Help with Rhubarb wine

[siegeltim]

Hello all I have a questions about Rhubarb wine I am trying to make.
Here is the recipe.
4 cups rhubarb
1 quart Strawberries
3 pounds sugar
1 package of Wine yeast
10 raisins
enough water to fill 1 gallon jug.

Had the fruit frozen and unthawed to open up cells to get more flavor out.
put the fruit in jug and put sugar in water heated to make it liquid.
Put sugar water in jug and added yeast and filled up with water.
The thing if fermenting like crazy.
The problem is after I was cleaning up I found half of the sugar was left out.
I read 3 pounds but only put in 3 cups.
I weigh out 3 cups and it is 1.5 pounds
Any ideas on how to get the other half into the jug.
I think it will be dry when finished and we don't like dry wines.
Can I back sweeten it?
Any ideas would be great.
Thanks
Tim

 

[Arpolis]

Just let it go. After it is done and you rack every 30 days till clear. Then add sorbate and crushed Camden tablet. Wait 24 hours and sweeten to taste. It is an easy way to back sweeten and that will fix your problem.

 

[buzzerj]

Right it helps to take an Original Gravity measurement with a hydrometer and tell us what is was so we can estimate the alcohol content of the final wine. I'd suspect your O.G. was quite low so the final alcohol content will be low too.

On your next batch I'd suggest you invest in a 2 gallon food grade plastic bucket with cover and a nylon mesh bag to hold the rhubarb pieces. You should be able buy these at your local homebrew shop/winemaking store. Use this as your primary fermenter and after primary fermentation is out a week, squeeze the bag to get all the remaining juice from the pulp of the rhubarb and discard. If you have rhubarb pieces in a 1 gallon jug, you're bound to lose rhubarb juice among the pieces when you rack off. A 2 gallon bucket gives you room for even more rhubarb should you have it. Nothing wrong with that. I've used my 2 gallon bucket to start a lot of one gallon batches just like I use my 12 gallon plastic fermenter to start a lot of 6 gallon + size batches of fruit wines. So consider that for your next batch and don't minimize the amount of fruit juices in your wine. Good luck.

 

[jensmith]

No problem. After you rack it off the fruit you will have plenty of headspace. Add the rest of the suger then. It will finish fermenting just fine. That will up your finel abv. Or if it is thin tasting add a can of 100% fruit juice concentrate. That will bost both the flavor and abv.



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