Hello,
I'm a new kid here, so please put up with me for a while. My first batch of homemade wine from a kit ended up with 22 bottles of, to my tastes anyway, pleasant tasting wine. Now I'd like to try winging it with fresh fruit juice. After putting up about 1.75 gallons of pomegranate jelly in 8 and 12 ounce jars, and another gallon of drinking juice frozen in recycled water bottles, we are left with about 2 1/2 gallons of delicious fresh juice. I've scoured around the internet for recipes, but none of them seem satisfying to me. Especially the ones that call for a couple cups of pomegranate juice, 2 gallons of water, and nine pounds of raisins. What's with those raisins anyway! Now, I can't find the recipe for generic fruit wine that I read a couple months ago that suggested bundling up the crushed, pulp, seeds, skins, and whatever in cheesecloth and putting them in the primary fermentor like a bag of hops in a batch of beer. But that sounded interesting. My target is to end up with 2 (or more) gallons of wine. My wife suggests that it should be just short of a dry wine -- just a hint of sweetness to it. With that in mind, I ask:
- How do I assess the acidity of the juice to determine the proper ratios of water, sugar, yeast, etc.?
- What are those ratios?
- What other stuff should I use (and when) like campden, sodium bisulfates, and so one... or am I safe in following the schedule used to make the Zin I'm drinking?
- Will you share your favorite pomegranate wine with me?
And for final thoughts, will it be a problem if i use my six-gallon primary fermentor to get this started and then take it down to a 3-gallon carboy at the first racking? Since this will take about a year, according to my reading so far, I intend to put up a dozen or more 187 ml bottles for next year's Christmas gifting. Any problems with that?
Maybe I should have broken this down into several posts, but that might have dragged the subject on much too long. Besides, I'm sure to have some follow-on questions.
Sincerely,
Casey Wilson Freelance Writer and Photographer