Raspberry Iced Tea Wine Cooler

[Jovimaple]

I made the Twisted Mist Raspberry Iced Tea Wine Cooler kit last year, and got rave reviews from some family members. I would like to make it again and of course it's not available. I'm not sure if it was seasonal or if it's been discontinued, but anyway, I decided to see about making my own raspberry iced tea wine.

Proposed recipe for 1 gallon test batch:
2 qts brewed tea (6 tea bags)
White grape juice concentrate
Water to 1 gallon (note: I have no idea what the SG will be so the water amount may have to be adjusted)
2-3 lbs frozen raspberries

I would like to end up at about 7% ABV but I haven't used frozen grape concentrate before so I'm winging it with that. I can add sugar if I need to raise the starting SG, or I can add water if necessary to lower it. Or I can live with it being full wine strength, if it's good!

I also am considering fermenting the tea and grape juice first, then adding the raspberries as a flavorpack, but I'm leaning more toward fermenting it all together. I am sure I will backsweeten it some. I'll check the flavor first and figure out if it makes sense to backsweeten with a raspberry fpack and/or sugar - in the planning stages I want a lighter, wine cooler effect, but if it turns out more heavily flavorful and I like it that way, I'm okay with that.

Obviously I will be using kmeta/campden and potassium sorbate before backsweetening.

Am I on track with this recipe?

P.S. I'm also going to crack open one of the Twisted Mist bottles I have left, to get a better idea of the strength of the tea vs raspberry flavor. That might cause me to tweak the amounts in the recipe.

Thanks!

 

[Rice_Guy]

7%; you should be using beer or cider rules. On my part the idea of adding a raspberry flavor pack makes sense. A ferment targeting 13 or 14% ABV would give you room to dilute yet have working alcohol (FYI a lot of cider products ferment a high alcohol and add non fermented juice to make the finished product.)
I like to know what the answer is before I do a test batch. I would play around with tea and a raspberry concentrate to get an idea about ratios. My guess is that you would not taste normal strength tea tannins. This opens up building the tannin flavor after the fact with a finishing tannin or adding chestnut tannin to the primary. ,,,,, Do you have numbers on what the twisted mist finished wine was? The US market likes sweet which pushes us into K sorbate. ,,, Sounds like fun, (I play with my food / lab bench all developmental recipes)

 

[Jovimaple]

7%; you should be using beer or cider rules. On my part the idea of adding a raspberry flavor pack makes sense. A ferment targeting 13 or 14% ABV would give you room to dilute yet have working alcohol (FYI a lot of cider products ferment a high alcohol and add non fermented juice to make the finished product.)
I like to know what the answer is before I do a test batch. I would play around with tea and a raspberry concentrate to get an idea about ratios. My guess is that you would not taste normal strength tea tannins. This opens up building the tannin flavor after the fact with a finishing tannin or adding chestnut tannin to the primary. ,,,,, Do you have numbers on what the twisted mist finished wine was? The US market likes sweet which pushes us into K sorbate. ,,, Sounds like fun, (I play with my food / lab bench all developmental recipes)

I don't keep track of TA. My notes indicate the SSG was 1.051 and the FSG was .996, before the flavor pack.

I like the idea of testing the ratio, but I am working with frozen raspberries rather than concentrate so I will probably just juice some to add and figure out ratios from that.

Thank you!

 

[Rice_Guy]

A TA on finished wine typically is between 0.5 to 0.75%. I use TA to estimate a dilution rate. A black tea component should test like water with pH close to your tap water and TA close to zero. To maximize flavor I might titrate 100 ml of tea drop by drop with raspberry juice. When you get to pH 3.4 you could stop and use this as the weakest (? at least one end point) raspberry ratio. ,, ,, Working from TA numbers a skinny wine might be 1 part raspberry with 3.6 parts tea. A high solids wine might be 1 part raspberry with 2 parts tea. Any raspberry level above that ratio would need significant back sweetening. Knowing that the US likes sugar, I would expect the flavor pac to push the TA close to 0.75 which could balance back sweetened to 1.000 or 1.005.

There is more than one way to build a food product. ,, ,, Humm ,, ,, What I just suggested was two dosages of raspberry. The first provides pH under 3.5 from the acids in raspberry to successfully ferment. The second dose gets to 0.75% TA which combined with sugar provides maximum raspberry flavor.

Some red raspberry numbers pH 3.04; 3.19; 3.46, 3.01; 2.93. Related TA numbers,, 2.26%; 2.18%; 2.26%; 2.60%; 2.22%. (Average 2.30%) Typical SG is 1.035 so it doesn’t contribute much sugar.