and 2L of ribena cordial (4:1 ratio).

If you decide to go down that route simply subtract the extra sugar given from the grape juice, which will be approx 850g.

Once you get your head around homebrewbuddy you will be able to have a play around with it all though, to get exactly what you want.

More grape would definitely help though.

 

[alchomist]

you guys are awesome. :thumb:

ok yeah, i think i will start later this weekend so i can get the extra white grape, i want this to be as good as i can make it!!

I personally find the 5:2 ratio a little bit thin so I tend to go for a 5:3 ratio. With that in mind you want approx 1.5L of each juice per gallon, 5 gallons means 7.5L of each juice. Given the ingredients I would go with 7L grape juice and 2L of ribena cordial (4:1 ratio).

If you decide to go down that route simply subtract the extra sugar given from the grape juice, which will be approx 850g.

that sounds like a great plan.

 

[RobWalker]

as for dryness - dry wines are DRY AS HELL in home brewing. you are fine to sweeten it with sugar once it's killed with k-sorbate and campden. you'll need to calculate where you want it, i perceive a lot of sweetness at 1.010 and i'm not really a wine drinker, so maybe you would want it around the 1.000 mark..

 

[alchomist]

as for dryness - dry wines are DRY AS HELL in home brewing.

hmm i would normally drink Chablis (when i can afford it!) or Pinot, so i do really like dry wine, but, ill try sweetening to taste and try take a hydro reading for preferred sweetness for next time?

oh! and thankyou ScottM for activating :)

 

[ScottM]

No worries mate. Let the wine go dry rather than stopping it. You can add sugar, you can't take it away

All the wines I have made I have preferred dry, appprox 0.990-0.995 is dry to medium dry. All of my wines have finished in this region. The thing with ribena is it will taste sweet, even when it's not. The flavour will trick you into thinking it's sweeter than it really is. I noticed that in spades with my raspberry cider, it went bone dry and yet the flavour tricked the tongue into thinking it tasted sweet lol.

So, I would go as low as you can and see what you have got. After that add 1 level tsp of sugar to 1L of wine, stir, taste and repeat until you hit the magic flavour that you are after. Once you get it simply multiply the tsp by 85 (4g per tsp * 21.5L which is the remaining volume) and you will have the amount of grams of sugar to add (4g * 21.5L * amount of tsp).

 

[alchomist]

drunk mathamatics! haha, ill try adding up the sugar before i try drinking all of the liter of wine then

yeah, once it starts, im not touching this wine till it stops bubbling away! id rather back sweeten to taste than not have the option.

 

[alchomist]

so, after a minor equipment setback, i finally have started. SG 1.120, anyone attempting this recipe take note, dont just add the 3.15kg sugar to the ribena unless you want to clean up pink napalm glue (also it hurts a hell of a lot if you get it on you!!)!! haha :)

 

[alchomist]

so, 1.120 is way too high. either ill end up with desert wine or rocket fuel is the yeast survives, sigh.. im not sure why im so off, maybe i didnt take into account that the grape juice was from tesco and not asda and has different sugar values? or maybe my scales are off and i just added too much sugar!!

 

[alchomist]

after some discussion, the plan is to let it ferment for a week to establish the yeast colony, then to top up with water. hopefully the yeast wont have partied itself out by then!!