raspberry wine advice

Being an advocate of 100% juice wines I'd say go for it! But *as long as* you can produce a balanced wine from that juice. I would recommend you check your TA and reduce with carbonate if necessary.

When raspberry wine is diluted, it's often reduced in concentration by

3-5 times. If you are diluting for balance reasons alone, as you indicate: I'd again suggest you check the TA and dilute only enough to give a reasonable TA, but no further. There is no point in diluting beyond that and then having to add acid blend, unless your aim is to change the acid profile of the wine.

If you are happy with the quality of the puree (flavour and acid wise) and you can gain considerable volume from it, why not. Again I'd stress the balance issue though.

Ben

I'm going to assume that the proper TA would be around .65 for a fruit wine....

I do think I would like a larger volume of wine....

2 gallons for all those raspberries and all that work will only yield me 10 bottles, and if it turns our really good, I'd rather have 15 or 20 rather than 10.... I once had some raspberry wine and it was HEAVENLY! Very rich, balanced, strong raspberry flavour. This past summer I had some raspberry wine and you could barely taste the raspberry....I definitely would like to have it closer to the first one I tried and not the latter.... So I want to keep a strong flavoru concentration...

One thing I also did last night I forgot to write about....I took all the pulp and seeds that I had extrated using the Victorio Strainer and the Berry screen....so, absolutely no seeds in the juice... But I took the seeds and leftover pulp, put it in a straining bag, and poured hot water over it, extracting all the nice red colour and aroma from the remaining pulp. I'll only leave it on there one day or so...so I don't pick up any strange flavours from the seeds. So that might be another 1/2 gallon of "juice"....not as strong as the extracted juice, but still pretty flavourful.

Thanks for your ideas. Will still welcome other comments if there's anyth>

Hi Rick

Style. It's all a matter of style. You can do any or all of the things you mention, it's entirely up to you. Country musts have to be "created", and how they are formulated depends entirely on the desired outcome. Want a lite, delicate, dry table wine suitable for serving with a fish or seafood dinner? You can do that. Want an intense "Port" style with high alcohol, high sugar, high(er) acid, bold tannins, and intense flavor? You can do that too. Want something somewhere in between? Yup, go for it. But it is up to you to decide !! It's the reason you get so many recipes and so many differing opinions when you ask such a question. There simply is no single "best" way.

In a recent post, Jack Keller listed 4 major components of balance. With country wines, I would add a 5th. Intensity. Not just intensity of flavor, but intensity of the finished wine as a whole. I don't want a table wine to overpower the delicate flavors of a well prepared meal, and I don't want to burn out the palates of my guests *before* serving such a dinner by serving an overly intense wine. It is *after* dinner that I might drag out the "knock them dead" Port style dessert wine.

There is nothing stopping you from breaking down that juice and using it to make all of these styles in little one gallon batches.

More an "approach" or philosophy to winemaking rather than a direct answer to your question, but I hope it helps. HTMS

Rick, no, no, no, NO! In my experience, you don't need to pour hot water over any raspbery must/pulp. This hot/boiling water thing is a pet peeve of mine. For the most part, it is an ancient holdover from the days before Pot. Metabisulphite. Cold water would have done just as well. Jack Keller staunchly maintains that you need hot/boiling water on _some_ fruits to "set" the color. That may be for a minority of fruits (into which Jack Keller lumps raspberry). However, I found that this is not necessarily so for raspberry as I have had successful color retention for up to two years. Raspberry wine is Heavenly! And I second Ben Rotter's suggestion that you do a non-diluted raspberry wine. You could add the water which you poured over the remaining pulp. HOWEVER, I strongly suggest that you check the TA and the pH of both your juice AND the water you poured over the pulp. I've heard that a lot of acid can come off the seeds, but I would love to see if this is true. I'd be especially interested if the is a difference in pH...... I would stay away from adding any canned puree to a fresh fruit. Have fun with your wine and let us know what happens. Joanne

Rick:

I never made a raspberry wine, although I want to. Have made blackberry wine though. I didn't have to deal with the tart aspect though. Check the acid. Sometimes what I do is to add the sugar in water instead of in must. That is, dissolve the added sugar in water and add that to the must. Some people add water until the TA is adjusted instead of adding CaCO3. I too advocate 100% juice wines but have deviated in the past. In the end it is up to you, but you might want to play it safe and add some water (of course keeping track of how much) and then next year you will know whether to add more or less water. For apple and peach I never add water.

Good luck, Arjay

"Rick Vanderwal" wrote in news:bso82b$eruur$ snipped-for-privacy@ID-177257.news.uni-berlin.de:

Hi Joanne

With all due respect, I would like to offer some other points of consideration when discussing the use of heat in winemaking. About the only way to avoid having heat used at some point in the process, is to make the wine from fresh fruit or "flash frozen" fruit.

Consider: Anything that is canned uses heat during the process for pasteurization, even though the label may not say so. Consider: Many frozen things either say "pasteurized" on the label or are in the form of concentrates. Consider: The normal commercial process used to make concentrates also uses heat. So anything made from concentrate, or anything which says on the label that it has been "reconstituted from concentrate", has had heat used on it at some point during processing. Consider: Virtually all kits are made with juices that have been pasteurized, condensed, or reconstituted from concentrate, which means heat was used. They also have the tartaric acid removed which places them in the "non-tartaric" class of wines ( but that is another subject) Consider: Commercial jams and jellies use heat during the process.

The list goes on, but the bottom line is that anyone that has ever made wine from any of these things has been making (so called) "hot process" wines. There is nothing *wrong* with such wines, but yes, they are different from "fresh fruit" (cold process) wines, and folks should be aware of the differences. I make both hot and cold process wines using the same fruit, and each has it's following among my friends. HTMS (?) HTH

Frederick,

Aside from the puree Rick suggested he might use, we are talking about cold processed fruit. Joanne is saying that when using fresh/flash frozen fruit it isn't *neccessary* to heat the fruit. That's perfectly true, and like her, I agree there is no need to heat raspberry must to set the colour.

It's true that many potential sources of fruit for winemaking have had some kind of treatment. There is a general opinion, however, that these are generally inferior to the fresh version (of the same original fruit quality). You could argue they are "just different", but would you really prefer to drink reconstituted orange juice over fresh orange juice? I think the answer in most cases would be no.

Of course, in the end it's up to the individual.

Ben

Hi Ben

Comments interspersed........

Oh, I agree absolutely that is isn't "necessary" to heat the fruit, but it isn't necessarily *bad* to do it that way either.

I know little about the use of heat to "set" colors so I can't really comment on this.

But don't you see, it is with this "general opinion" that I so strongly disagree. Each wine has to stand on it's own merit. Period. The fact that the resulting wines may be different has little to do with whether an individual will choose one over the other as his "preferred" style.

Yes, I *do* argue that they are "just different". To support this, I would point to Jack Keller's site. Jack lists the wines that have won prizes in various competitions. Even a brief survey of these wines and their recipes will show that some of them were "hot process", others were "cold process", and yet others were made from bases that had heat used at some point during the processing of the base materials. It must surely be assumed that these wines were in competition with at least some "cold process" wines, and yet were judged better that the others. IOW - they were judged on their merit rather than the "process" or materials from which they were made.

That's exactly my point. HTMS

PS - I sincerely hope that my comments are accepted in the spirit with which they are offered. Namely, that I am only trying to be helpful here by presenting an alternative point of view.

Best regards and happy new year to everyone !!

Frederick

thanks everyone for your comments and your input. I really appreciate them all! I wish you all a very happy new year!

Well, I went back and forth, back and forth.... pure juice wine, or dilute, pure, dilute, pure, dilute....

I finally decided....I wanted more of the volume this year... And see how it turns out. Then, next year, I can do it differently, and just go with the pure juice... I guess that's the beauty of it, as one of you said.... there's no perfect recipe, you can create your own, and try it in different ways,

So, I took the pure juice, and also the water in which the seeds and leftover pulp had sat in for two days, and ended up with about 3 gallons of juice. I added one more gallon, to get four, and added sugar to get a reading of

1.090.... Added yeast nutrient, energizer, a bit of tannin, and.... now the yeast.

So, now I wait...and see how it all goes.

Thanks again.

Rick

What is the pH?????

Rick, let me give you one very serious piece of advice on raspberry wine; you ned to know the pH! Tartness does not necessarily come fom the TA of the fruit or the seeds. It's the pH of the fruit that accounts for the "pucker factor" of raspberry wine. If you don't have one, or the wife didn't buy you one for Christmas, get thyself a pH meeter and take a reading ASAP!!!!! You may have to correct for the pH so your lips don't pucker all the way to the back of your head. Joanne

that I don't know... I did check acid level....it's about 7.5 so I'll probably have to get some calcium carbonate... but ph? I haven't done that before. a ph meter? next time I go to my wine store, I'll have to look for one. Unfortunately, I live an hour away from it.

what does adjusting ph involve? Rick

p.s. . . . i've been doing home winemaking for about 2-3 years now... and still feel like such a newbie! normally, have just been following recipes, and going by taste, adjustements, etc..., but haven't been so technical...yet. So things like meausring acid and ph are relatively new to me.

Rick

ok, I got some ph strips....and I've read that they're not the most accurate in winemaking...but it's all i have right now.

Under the faucet, the ph strips immediately turn green, showing tapwater to have a higher ph than my raspberry must, which looks like it's below 3.0... I'm going to see if I can drum up a ph meter somewhere to get a more accurate reading. At this stage, and please let me know if I'm right, the best course of action is probably to let it ferment, then to cold stabilize to see if any tartaric crystals form, thus reducing acid and raising ph. Else I could use potassium carbonate...and try to reduce the acid as well, which I think is higher than I first thought...

During fermentation is probably not the best time to do it, right?

Anyway, thanks again for your earlier comments, interesting discussion.

Rick Vanderwal Fremont, MI>

Yup, raspberry will most definitely be in the low to mid 2.0's. Making it pucker material, extraoridunaire. Get thyself some potassium carbonate to adjust pH upwards, in addition it will help your acidity to go down. According to Iverson's Home Winemaking Step by Step, you should not reduce the acidity using Pot. Carbonate by more than .3 to .4 . Go to your local winemaking supply dealer and get yourself a pH meter AND some Pot. Carbonate. Your dealer may try to sell you Pot. Bicarbonate instead. Get the regular carbonate. If he/she doesn't have it on hand, have them order it for you or find it online somehwere. Also, according to Iverson;

1 tsp.Pot Carbonate = 6.0 g 3.8g will reduce acid by 0 .1 (and raise your pH in the process) You will also want to cold chill this wine so that potassium bitatrate will precipitate out of suspension. Joanne

Rick,

Unless you used acid blend (with some tartaric acid in) you're not going to get significant tartrate crystal formation (since raspberries don't contain much/any tartaric acid). You'll also get a TA increase (pH decrease) from fermentation. I'd recommend you deacidify (potassium carbonate for e.g.) post fermentation if you really need to (taste the wine and see). Ben

Improved Winemaking

Rick, I would strongly consider(and have) using Welches White Grape/Raspberry juice instead of plain water to increase volume.

Jeff

Rick, I would concur with these folks, if you want to increase your vinosity of your raspberry wine. If you are going the dilute route then at least add some white grape juice to add some body. BUT, you STILL need to get a pH meter...... Joanne