Adding water to grape wine

[Daniel_01]

Hello,
I added 0.4 l of boiled water to my 16 days old grape wine after second racking off to a new carboy to avoid issues with not fully filled carboy.
The sugar was almost on 0 but after adding water, a bubbles were going up a lot slower than before. I have made a mistake or it is better for a wine to be a fully filled even with water ?

Thanks you for your response and sorry for my english

 

[sour_grapes]

In my opinion, it is better to top off the carboy with a wine, instead of with water. That way, you won't dilute the taste of the wine so much.

How big was your carboy? If it was ~25 l, than adding 0.4 l water is probably acceptable.

The bubbling may have slowed down because you reduced the supersaturation of the CO2, not because you did anything harmful to the fermentation.

 

[winemaker81]

I concur with Paul -- top with a compatible wine, not water.

During active fermentation most of the CO2 bubbles out, so you see a lot of activity. After fermentation ceases, there's still a fair amount of CO2 dissolved in the wine. Any activity you see once Brix drops to 0 is that CO2 bleeding off.

If you give wine a good stir, that will encourage the CO2 to disperse and your wine will clear quicker. CO2 can hold particles in suspension so the wine probably won't fully clear until all CO2 is out.

DO NOT stir in a full carboy! The wine will foam up and overflow the carboy! I always transfer to a primary fermenter for stirring.

Please note that stirring is not essential. Given wine time and the CO2 will bubble off on it's own. [I like to clear the wine quicker so I stir.]

 

[ASR]

This is a related question, but on intial SG. I am making a one-gallon cranberry wine. It started with 64 ounces of unsweetened cranberry juice, 60 ounces of cranberry juice that also had a blend of some other juices, 8 ounces of water and then 4 cups of sugar. The initial SG is supposed to be somewher ein the 1.09-1.095 range but mine is 1.12 How much water should I add to bring it down to the 1.09 range or is this close enough? I don't want a high level of alchohol but then I dont want it watered dwon too much either. I tried using a Pearson Square and ended up with .09 wine and .03 water but not sure what to do with that (trying to map to the example would have me adding something like 44 ounces of water). My engineerign side says use the formula, my gut side says add a cup at a time and see how it goes until i get close. Any help appreciated.

 

[winemaker81]

Don't mess with it.

You are far more likely to mess up other things trying to change the alcohol level. There are many factors in play; changing one may have an unwanted dramatic effect on others.

For future reference. add 1 cup sugar, stir the heck out of the must, and check SG. Repeat until you hit your target.