Wine without the concentrate.... Whoops

[DDuck]

Hi everyone!

What an incredible forum and community that has been made here. I've recently been using a Solomon Grundy Peach wine making kit to try as a first go, and been loving the process so far.

My problem (possibly due to dyslexia), is that I've realised I've left out the concentrate over the week that the wine has been fermenting. It seems like an obvious mistake in hindsight, but I'm wondering if it's possible to add the concentrate after the wine is reading 995 on a hydrometer?

I had just added the stabiliser, and there seems like plenty of alchol in the brewed water (?), so i'm just looking for the concentrate to add some flavour, not anyting too crazy.

Is it too late? Is it worth a shot? Will it explode

Thanks in advance

 

[Rice_Guy]

welcome to WMT

Many kits are put together with two pouches 1) a grape concentrate intended to generate enough alcohol to reach 12% ABV, 2) a bag of peach / other flavor intended for boosting the flavor and sweetness of your 12% alcohol. I assume that you fermented bag two and are asking how to treat bag one. Sorbate would keep the yeast population from growing, this would make a hard ferment.
I would ferment bag # one with new yeast and yeast nutrient as a separate primary and then combine them. Do you have enough carboys to do this?
If you added bag one at the end you would probably have some fermentation, (sorbate keeps yeast from reproducing) but it would be slow. It might ferment to dryness.

 

[winemaker81]

Welcome to WMT!

Your wine will not explode. It won't burn, either (too little alcohol). But it is worth messing with to see if you can recover.

I'm not clear on what you did. Did you mix sugar & water and ferment that, or did you add the F-pack to the water and ferment that?

As David (@Rice_Guy) said, if you added stabilizer, which is potassium sorbate + potassium metabisulfite (K-meta) it will be difficult to get

 

[DDuck]

Thanks for the reply both!

So Bryan you're correct, I essentially added the sugar (770g), water (4.6l roughly), Yeast, Acid regulator and Nutirent. There's definitely some alochol in there from the smell. This then fermented for a week at roughly 21 degrees C, once the fermentation stopped, added the stabiliser and de gassed it.

As i don't have the capacity to try another set up, I have decided to add the grape jucie concentrate and the peach back in and see what happens! I'm not so fussed about it being super high abv, just want to try something.

If it seems relitively stable I'll bottle up.

Another Q I have is if the tub is sealed atm, is there harm leaving it in there to sit for a week or two (whilst I am away). Or shall i try to bottle before then?

 

[winemaker81]

If you dilute the concentrate to ferment it separately, and later blend into the first batch, you'll get a very weak tasting wine, as you'll have essentially double the amount of water.

In your situation, I'd mix the concentrate into the wine, no extra water. Buy a new packet of EC-1118 and make an overnight starter. You'll have a tough time getting it to ferment, and an overnight starter gives you the best chance to do that. Don't add the flavoring pack yet.

My method of making an overnight starter is here:

https://wine.bkfazekas.com/how-to-make-a-yeast-starter/