Backsweetening fruit wines

[Stressbaby]

Backsweetening fruit wines in my opinion is like hara hachi bu. When you are 80% there, you are there.

 

[TemperanceOwl]

What kind of frozen juice concentrate do you all use to back sweeten? I wanted to use a triple berry blend or strawberry in my Dragon Blood, but am not able to find anything that is only that. I find grape, and blends that mainly include apple, pineapple, and citrus fruits that I don't think will blend well with the blueberry, raspberry and blackberry of my wine.
What have y'all used in berry wines?
Thanks!

 

[quiltertoo]

I used a mixed berry concentrate that I got at Walmart. I don't remember if it was Welches or Old Orchard.

 

[wineforfun]

Old Orchard makes a 100% juice concentrate that is Mixed Berry. I find not all stores carry it though.

 

[TemperanceOwl]

Old Orchard makes a 100% juice concentrate that is Mixed Berry. I find not all stores carry it though.

Is this the one you use? It's the only one I see that is a berry blend, but when you look at the ingredients its base is apple. I just don't know what that might do to my 4 berry blend DB.

 

[wineforfun]

Is this the one you use? It's the only one I see that is a berry blend, but when you look at the ingredients its base is apple. I just don't know what that might do to my 4 berry blend DB.

That's the one. With that said, I don't use it on DB. I don't use any concentrate on DB. I only use straight table sugar(or honey the one time I made a DB melomel). To me, it is not needed. I use 1.5lbs of fruit per gal. and it yields plenty of fruit flavor.
I have used that mixed berry blend with another wine I made.

FYI
You will notice with almost every juice concentrate by Old Orchard, Welchs, etc., ie: blueberry/pomegranate, cranberry blend, mango/passionfruit, etc. that apple is normally the first ingredient. Alot of them will have pear up there too as apple and pear are much cheaper than giving you all blueberry, mango, etc.

 

[Zog]

I also back sweeten most of my apple and pear cider wines. I make my own concentrate from fresh juice. This adds much more flavor and body to the wine compared to sweetening with sugar or fructose.

Even with the addition of sorbate, I've had a couple batches start fermenting again. So you need to watch out for that.

Alternately, I've played around with different methods to stop the fermentation at the sweetness level I'm looking for instead of fermenting to dry and then back sweetening. It's tricky to do... it takes sterile filtering, high sulfite, cold stabilization or all of the above.

 

[fabrictodyefor]

There is certainly an art to getting the flavor just the way you want. Several times I have made a frozen concord grape concentrate/blackberry Dragon's Blood version which I had never back sweetened. I like it dry. This last bottling didn't seem as good, so to one of my bottles I added 1 TBS of simple syrup and we were amazed at the difference in flavor. As this batch is already bottled I will just add the SS as I open the bottle. I had made a plum, one of my first batches and it really did not have enough plum flavor even after 14 months in a car boy, it just tasted like alcohol. So I made a flavor pak of a few jars of my home canned plums and a jar of homemade plum jam. Simmered most of the water out, added it to the carboy and let it set another couple of months. After racking again, letting it sit another couple months, then stabilizing it was finally ready to bottle. It is sweeter than most of my wines, but among my beer drinking friends it is a favorite! And those bench tests can be kind of fun, sampling and sampling and well you get the picture!

 

[Jc5066]

I use old orchard concentrate. The flavor depends on the flavor wine I am making.

Apple is almost always used in the 100% blends because it adds the sweetness.