Inspired Cherry Wine

[Forager]

hey nice pics pgentile.

So I finally started my gallon of tart cherry wine today. 8.5 lbs of tart cherries with a half liter of cherry juice that I canned last year, and a tiny bit of water just to bring up the volume a bit over a gallon, one Campden tablet and 1/2 tsp of pectic enzyme. Will give it around 36 hours before I pitch the yeast and add sugar.

Any rough estimates on how much sugar to add to one gallon to get the SG up to around 1.090? It was a very wet summer and the cherries are unusually tart and low on sugar.

 

[pgentile]

Thanks, my guess without a hydrometer, and not knowing the sugars in your juice, roughly would be around 2 to 2.5 lbs of sugar to get in your range.

I would get pre-fermentation volume closer to 1.5 gallons. After primary fermentation and removing wine from cherries, you'll be closer to a gallon with maybe a little extra.

Good luck, will be curious how it turns out.

 

[Scooter68]

I would get pre-fermentation volume closer to 1.5 gallons. After primary fermentation and removing wine from cherries, you'll be closer to a gallon with maybe a little extra.

Good luck, will be curious how it turns out.

VERY much agree with this. If you are using whole or crushed cherries with pits still in there you will need at least 1.5 gallons to start. Best way to check this is to pull out your fruit bag and check your volume with out the fruit in the bucket. (Assuming you are using fruit bag AND that you have crushed the cherries. ) Without the fruit you should have not less than 3/4 gallon of volume even though some of the cherry pulp will release liquid you will have the pulp and yeast residue to account for.

 

[Forager]

Yup all good, fruit bag pulled up, and still a bit over a gallon. I also still have a couple more jars of cherry juice from last year that I can use to top up when I transfer to secondary.
Also pitted all the cherries right after I picked them. Most people and online posts that I found seemed to agree that not including the pits produces a better quality wine.

 

[pgentile]

I back-sweetened 1 gl of the cherry with the product in the photo. 2oz to 1 gl. Never back-sweetened anything I've made before. Nice cherry flavor and not too sweet. I typically like dry wine, but this isn't bad at all.

 

[pgentile]

After tasting a little more last night it is too sweet. Will try 1oz to a gallon later this week.

 

[Scooter68]

I would not use 1 gallon quantities for bench trials of back-sweetening unless you are dealing in 20 gallons of wine or more for your batch.

If you have several gallons I would suggest you blend 1 cup of the already sweetened wine with 1 cup of unsweetened wine. That would give you a chance to test a 1 oz per gallon mix. When back sweetening as you are doing I normally us one cup quantities for testing the amount I need. Then use appropriate quantities of the sweetener for that 1 cup.

For my backsweetening I normally work with simple syrup (2:1) and start with 1/4 oz per cup. If that is too sweet I dilute that original 1 cup with a second cup and the gives me a chance to test 1/8 oz per cup. Once you find the amount that works, scale up the quantities based on the amount of wine you have left to back-sweeten. Using a one gallon batch quantity that would mean after a 2 cup test I would have 14 cups of wine left to back-sweeten. At 1/8 oz per cup I need to add 1 3/4 ozs of sweetner to the remaining 14 cups.

 

[pgentile]

Yeah I learned my lesson on that one. Will do a series of small 1 cup tests before any large changes to any of the 7+ gls remaining.

 

[Scooter68]

Yeah I learned my lesson on that one. Will do a series of small 1 cup tests before any large changes to any of the 7+ gls remaining.

I've made a few choice mistakes along the way. One resulted in about a quart of wine on the floor. ARRRGH! And others - I do learn from them.

I just don't want to be like that young military officer - In his evaluation report his commander wrote: Lt Jones never makes the same mistake twice, however, he has made just about every mistake once...."