Wine from Jam

[Luc]

Ok, I had an empty carboy and an Idea. So yesterday evening I put the two together. I had bought 7 cans of Jam. Straight fruit with no preservatives. I bought 6 cans of strawberry and mistakenly one can of cherry.

As these jam cans are cheap and made of pure fruit, I thought I could make me some wine with it.

The day before yesterday I made a yeast starter with grape juice (from a pack) some sugar, some nutrient, and a bit of acid. Yesterday it was already fermenting vigorously.

So I put the 7 cans of jam of each 450 gram in a bucket, and added about 2 liters of water and mixed it thoroughly so the jam was solved in the water. Then I put several spoons of pectic enzyme in the must, added some sulphite and dropped it in a carboy.

Calculation time !!

7 cans of fruit of each 450 grams.

The packaging told me there was 62 grams of sugar in each 100 grams.

So I had 7 x 450/100 x 62 gives 1953 grams of sugar.

I wanted to make a wine with about 12% alcohol so my SG table told me I had to have about 2500 grams of sugar per 10 liters.

I took another liter of grape juice, and dissolved 570 grams of sugar and some nutients in it and added all this to the must.

I measured the acidity and brought it up to 6.

Then I added the starter and topped the carboy up with water to the desired 10 liters.

The yeast are having a good time, and my airlock is bubbling joyously.
So if this turns out well, it seems there is a constant cheap source of winemaking ingredients available in the shops.

I wonder how it will taste in the end. The smell is good at this moment.

Luc

P.S. If anyone is interested how all this sounds in Dutch, take a look at my weblog.
http://wijnmaker.web-log.nl/

 

[smurfe]

Ingenious. I am always amazed at the thing people will use to make wine. If this is 100% fruit with no preservatives, I don't know why it wouldn't be successful unless the fruit isn't full flavored. Keep us posted on the progress (in English ). Sounds interesting.

Smurfe

 

[cpfan]

Luc:

We made a Blackberry Merlot wine kit in order to make wine jelly from it. Others buy jam (or jelly) to make wine. Just one of the different approaches to wine making.

Steve

 

[Luc]

Luc:

We made a Blackberry Merlot wine kit in order to make wine jelly from it. Others buy jam (or jelly) to make wine. Just one of the different approaches to wine making.

Steve

Hey Steve,

If this jam-wine turns out bad. maybe I can make wine jelly from it

But serious at this moment (monday evening over here so 2 days later) it is fermenting like hell !!!
Foam is forming on top which is to be expected if you consider of what
kind of compact mass the wine was made of. Despite the pecto enzymes there will be solids in the wine which will produce foam.
As it is a red wine I have no pictures from it because I made this in a dark green carboy which is no good for photographing. When I rack it, I will rack it into a seethrough glass carboy (now what is the right word for that ???) and make some photographs.

There was some foam in my airlock, but out of precaution I had put a plastic sandwich bag over the airlock so nothing could come sputtering out

For now it looks great and surely smells great.

 

[Luc]

Update on Jam wine

I just racked my Jam wine.

It has a great colour, it smells great and even better: It tastes like heaven.

Although my weblog is in Dutch, there is a new picture on it so you can see the color.
Click on the pic to enlarge.

http://wijnmaker.web-log.nl/

Now just wait and sit until it's finished.

Luc

 

[lockwood1956]

A friend of mine made some jam wine, it is just fabulous (still only a couple of months old)

wonderful mouth filling texture, an incredibly fruity nose and a long fruity finish

 

[outdoorsmadness]

hey luc how did this wine turn out, was thinking about making a wine from jam. do you still have some of it left

 

[Luc]

None left !!!

It turned out great and I can really recommend making wine from Jam.

I have used jam's several times from that first try on.
I have mixed jam with dandelions to make a strawberry-dandelion wine with excellent results.

http://wijnmaker.blogspot.com/2009/04/paardenloem-aardbeien-wijn-dandelion.html

Just make sure you have a jam made from fruit and sugar only. No conservatives like sulphite, benzoate or sorbate and you will be fine.

Make sure that You use plenty of pectic enzyme like 4 to 5 times the recommended dose. Just add a few full teaspoons.

Also make sure to use a full flavored jam.
With strawberries you just can not go wrong !!!

Luc

 

[outdoorsmadness]

thanks for the response, i will try this with strawberries. the dandelions sound intresting but i would never get that many im afraid.

Bryan

 

[arcticsid]

Bryan, heres a similar/sister thread to the wine with jam topic

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5565&highlight=jelly

Interesting variation on wine making, I see the experiment on my table myself.

 

[rocketguy]

"Just make sure you have a jam made from fruit and sugar only. No conservatives like sulphite, benzoate or sorbate and you will be fine."

So, let's say a newby winemaker decided to add some jam to a wine kit but didn't consider the preservatives issue until after 72 hrs and no fermentation. Is there any recourse? Did I just waste $50 worth of ingredients?

 

[GreginND]

A friend of mine once made a delicious raspberry wine from jam. It was remarkably good.

One of these days I'll follow a dream I have and drive the old Route 66. At every diner I'll fill my pockets with those little plastic jelly/jam packs and make a mixed fruit wine from them.

 

[saramc]

"Just make sure you have a jam made from fruit and sugar only. No conservatives like sulphite, benzoate or sorbate and you will be fine."

So, let's say a newby winemaker decided to add some jam to a wine kit but didn't consider the preservatives issue until after 72 hrs and no fermentation. Is there any recourse? Did I just waste $50 worth of ingredients?

I make jam wine all the time and commonly have sulphite and sorbate on the ingredient label, never had an issue. Now, benzoate I will avoid and refuse to purchase those products. Apparently if you have benzoate laden goids, you can TRY a huge starter and literally feed your must to the starter in increments. Keyword: TRY.

How do you know there is no fermentation? Added to a kit wine at what stage?

 

[olusteebus]

I am about to bottle a Cabernet (2 cans of Alexander) and blackberry (6 jars of smuckers seedless jam) that is tasting very good. It may be the best wine I have made in my short career. I got the recipe from Longtrain.

 

[rocketguy]

How do you know there is no fermentation? Added to a kit wine at what stage?

The missus asked for strawberry wine with 1) more strawberry flavor, 2) less sweetness and 3) more alcohol. I added a couple small jars of preserves to my simple syrup and brought the starting SG up to 1.085. The basic kit starts at around 1.050-1.055.

I've done 5-6 similar kits and always saw the airlock bubbling merrily after less than 24 hours. This one hasn't produced and gas after 72+ hrs. I've also done similar addition of sugar (no preserves) in the past without incident.

I think I'll go ahead and pick up some more yeast, make a starter, and give it another try.....and swing by the store and read the label on those preserves...

Just left the store - potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate. yay...

 

[rocketguy]

So, I picked up a couple packs of Red Star Montrachet, made a big, strong starter and added it yesterday. Almost 24 hrs later it's still chugging like a train. I think I overcame the preservatives.

Now to see whether the recipe was worth this trouble...

 

[saramc]

I've done 5-6 similar kits and always saw the airlock bubbling merrily after less than 24 hours. This one hasn't produced and gas after 72+ hrs. I've also done similar addition of sugar (no preserves) in the past without incident.

Just left the store - potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate. yay...

In regard to checking for fermentation, one thing to remember is that relying on airlock activity is not a good practice. Airlock activity can be caused by barometric pressure changes, temp changes and off-gassing in the abscence of fermentation. Not all ferments are the same so it is very common to actually have little noticeable airlock activity, but if you check with hydrometer in a day or so you should be able to confirm. Sometimes all you hear/see is the pop and sizzle on the surface of must. Cannot even begin to tell you how many people think their ferment failed to start or stalled all based on no airlock activity.

Glad to read that your starter seems to have overcome the benzoate. Definitely an additive you want to try and avoid.

 

[rocketguy]

Lesson learned.

I understand the airlock issue. I deal with that sort of thing at my day job. It was pretty obvious that zero gas was being produced. The little cap in the airlock didn't twitch after 3 days and I didn't want to break the seal and risk contamination when I was pretty sure what had happened.