Are these wines 'ruined'?

[ButcherBoy]

Last October I purchased 6G of red and 6G of white grape juice, had never used grape juices before, I simply opened the buckets and pitched the yeast. Racked both to carboys after 6-7 days in primary, and racked again in December. The both tasted OK when I racked in Dec, yeasty and clearly not done, so the waiting continues.

Now that I've been doing some reading I find I probably should have tested acid and sugar content, i have no idea about the acid content. But I did take a gravity reading, 1.070 for the white and 1.042 for the red. Literature indicates it should have been more like 1.100, so it looks like I will end up with low ABV wine.

The questions I have; is it too late to add sugar to increase alcohol content? What kind of sugar works well for adjusting gravity in wine? If it's not too late for that, is it worth buying an acid test kit and adjusting the acid also?

Thinking about buying some S American juice to take another stab at this and am planning to make adjustments in that before fermenting.

 

[Noe]

If I'm not mistaken you can adjust both later. The sugar I'm not too sure on, but I know people add acid later to suit their tastes.

 

[Daze]

For me acid is all about taste. yes a test kit can help get to to the rage you want it at but different wines need different acidity so like I said I do it to taste. As to the adding more sugar, you sure can there is no ill effect in doing it. When I do it I make it in a 2 cup glass measuring cup. I put the sugar in, and add just enough water to "liquify" the sugar. Because the water fills the air pockets between sugar crystals I usually end up with the same volume in cups I started with only in liquid form. I then put it in the microwave and bring it to a boil. This helps dissolve the sugar and sterilizes the solution. I then pore the liquid in to the carboy. I don't even let it cool. the volume of a gallon is so much bigger than the volume of what I am adding that the gallon does not heat up hardly at all. Also the difference in temperatures helps the wine and sugar to mix better eliminating the need for stirring. Works great. Another option you may want to use is to add more sugar by adding juice concentrate. It's a good way to up the ABV and add to the flavor profile.

 

[Yooper]

Something to consider is that the bucket of juice with an OG of 1.042 (well actually, both of the juices) might have actually been higher and started fermenting before you ever pitched the yeast. That's pretty common.

If it tastes like wine, and is good, I wouldn't worry about the ABV because of the unknowns here.

 

[ButcherBoy]

Something to consider is that the bucket of juice with an OG of 1.042 (well actually, both of the juices) might have actually been higher and started fermenting before you ever pitched the yeast. That's pretty common.

If it tastes like wine, and is good, I wouldn't worry about the ABV because of the unknowns here.

OK, glad to know that the ferment may have already started is common, I thought it may have when I opened the buckets due to bubbling. I was a little concerned, but not enough to get excited about it.

So what I'm planning is to taste it sometime soon, if I like it into the bottles it goes! If I don't like it, time to get creative. Thanks for the reassurance.

 

[ButcherBoy]

Just a quick update for those who may care. I ended up letting these set in a carboy until Dec 2012 and then bottled, decided not to do anything with them at all. They aged out nicely and are both decent wines, not great but very drinkable. Thanks all for the reasurance, if you get to the Pittsburgh area give me a shout and I'll share a glass or two with you. Assuming there's any left! Now all I have to do is decide on the Chilian juice for this year's spring batch.