Any luck with 100% fruit juice wine?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Tactical-Brewer

Tactical-Brewer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 10, 2015
Messages
802
Reaction score
173
Location
St. Louis
My girlfriend has had a lot of luck with making wines from fruit purée "kit" cans and frozen juice concentrates, but seems to run into road blocks with 100% fruit juice (think welches or something similar) wines.

She has two batches attempting to start now, a white grape fruit juice wine (because white grape frozen concentrate is apparently unbelievably hard to find near us at this point), and a cranberry/dark cherry juice wine.

She found some recipes for the sugar to juice ratio, etc, did all the regular prep (I don't know, it's her forte), and pitched her yeast and still after 72 hours, still no signs of fermentation.

Any ideas? I can't recall what yeast she's using, but the ambient room temp is approximately 66 degrees.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Tac
 
Read the juice can/bottle labels....make sure there is no sorbates or preservatives....these can and will inhibit the fermentation process.

Asorbic acid is ok.
 
Checked for all that jazz and was all good.

10qts juice
10qts water
8lbs sugar
12.5 tsp acid blend
2.5 tsp petic enzyme
2.5 tsp energizer
5 crushed campden tabs
1 package yeast (red star) mono

This was her recipe for a 5 gallon batch
 
I've often times had trouble starting "juice only" wines. It seems the yeast doesn't take. I never could figure it out, until I thought about the difference between juice and fruit.
The fruit has something for the yeast to start on! To "grow" on. Sanitize a cheesecloth, or nylon fruit bag, etc, and float in on the surface. Sprinkle yeast on top of it, and DONT STIR. Let the yeast slowly absorb, and grow. After about 24-36 hours, if growing well, dunk the cloth into the wine to spread the yeast. Let float back to top. Repeat process until things are rocking!
What I do is, for 5 gallons of cranberry juice (store bought), I'll buy 1 pound of cranberries, crush, put in a bag, and sprinkle yeast on those!

Try it!
 
why the campden tabs? I would think that any juice sold commercially would be pasteurized (heat or UV) and so there should be no wild yeast or bacteria in the juice that would require added K-meta... adding those tablets may be further inhibiting the action of the yeast..
 
Still just trying to keep her patient and keep her from dumping it out. Still no sign of fermentation and it's driving her bonkers
 
lukebuz said:
Tabs should be OK. You still want to prevent oxidation. Not just sanitation.
Click to expand...

Protect what from oxygen? Yeast NEED oxygen to reproduce and indeed to ferment. When active fermentation has ceased THEN you want to create an anaerobic environment to prevent other kinds of fermentation from occurring but when you pitch the yeast, you need to aerate and then you need to stir the must -wine vigorously several times a day to ensure that the yeast have enough O2 to do their job... The reason so many people on this forum announce with what sounds like pride that their wines smell like "rhino farts" (hydrogen sulfide) is precisely because they are stressing their yeast... and this is why wine makers ferment in open buckets with perhaps a loose cloth covering the top to keep out flies and dirt and pets and the like...
 
Are you adding any yeast nutrients? Did you stir lots of air into it initially?

I made some concord grape wine a couple of months ago using bottled juice with just a little sugar added, and "71B" yeast; it turned out pretty good. The OG was 1.085, so it's a little lower in alcohol than most wine, but that's what I was shooting for. It means it was ready to drink a lot quicker. It also won't keep as well; but I'm okay with that.
 
Yeah, she used yeast nutrients and we stirred well when she made it. I may stir it up a bit when I get home and add the cheese cloth and yeast on top
 
Er, I'd ignore the cheesecloth advice. Yeast doesn't need to 'grow on something' or wort wouldn't ferment; especially extract wort.
 
Any idea on why it's not doing anything then? I'm definitely not a wine guy and these are the first 100% fruit juices she's tried from a recipe she found online. I guess just keep stirring it every day?
 
What does a hydrometer say? Are you *sure* it isn't loaded with preservatives?
 
Tactical-Brewer said:
Yeah, she's had great luck with frozen fruit concentrate. But this is just 100% fruit juice.

I'll read through it though and see if there's any pointers in there for 100% fruit juice.
Click to expand...

Make sure the juice does not have any sodium (or potassium) benzoate or sorbate preservatives. Vitamin C or ascorbic acid is fine.
 
I ferment fruit juice every other day by just adding (a lot of) yeast directly into the original plastic bottle of pasteurized fruit juice. I cap it overnight and it is inevitably bulging by morning when I fridge it. At that point I drink it as cider, but once I left it a while in fridge with the cap not tight and it made wine.

I'm just saying it doesn't have to be rocket science.
 
daft said:
I ferment fruit juice every other day by just adding (a lot of) yeast directly into the original plastic bottle of pasteurized fruit juice. I cap it overnight and it is inevitably bulging by morning when I fridge it. At that point I drink it as cider, but once I left it a while in fridge with the cap not tight and it made wine.

I'm just saying it doesn't have to be rocket science.
Click to expand...

I hear you, trust me. The whole point of it is that it's not fermenting. Went through and dotted all the I's crossed all the T's and it's not fermenting. Not rocket science lol, but no idea why it's not fermenting after having done everything correctly.

If it just needs to wait a bit and all will be well, perfect, but if it's something else, then who knows
 
It's been a long time since I have done conventional fermenting. With the pure juice in original bottle approach I have found the exotic steps aren't needed, but I do need LOTS of yeast to get that initial take or else it will sit still forever.

If no other ideas, you might try doubling the yeast. What I seem to see is that I need to triple for purple juices, quadruple for red juices, and 5x for yellow. Clear or light amber is unpredictable whether it will catch on like a bonfire or sit still maybe unable to compete with bugs from the air.
 
White grape juice concentrate is a PITA to find around here too. Actually any white grape juice without sorbate.

I just used this black mullberry for a test. Its rather expensive but its 100% pressed juice. Not from concentrate. My father wanted a STRONG mullberry wine so i used EC1118. Its bubbling away like mad ATM.

http://smartjuice.us/our-juices/
 
The_Bishop said:
What does a hydrometer say? Are you *sure* it isn't loaded with preservatives?
Click to expand...

Hydrometer sets at 1.080 on one and 1.090 on the other...

Unless the ingredient label is not 100% factual, there are no *preservatives* in the juice.

Thanks Daft! We'll get a couple more packages of yeast today and give that a go!
 
I use bottled juice, mono, sugar, but I also a 1/4 tea of yeast nutrient per gallon. It seems to help, especially Apple. I have also found that like another poster if my house get too chilly everything slows way down. I have not had any not bubble yet and I am on batch 7 of 100% juice.
 
Most grape juice, especially white grape juice, has added sulfites, check the label. By adding more sulfites, you may have created an environment the yeast simply couldn't take hold & grow/reproduce. Sulfites will dissipate over time, but you can speed up the process by aerating the must. Also, what strain of yeast? Was it pitched dry or rehydrated? Any idea what the PH is? Try stirring the hell out of it for a few minutes, often that's all it takes & a day or 2 later the yeast are fermenting away.
Regards, GF.
 
An update on this,

The 2 gallon of white grape juice is fermenting along nicely. Just took a while for it to start.

The 5 gallons of cranberry/dark cherry... well, that's another story. I rehydrated some wine yeast, poured it in and stirred it up a couple days ago. No noticeable signs of fermentation so I pulled the bung to smell it... bad idea... It was putrid. I guess it's rotten.
 
just started a 5 gallon batch yesterday from welchs juice in the bottles, basically the same price as the frozen cans. yeast nutrient is the key to starting the ferment with these, 1 tsp per gallon of juice and this thing is blooping like crazy through the airlock 24 hrs later.:ban:
 
Nice! She pitched the 5 gallon batch. It never did end up doing anything and smelled putrid. Who knows, maybe not enough nutrient and too much acid blend?
 
Fruit juice you buy for drinking is usually *very* acid, to balance all the sugar. I don't know why beginner wine recipes call for acid blend; if anything you need to add a little bit of chalk.

It does need yeast nutrient.
 
the first batch I made with straight juice and sugar didn't ferment well. I did not use yeast nutrient. this 5 gallon batch I did use the yeast nutrient and its doing fantastic. maybe the nutrient helps to over ride the preservatives like the sulfites. either way it did help tremendously ;) also I didn't add any acid blend but did add a little lemon juice
 
My Juice/wine fermented for three days then stopped. I used champagne yeast since I wanted a dryer wine. I also only added 1/2 amount of sugar called for. Was that my problem, not enough food for the yeast?
 
yeast eats sugar to make alcohol, maybe a bad packet (old) of yeast. if it hasn't completely stopped give it a bit to multiply it may take off again. also was it %100 juice no sugar added? try some yeast nutrient and add another packet of yeast if it doesn't take off again (it wont hurt it). I use 1 tsp of nutrient to 1 gallon of juice to kinda over ride the preservatives. you should add the required amount of sugar though, it should be dry even with all the sugar added. to make it sweeter youd have to backsweeten. the champagne yeast may be starving for sugar.
 

Similar threads

D
Making a Rosė table wine with Welch's grape juice???
Replies
1
Views
1K
lumpher
lumpher
J
Will wine yeast eventually ferment out all available sugar?
Replies
7
Views
3K
DBhomebrew
DBhomebrew
S
Planning - fig wine
Replies
11
Views
2K
Srimmey
S
Liz
Jumping in feet first- Persimmon Wine
Replies
2
Views
353
Liz
Liz
S
Is fermentation completed?
Replies
2
Views
923
Smitty_Brew
S
InkBird 300

Latest posts

Back
Top