Ribena Wine

[ScottM]

How long did you boil the Ribena for? Sounds like the preservatives might still be taking hold.

 

[beermaker]

Hi Scott

Cheers for the reply. I boiled it for about 10 mins, although it was more of a simmer than a boil if I'm honest. There's no sign of infection and it's definately alcoholic - just very sweet like a desert wine! Bit of a bugger as I have five gallons and my missus only likes dry wines! Guessing that it'll just be a case of patience on this one and see what happens.

 

[Leeds Chimp]

think this will be the next one on then

 

[ScottM]

Hi Scott

Cheers for the reply. I boiled it for about 10 mins, although it was more of a simmer than a boil if I'm honest. There's no sign of infection and it's definately alcoholic - just very sweet like a desert wine! Bit of a bugger as I have five gallons and my missus only likes dry wines! Guessing that it'll just be a case of patience on this one and see what happens.

Yeah, it still has miles to go though. 1.062 is probably less than halfway (you will be finishing around 0.990-0.995).

Has there been any change since your last post? Just wondering if it's working, all be it slowly.

10 minutes at a simmer is plenty I would imagine. I can't see anything surviving that so it may be something to do with your yeast/nutrient.

If it's still going though, patience is the key

 

[beermaker]

as I speak, it's still bubbling, but very very slowly. I'm off on holiday for a fortnight at the end of next week - if there's no improvement by the time I get back I'll try adding a different yeast and nutrient and see if that gets it going!

 

[nicknjh]

just put a gallon of this on

600 ml Ribena
500 gramms brewing sugar
Small can youngs grape juice
1 tsp citric acid
1tsp Tannin
topped up with sugar to 1095 specific gravity

we will see how it goes

 

[nicknjh]

oh and one tsp of yeast nutrient,and one teaspoon of youngs red wine yeast. four hours later, she has started bubbling :

 

[DannyT]

So, the discussion here has been great so far. Literally just starting the brewing process this week for the first time! I live in a part of the world (Expat from the US) where alcohol is not available nor are many wine-making ingredients/equipment. I have access to Ribena, carboys, bakers yeast, lemons, and tea. Is this going to work fine? Is there anything special I will need to do as I don't have wine yeast or some of the other special adder items.

Thanks for any tips you have!

 

[Badger]

will definatley give this a go! I was looknig at the other juice wine / ciuder alternatives and found alot to be only40% or 15% juice and the rest water :'(

 

[mikey1967]

mmm liking the sound of this only got 1g D.J spare what would I use in this quantity wise?

 

[Triker]

I have followed this recipe to the letter. Fermentation started and was going fine but after 4 weeks it has stopped and my hydrometer reading is still well into the 60's. I used a Gervin yeast GV4. Obviously there is still a lot of sugar in there so my plan is to seperate it into two fermenting bins and dilute it before adding another yeast culture. What you think?

 

[Leeds Chimp]

I have followed this recipe to the letter. Fermentation started and was going fine but after 4 weeks it has stopped and my hydrometer reading is still well into the 60's. I used a Gervin yeast GV4. Obviously there is still a lot of sugar in there so my plan is to seperate it into two fermenting bins and dilute it before adding another yeast culture. What you think?

same as what happened to mine......thinking to turn it into a "alcopop" instead now.....but not sure how to go about it

 

[Triker]

There was a hell of a lot of sugar in this before fermentation. I can't remember what the reading was but it was well over 1.150

I have a feeling that it may have fermented out and that it was actually a very sweet strong wine? Perhaps the more experienced can clarify?
Anyway I diluted it to 1.040 and pitched some more yeast and it has been happily gurgling away since. So I have managed to salvage around 4 gallons of what could be a drinkable Rose' :party:

Unless anyone knows something I don't

 

[Chippy_Tea]

All depends upon how you like your wine.

As I would suggest that this probably works best as a medium wine, then best practice would be to let it ferment out into the low 0.99s, then rack + CT + sorbate and back-sweeten to taste.

.

I have been reading a lot about stuck fermentation with the Ribena wines even if boiled, have you always found yours ferments below 1000 ?
How long do you find on average it takes to reach this ?

 

[oscartrain]

Hello all,

i am new to the art of brewing and wanted to do something simple so i have made up a gallon of the Ribena wine.
i used the cut down recipe that was quoted:
For 1 gallon I used:

500ml Ribena
1250g Sugar
Juice of half a Lemon
1tsp Youngs Wine Yeast
1tsp Nutrient
1 Strong Cup of Tea
1tsp Glycerin

my only deviation from the above was to use Youngs brewing sugar in place of the T&L granulated sugar.

I followed the process that was descibed and placed all mixture into a demijohn at around 3:30pm yesterday. By 8pm i could see bubbles appearing in the liquid.
This morning the airlock is bubbling gas every 1.5 - 2 mins !

i guess that i can assume the fermentation process is well underway?

another obsevation is that 'fluffy cloud' like 'lumps' appears to have formed in the liquid. Would this be the yeast growing?

Like i mentioned i am new to all of this so please be gentle with me! :shock:

thanks
chris

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Was this the standard Ribena cordial?

If it was you may run into the problems most of us have done with this wine.

If you want some recipes and guides on how to make cheap supermarket juice wine that tastes great have a read of this thread - viewtopic.php?f=41&t=39846 :thumb:

A couple of quotes from this thread -

Triker wrote:
I have followed this recipe to the letter. Fermentation started and was going fine but after 4 weeks it has stopped and my hydrometer reading is still well into the 60's. I used a Gervin yeast GV4. Obviously there is still a lot of sugar in there so my plan is to seperate it into two fermenting bins and dilute it before adding another yeast culture. What you think?

same as what happened to mine......thinking to turn it into a "alcopop" instead now.....but not sure how to go about it

 

[niccolo]

Hi Guys,

I decided to give these a go and tried a Ribena and a Strawberry.

I worked out that 1 litre of each contains about 525g sugar.

• 1 litre Ribena[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• 680g Sugar.[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• 1/2 a mug of strong black tea.[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• 1 tsp Yeast (youngs super yeast)[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• 1 tsp Nutrient.[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• 1/2 lemon.[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• 1 Vit B1 tablet.[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• Make up to 5 litre with water.[/*:m:2vo0t27f]

I planned to add 1 tsp Glycerene at bottling.

At first Racking
1 Camden Tablet & 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate.

On 21th Feb 2014: starting SG = 1.072 for the ribena, but by calculation this should have been 1.092
My calculation is based on
From Ribena Typical values per 100ml (after dilution)
Carbohydrate 10.5g
(of which sugars 10.5g)

Dilution is a 1:4 ratio
=> 100ml after dilution = 20ml Ribena + 80ml Water
=> 20ml Ribena = 10.5g sugar
=> 1000ml Ribena = 525g sugar

680g sugar + 550g sugar which is in 1 ltr of ribena made up to 5 litre with water = sg 1.092.
Question 1 - Have I got the amount of sugars wrong? If not why is my hydrometer reading so different from my calculation?

These to a while to start and I added more yeast and then made a starter which I fed parts of the 500ml must I had set aside in case of overflow(I wish). Eventually they began to bubble.

With both cordials, I heated the cordial to 70 deg Centigrade (using a sugar thermometer to measure) for 15 minutes.

Eventually the ribena went into the airing cupboard and is visibly bubbling, the strawberry went into the living room and is also visibly bubbling. Both have slowed significantly so I took a reading today.

On 14th Mar 2014 (after 1 month)

• SG Ribena = 1.026 (measured drop of 0.05 => ABV 6.79%)[/*:m:2vo0t27f]
• SG Strawberry = 1.06 (measured drop of 0.012 ~ ABV 1.63%)[/*:m:2vo0t27f]

Question 2. Is this to be expected? They are going to take a long time to ferment out at this rate or are they going to grind to a stop as alcopops?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Having tried this wine I am convinced boiling doesnt get rid of the preservative which slowly kills the yeast, I gave up after a few weeks when it was still reading 1020 and far from finished, there are several threads about it finishing early in the forum.

 

[niccolo]

I will watch it to see if it stops and then try a restart.
Does anyone know how you test levels of preservative?
Ribena has Potassium Sorbate and Sodium Bisulphite

I am not sure if the Sodium Bisulphite is a problem; it is used to prevent oxidation and preserve flavor and related to Sodium metabisulfite which is campden tablet and should not have any effect on the yeast as its active effect should have gone.

Potassium Sorbate which is basically ferment stop but this may not be as big a problem as it initial seems.
I have tried to attach some URLs but I get the message "Your post looks too spamy for a new user, please remove off-site URLs."
So search for "bcawa winemaking sorbate" and "markcoatsworth defeating-potassium-sorbate"

As Chippy_Tea said

I am convinced boiling doesnt get rid of the preserve

.
Well it has solubility in water: 58.5 g/100 mL (100 °C) so I am not so sure it can be boiled off either.

Any feedback on my SG calculations?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I meant preservative not preserve.