Tesco 50% high juice wine

Make sure you get the one WITHOUT SWEETENERS as there are 2 versions on Tescos shelves.

Boil 2 litres of the high juice for 20 minutes to destroy the preservatives.

15lb of sugar, pinch of citric acid, disolve all the sugar properly.

You are looking for a temperature of 30 Celcius before stirring in a sachette of turbo yeast.

Then keep it at about 25 Celcius for 5/6 days.

Check the SG & use campden tablets to stop the ferment at about 14% abv

Other wise go very carefully with a brew of 25%

 

Is that really 15lb of sugar Ziggy? Or is there a decimal point missing?

 

Sorry Ziggy with that amount of sugar I would end up in hospital:roll::D

 

:dh:Sorry, bit lashed up last night, should have mentioned that was for FIVE gallons, not one. No wonder you're all worried about the amount of sugar.

As I should have said, top up with water to five gallons, add turbo yeast when temp is 30 celcius & stir well. keep in a place where you can maintain 20-25 c & use that hydrometer.

 

2 Days & the alcohol by volume is 7.4% :thmb:

 

5 days, alcohol by volume 12.8% but we had let the fire go off for a day or so.

Tasting good but yeasty.

 

Stopped the fermentation with campden tablets 2 days ago. Although the hydrometer readings say its 14.4 abv, I tasted it & it burned my mouth, a bit like vodka & blackcurrant with not enough blackcurrant.

Will use my new fangled alcoholic content reading device when I get home to see what it really is. Either that or drink some & see what it does.:exclamation:

 

I must admit to being very sceptical on this ziggy.

Cant see the alcohol content being anything much above 14% at best.

As for burning your mouth, perhaps thats just the acid content.

Above 14% and your into fortified wine territory.

 

Thats unlike you to be sceptical Pete

No, not the acidity, definately an alcohol, just hoping its ethanol & not methanol. Retrospectively, I should have used unrefined sugar. This might just be a bad hangover brew. Best try it on the Mrs first.

 

Put it in the freezer.

Not sure if it works but you could try separating the alcohol from the water.

 

Blimey Pete, don't want to make it any stronger ! I was just looking for a quick brew of about 14/15% mate.

First time i've tried the turbo yeast & I am impressed with the speed of fermentation. I'll have to learn how to use just the right amount of sugar to get to the desired alcohol level. Try a pound less each time till it stops me going blind I suppose.

 

I was under the impression that unless you use a still, all fermented alcohol is safe.

The alcohol will kill the yeast.
Although campden tablets are best if you want to be sure its totally dead, and you dont want secondary fermentation.

Adding the sugar in stages, as the fermentation progresses, means you dont end up with a very sweet undrinkable wine.
You just add up the drop in gravity each time that you add more sugar to determine the alcohol content.

Long time since I've made wine, but I think that is true.

Still have a few bottles hanging around from the late 70s, scared to open them.

 

I'm going to come round & suck those bottles till they are dry.



The Alcohol used to kill the yeast pete but the new turbo yeast can survive much higher tolerances than the old yeasts.

Methol alcohol can be produced by using refined sugars and is toxic to carbon based life forms such as ourselves & badgers. We cant process it like we can ethanol, a bit like the way we can't process sweeteners like aspartamine yet they still put it in our food & drink.

They don't care about us, only their profits.

 

Well I always used normal granulated sugar and I can still see, but I now wear glasses to read.:WINK1:

Is it part of the new trend?
Has Health and Safety now reached the world of home brewing?

As I say very sceptical, "turbo yeast" sounds like a modern day hype, I'm sure if this stuff existed it would have been discovered by brewers a couple of hundred years ago.
There has always been certain yeasts that can tolerate more alcohol.

But with wine its a case that the more alcohol, the longer it needs to be stored before drinking, I believe.
Its about taste and flavour and not all about alc content.

 

Not around here its not, if you don't drink it before the mrs finds it, you don't drink it.

First 30 bottle kit I made, I said to her, its time to add the finings, she looked guilty.

Yes she'd drank it all. Next one I made, I hid in the shed with piles of stuff on top of it. About 6 weeks later, I noticed some red wine in the bottom of a jug.

She'd found it & drank the lot.

Might as well throw out my hydrometer. Just tried the vinometer, tested it on water. It gave a reading of 0%, tried cabinet sauvignon, 14%.

High Juice wine - 30%

Its come out as a rosé so next brew will have half the sugar & another litre of high juice.