Supermarket Juice Wine How To guide and Recipes.

[LED_ZEP]

Just a curiousity question. Has any one tried to brew a wow to a liquor strength? If so are there any recipient/methods to follow?

I got a liquor kit for Christmas which then got me thinking about it.

I'm still waiting for my mulled fruit wine to clarify, which is slowly starting after about 2 weeks.

I you want something in the high teens percentage use a high alcohol yeast such as GV4 and adjust your s.g. accordingly. Make sure it's sweet or back sweetened as dry and high alcohol isn't very nice. Don't use the turbo yeasts as you'll get the high percentage (up to 23%) but it will taste like crud.

 

[Delta3]

Awesome thank you! I was thinking 3l juice and topping up with a 1l of brewing sugar/water to get the gravity (then back sweeten).

Do you know how long it would take to mature for it to be drinkable? Or would that be dependent on the fruit juice?

 

[LED_ZEP]

Awesome thank you! I was thinking 3l juice and topping up with a 1l of brewing sugar/water to get the gravity (then back sweeten).

Do you know how long it would take to mature for it to be drinkable? Or would that be dependent on the fruit juice?

It depends, are you after something akin to an alcopop or something a little more refined?
If it's the alcopop then use strong fruit flavours (as you find in commercial drinks) because you will loose more subtle flavours due to the amount of alcohol. You can even add things like Lowicz syrup to flavour. This would be ready to drink as soon as it's cleared and bottled.
Whereas something like a good dessert wine, port or sherry! Well they would all need a thread in themselves.
For a liqueur your best just getting cheap vodka and adding fruit, herbs or even wood like oak to the bottle (I made a nice vodka flavoured with bayleaf). Leave for a month or two then add sugar syrup and or glycerol to get the sweetness and consistency.

Hope that helps.

 

[Delta3]

I was looking at something akin to a more refined tipple than an alcopop, although my lack of experience and equipment may prohibit this at present.

Although then 4l of juice may achieve the effect of an alcopop (with the last litre mixed with additional brewing sugar, added After the main stage of fermentation has somewhat settled), even after clearing would it be palatable?

Im more curious than anything else if the effort is worth the product...

 

[brewaholic]

hi new here trying this wow thing while in the winter months isit ok to use welchs juice drink? this is what I'm doing.

1ltr pineapple 100% juice
1ltr orange and mango 100% juice
1ltr welchs wgj apple and pear juice drink
pectolase
enough sugar to make up to 1.100 after topped up to shoulder of DJ with water.
(roughly 750g sugar)

so what do you guys think isit ok to use or should i stick to 100% wgj next time? I'm making different batches too il keep you posted.

 

[brewaholic]

hi here's another im trying!

1ltr welchs wgj apple and pear juice drink
1ltr tropical 100% juice
1ltr apple and mango 100% juice
pectolase
enough sugar to make up to 1.100 after topped up to the shoulder with 100% apple juice.

let me know what you think of this............... while a make another.

 

[brewaholic]

here's another im trying!

2ltr forest fruit 100% juice
1ltr welchs rgj drink
pectolase
suger up to 1.100 (roughly 750g) after topped up to shoulder of DJ with apple juice 100%
I forgot to mention in other posts i'm using
super wine yeast compound.

any feedback on my recipes is much appreciated and who knows if you live
close enough maybe we can tip a few
glasses!

 

[chewie]

You need to be careful when using juice type drinks as opposed to 100% juices, as long as they don't contain preservatives they should be OK to use. Your recipes with thicker juices can be volatile once fermentation gets going and you tend to lose quite a bit to trub, you may need to top up with 100% juice rather than water to get some flavour back in, with the likes of pineapple , orange and Mango I would be expecting at least 1litre of loss to true.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Welcome to the forum.

We tend to use grape juice to add viscosity and try to mimic wine but there are no rules so anything goes, some juice drinks have very little juice so you need to double up or you risk ending up with a watery wine, keep us posted on how yours turns out.

 

[brewaholic]

cheers boys will keep u up to date

 

[brewaholic]

point taken! I had a check this morning and there was 3/4 of full of pulp on the pineapple recipe so this is what I did.

run around my kitchen shaking my fist at the sky through the window like a a man possessed then run to my local Tesco and got 4lts of apple juice got home shook the troubled demijohn till all pulp was mixed and split it over 2 demi johns and topped up to the shoulder with apple juice and made sugar back up to 1.100 in both.
what you think?
quick responses might have saved the day boys cheers

 

[chewie]

point taken! I had a check this morning and there was 3/4 of full of pulp on the pineapple recipe so this is what I did.

run around my kitchen shaking my fist at the sky through the window like a a man possessed then run to my local Tesco and got 4lts of apple juice got home shook the troubled demijohn till all pulp was mixed and split it over 2 demi johns and topped up to the shoulder with apple juice and made sugar back up to 1.100 in both.
what you think?
quick responses might have saved the day boys cheers

I would always tend to advocate leaving it until it fermented out and then topping up to 6 bottles worth, splitting it can increase slightly the risk of infection and you learn more by making up a recipe and seeing how it turns out rather than altering something.

Racking the pineapple wine of the trub once it completed fermentation and topping up with wgj, rgj or apple would have been a more sensical approach, this thread is extremely long and just about every scenario relevant to wurzel wines has been discussed which is why replies may not be as quick as you would like them to be, patience is required a lot in home brewing mostly it's to do with waiting for stuff to ferment out and clear or condition, sometimes though it has to do with researching and waiting for replies to things which have been previously answered and only required a bit of back reading.

One other thing is you are adding quite a bit of sugar and are approaching around 14%, nothing wrong with that but that is on the strong side, certain yeasts may start to struggle to fully ferment out.

 

[brewaholic]

cheers for the info yeah the wife likes to drink spirits and a strong wine something with a kick to it she says.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I agree too much sugar is not good for standard wine yeast, I also stopped topping up with juice as I found they often started to ferment again even though I had used stabiliser we now know it doesn't kill the yeast so I now add more juice at the begining and lower the amount of sugar I add to keep the ABV the same.

 

[brewaholic]

hi again all the recent brews are going well felt confident enough to top up with water at this point on all except the tropical, apple and mango as the pulp is still on the top the rest have fallen to the bottom leaving an inch thick layer of pulp on the bottom il keep you posted in another week.
oh yeah none of them erupted out the air lock.

 

[Delta3]

Hi all,

I've been reading up on the thread for the last few weeks, and given this a go;
2L ASDA mulled fruit juice,
1L ASDA red grape juice,
1tsp neutrient,
1tsp citric acid,
1tsp pectolase,
½tsp tannin,
1 vitamin B1 tab,
500g brewing sugar,
Super yeast.
Then bentonite to clear it.

Running the numbers this should come out roughly at 176g/l sugar at 5l.

It's been brewing nicely for 3 days so far, but it's only really today that it's become really active in the airlock.

Smells pretty good at the moment, so fingers crossed it turns out ok.

Just racked this again to help it clear with another dose of bentonite. It's been in my basement for a few weeks. Tastes ok, loads of cherry coming through and a nice hint of the mulled herbs. Seems a tad watery to me, but I'm hoping it will improve with further aging :-)

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Seems a tad watery to me, but I'm hoping it will improve with further aging :-)

How much juice was in the ASDA mulled fruit juice?

 

[Delta3]

100% juice (made up with a mix of fruits)

It's not extremely watery just a noticeable amount. Might add a bit more juice if I do it again next year :-)

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I upped the original recipe for all mine by half a litre of 100% juice and it did make a difference.

 

[Delta3]

Sweet. I'll give that a try next time :-)

The second racking has worked wonders more or less cleared over night! Still some floating particles but more or less clear :-)