Geezah wrote:I have made plenty of wines from fruit juices and off fruit itself to understand the ins and out of it all
I nearly always ferment to dry, stabilise and back sweeten to the wifes desired taste, and also add gelatine on occasions to give it a little more body.
Fair enough. I personally don't like gelatine for adding body, I use either grape juice/concentrate, or glycerine - though you have to watch it as it can give extra (unwanted) sweetness or a hint of a metallic taste.
This is just an experiment to see what sort of flavour will be retained from the juice on its own, and if 2 litres was a good quantity to start with. I would generally use something like a Lalvin 71-B for a red wine of this strength, but I only had my 'turbo cider - general wine' yeast available as I used the last of my lalvin on my plums.
Ah, again, I don't use 71B for reds. RC-212 yes, but it's a pain as it can be a complete nutrient hog. I use K1V-1116 on both reds, whites and meads as it's excellent as a general purpose yeast, and is excellent with meads.....
I don't even use the ones from Ritchies that are supposed to be for specific types. I've found, for reasons unknown, that they tend to produce tastes/flavours that border on the bland..... So mostly Lalvin stuff, with occasional redstar......
p.s. but yes, I've found that juice wines are fine for "quick turnover" quaffing type wines, but apart from that, it seems that supermarket juice isn't quite as good as they'd have you believe for anything other than drinking.....
