# Boiling Involved?



## Reverend JC (Dec 5, 2006)

Beer brewer here? I have been snooping around this forum for a bit and still have not figured out the exact process involved?
Does the juice get boiled first like beer wort? or do you just add water to the concentrate and pitch the yeast?

Total Noob!!!!!!!!!


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## Caplan (Dec 5, 2006)

If it's a grape (or general fruit) based wine then you don't need to boil like with a beer.


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## smurfe (Dec 6, 2006)

You are correct for the concentrate kits. You just add water, no boiling required. The only time boiling is needed is if for example you have well water and don't know the quality of the water. You only need to add water, stir very good to re-concentrate the juice, check your SG and temperature on the Must and add your yeast if the temps are in range. Although many do it, you don't have to make a yeast starter either. Just sprinkle the yeast on top of the Must.

Smurfe


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## Caplan (Dec 6, 2006)

As an aside to smurfe's post about boiling water for quality reasons, if you really need to do that then you should consider that boiling water depletes it of O2 and may effect your yeast in primary. Get some O2 back into your cooled water by pouring the water at a little height between two sanitized buckets a few times.


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## smurfe (Dec 6, 2006)

Caplan said:


> As an aside to smurfe's post about boiling water for quality reasons, if you really need to do that then you should consider that boiling water depletes it of O2 and may effect your yeast in primary. Get some O2 back into your cooled water by pouring the water at a little height between two sanitized buckets a few times.



Good point. What I normally do is stick my drill mounted mix stir device in it and give it a few bursts of vigorous stirring to introduce oxygen back into the liquid. Pouring back and forth does the same thing though. It also helps cool the water for pouring over the fruit bag. You want very warm water to extract and set the color of the juice into the wine but not boiling hot water. If you do add very hot water, it is good to have a portion cooled that you can dump in after the hot water to drop the temperature quickly. I guess this keeps the fruit from cooking? I am sure more experienced fruit wine makers will chime in on this. I am just starting fruit wines and still quite a novice.

Smurfe  

Smurfe


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## Luc (Dec 7, 2006)

smurfe said:


> You want very warm water to extract and set the color of the juice into the wine but not boiling hot water. If you do add very hot water, it is good to have a portion cooled that you can dump in after the hot water to drop the temperature quickly. I guess this keeps the fruit from cooking? I am sure more experienced fruit wine makers will chime in on this. I am just starting fruit wines and still quite a novice.
> 
> Smurfe
> 
> Smurfe



Smurfe,

Boiling water was used in old recipes. It was poured over the fruit to kill all wild yeast.
A lot of old recipes over here are not using sulphite because the people who were making the wines were trying to make wine as naturally as possible.
Nowadays no more hot water is used in the recipes because boiling fruit and using hot water drives away a lot of the flavor and will certainly kill all the vitamin C in the fruit. 

The only fruit that really needs boiling are elderberries.
They have some toxic ingredient in them called in Dutch sambunigrine
This toxic will disappear if you boil the elderberries. So therefore wine must with
elderberries should be boiled for approximately 15 minutes.

So what is best to get all the flavors en colors into the wine is to have the
must pulp-ferment just like you would do with grapes.
The alcohol that will form during fermenting will extract all the colors and flavors.

Hope this helps

Luc


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## Caplan (Dec 7, 2006)

Smurfe didn't mention using boiling water just hot water. However,

I 'cold steep' all my fruit wines and if my wine yeast isn't added at the start I use sulphite to supress any wild yeasts present until I do. 

Elderberries are also the only fruits I can think of that I heat to break down the 'sambunigrine' (nice word Luc - must be based on the latin name 'Sambucus' for Elder tree/shrub genus) which in English are cyanogenic glycosides - I don't fancy cyanide poisoning!

Another problem with adding heat to certain fruits is that it can lead to pectin hazes (a cloudy wine) which can be difficult to remove even with pectinase.


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## smurfe (Dec 7, 2006)

Yeah, I didn't mean pouring boiling water over the fruit, just warm water. It may not be a practiced used today though. Just a tidbit of knowledge passed on to me by an old time wine maker. It is also mentioned in the book The Joy of Winemaking by Terry Garey. Of course this book is somewhat dated as well. From what the book says, the warm water "sets" the color of the wine. It doesn't appear that it was used to kill wild yeast, only to set the color for the wine. Maybe it is just an old wives tale. Don't know.

Smurfe


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## Luc (Dec 8, 2006)

smurfe said:


> Yeah, I didn't mean pouring boiling water over the fruit, just warm water. It may not be a practiced used today though. Just a tidbit of knowledge passed on to me by an old time wine maker. It is also mentioned in the book The Joy of Winemaking by Terry Garey. Of course this book is somewhat dated as well. From what the book says, the warm water "sets" the color of the wine. It doesn't appear that it was used to kill wild yeast, only to set the color for the wine. Maybe it is just an old wives tale. Don't know.
> 
> Smurfe



Smurfe and Reverend JC of course,

I stand corrected.
Certain fruits NEED to be boiled and indeed I did this myself although I
do not call it boiling. Let me explain.

Babana's do not have a lot juice. Hard fruit like Rose Hips etc also not have a
lot of juice.
You can extract the flavor of these by boiling them or pouring boiled water over them
and pulp ferment these fruits. Indeed I did this myself.

But usually I use the steam extractor for this. And I do not see it as boiling.
But actually it is a kind of boiling because the fruit gets heated with steaming water.

So I really stand corrected.
I was referring to soft fruit like strawberries, pineapple, blackberries, plum etc. etc.
There is generally no need to boil those.

Luc


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## cpfan (Dec 8, 2006)

Each time I look at this thread, I wonder what exactly the Rev is planning on making. It would be much easier to discuss boil/no-boil if we knew.

For the record, I am a wine kit kinda guy (made one crab apple wine a few years ago), and have never boiled juice for addition to the primary. Further, from my readings I would recommend strongly against boiling any *juice*.

Steve


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## Luc (Dec 9, 2006)

cpfan said:


> Each time I look at this thread, I wonder what exactly the Rev is planning on making. It would be much easier to discuss boil/no-boil if we knew.
> 
> For the record, I am a wine kit kinda guy (made one crab apple wine a few years ago), and have never boiled juice for addition to the primary. Further, from my readings I would recommend strongly against boiling any *juice*.
> 
> Steve



Steve,

We are not paying attention to the Reverend's words  

Let me try to quote them :




Reverend JC said:


> Reverend JC
> 
> Beer brewer here? I have been snooping around this forum for a bit and still have not figured out the exact process involved?
> Does the juice get boiled first like beer wort? or do you just add water to the concentrate and pitch the yeast?



So from these words we can see that he is working with a concentrate and that should
not be boiled.

Are you still with us Reverend JC ???

Luc


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