Grocery store wine

[Ty520]

I use at least 5 lbs/gal for blueberry wine. Some on WMT use more. You will need to add some sugar to reach an ABV of around 11-12%, which works well for most fruit wine.


High quality frozen fruit can be very good. But cheaper frozen fruit is often not very good.

The best fresh fruit is locally grown fruit at the peak of the season. I try to focus on making wines using fruit grown in my area. Fortunately, I live in an area with a lot of fruit orchards. Some of the in-season fruit in the grocery store here has more like a 2-3 day journey, not 2 weeks. If you live in an area that does not have much local fruit, using frozen or juice concentrates is a good option.

Peaches and pears will ripen very well after harvest, but berries will not. If they are picked before being completely ripe, they will never be really good.

@bitterbad I suggest that you add the general area in which you live to your profile, so that we can respond appropriately for your region/climate. No need to be too specific, but you could at least include the state or country.

the problem is, if you live in a place like i do, access to fresh fruit for wine making would be next to non-existent...unless you want to exclusively make prickly pear wine

 

[Raptor99]

@Ty520 Understood. So your best choices are good quality frozen fruit or concentrates. I have had good success with making cherry wine/mead from this: Tart Cherry Concentrate - 32 oz Juice Concentrate. My first step was to reconstitute some of the concentrate in the recommended proportion. Awesome flavor!

I don't know where @bitterbad lives, so I wanted to mention the idea of looking for locally grown fruit.

 

[bitterbad]

I use at least 5 lbs/gal for blueberry wine. Some on WMT use more. You will need to add some sugar to reach an ABV of around 11-12%, which works well for most fruit wine.

You're right, the pure blueberry juice is only ~1.050 gravity. Though it's so so thick, I wonder what all that viscosity is if not for sugar? Pectin?
...why not bluebery cider though? I think might be able to get a nice ~6% ABV batch of that with some EC-1118 yeast I have on hand

 

[bitterbad]

the problem is, if you live in a place like i do, access to fresh fruit for wine making would be next to non-existent...unless you want to exclusively make prickly pear wine

That doesn't sound like such a bad idea, why don't you try making prickly pear wine?

 

[Ty520]

That doesn't sound like such a bad idea, why don't you try making prickly pear wine?

i've tried it several times...not a fan

 

[RevA]

That doesn't sound like such a bad idea, why don't you try making prickly pear wine?

It is kinda an effort to get enough juice, and depending on which type of prickly pear the area has it can either be a bland rose wine or a bland white wine without a bit of adjustment.

 

[BernardSmith]

I’ve made blueberry wine a couple times and most people really like it when it’s back sweetened. I like it dry . The last batch of dry I made underwent malolactic fermentation in the bottle, the back sweetened did not. Good luck.

To back sweeten you must have added K-sorbate and K-meta. I think that adding the sorbate prevents MLF.

 

[cmason1957]

To back sweeten you must have added K-sorbate and K-meta. I think that adding the sorbate prevents MLF.

Potassium Sorbate does not prevent MLF.

Potassium Sorbate acts as birth control for yeast, if you add it to an active ferment, the currently working yeast is unable to bud and make more yeast, so eventually fermentation stops. It should always be used in conjunction with K-Meta to stun the yeast somewhat and have an easier time of doing it's job.

Potassium Sorbate should not be added to a wine that is undergoing MLF, it will interact with the lactic bacteria and produce the wonderful smell of geraniums.

 

[Raptor99]

...why not bluebery cider though? I think might be able to get a nice ~6% ABV batch of that with some EC-1118 yeast I have on hand

That sounds like a great idea! No reason you couldn't make a 6-7% ABV blueberry "cider." I'm not sure what to call it, since "cider" is usually make with apples. Maybe call it a "low alcohol wine" (Low-Alcohol Wines Are Great for Keeping the Party Going). With lower ABV, it wouldn't keep as long, so I wouldn't age it for more than 6-12 months. But the same thing is true of hard cider.

 

[Ty520]

That sounds like a great idea! No reason you couldn't make a 6-7% ABV blueberry "cider." I'm not sure what to call it, since "cider" is usually make with apples. Maybe call it a "low alcohol wine" (Low-Alcohol Wines Are Great for Keeping the Party Going). With lower ABV, it wouldn't keep as long, so I wouldn't age it for more than 6-12 months. But the same thing is true of hard cider.

yes, "low alcohol" or "session"

 

[bitterbad]

That sounds like a great idea! No reason you couldn't make a 6-7% ABV blueberry "cider." I'm not sure what to call it, since "cider" is usually make with apples. Maybe call it a "low alcohol wine" (Low-Alcohol Wines Are Great for Keeping the Party Going). With lower ABV, it wouldn't keep as long, so I wouldn't age it for more than 6-12 months. But the same thing is true of hard cider.

huh... I've never heard of something like this ever referred to as something other than a fruit cider, that's just the vernacular I've lived with, anything that's fizzy and low ABV is a cider.

But yeah I ended up making one gallon of cider and 4 gallons of wine, the gravity for the cider was 0.999 so I bottled it today to get some carbonation

 

[winemanden]

Potassium Sorbate acts as birth control for yeast, if you add it to an active ferment, the currently working yeast is unable to bud and make more yeast, so eventually fermentation stops. It should always be used in conjunction with K-Meta to stun the yeast somewhat and have an easier time of doing it's job.

Potassium Sorbate used without K-meta or Sodium meta often produces the same Geranium smell. It's not a very nice bouquet in your wine!

 

[bitterbad]

I'd like to make an update to the blueberry wine.
The "blueberry cider" actually turned out really well. I really like it. I bottled them with some sugar so that the champagne yeast still active could carbonate, then chilled it, and it sure worked, it's fizzy and crisp and very nice, about 7% ABV. In the past I've made some failures of ciders, I guess I should have just been going about it as if it's a low ABV fruit champagne instead.
The wine tastes pretty bad currently, though I hope that'll change with time. I remember my blackberry wine from last year tasted pretty bad at bottling, but tastes great now one year later. This is also my first time working with oak chips, and the oaky flavor is definitely there. One of the carboys I was doing secondary in / aging it in for the oak, had its airlock go dry though, for a few weeks probably without me knowing. I didn't bother bottling that one and instead racked it again and added some mother vinegar to it in hopes of salvaging something edible from it. Never made vinegar before though, I wonder how it'll go.

 

[Christopher Anderson]

After reading this string, I have a suggestion: Ask the local grocer or local fruit seller what do they do with their overly ripe fruit? I live in the TX hillcountry/wine/ peach country and there are peach growers that throw overly ripened fruit into the compost bin. last year, I went up to my "ranch" with a bunch of 5 gallon buckets and was able to fill them up with overly ripe Fredericksburg peaches that could not be sold. I had asked a few of the roadside vendors to toss their fruit into the buck and came back a few days later. had a bunch of fruit. most of which was over ripe but still good. made peach wine. Cost of product? Under $20 a bucket