I only make a few single 1 gallon batches a year which turn out reasonalble. But I've been given 6 x 1gal sweet white kits. Can I use the grape concentrate as a direct replacement for sugar, and ignore the fact that its GRAPE,
for instance I hope to make a batch or two of blackberry , my thought is just to use the grape concentrate to directly replace as much of the sugar as possible, only using it to adjust the starting SG.
No, the wine police will come and get you and report you to Homeland Security. Just kidding. Of course you can do that. You might experiment and try adding sugar to some and bring up the SG with concentrate with the other and see which you prefer in the end.
You can do that with two caveats, first you will want to be careful that your acidity does not get out of hand. Second, it will affect flavor, so be carefull of that too. Many non-grape wine recipies call for grape concentrate to add vinousness (tartaric acid character mainly IMO) and additional body. Jack keller has a compilation of 10 blackberry wine recipies and one of them calls for the addition of red grape concentrate.
The use of white grape concentrate will lighten the color but you should be ok.
Ian - A very good commercial winery here in the KC area does just what you are thinking of doing. They don't use sugar...just grape concentrate for added fermentables.
Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA
Bill, is that the one that makes the elderberry wine?
Me and the wife were thinking a while back (before the recent gas surge) of making a trip down to KS to buy a bottle of it. It has been a while since I checked, they might have a shipping program set up now. Maybe I can order a bottle or 20.
I was speaking of Holy-Field Vineyard and Winery in Basehor, Kansas...just west of KC proper
Bill Frazier
Thank you Gents for the answers, I'll being giving it a go.
Ian
Ian, It's a very common practice, it's hard to have grapes not ripen in California but if they needed to bump the sugar up they would use concentrate. It's illegal for them to use sugar.
As others have mentioned, just think about what this particular concentrate will do to the flavor. A Concord is very distinctive, while a Niagara would be less so if you are talking frozen concentrate from a grocery store. If concentrate from a wine shop, the sky is the limit.
As a rule of thumb concentrate is roughly 70% sugar, but add it in stages in case yours is different. In other words, if that would work out to 3 ounces of concentrate add a third of that, taste, etc. There is nothing more annoying than getting close to the end and making a mistake that could have been avoided. :)
Joe
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