When making fruit wines, I have been reserving an amount of the pre-fermented must for backsweetening. I add my fruit and water to the bucket with the appropriate amount of campden tabs prior to adding any pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, etc. I normally let it go for 2 days rather than 1 so that I can extract more flavor from the chosen fruit. I then reserve 1/2 to 1 gallon of this must and refrigerate it and use it to backsweeten after its cleared and has been stabilized.
I think we've all experienced that adding fruit in the primary will scrub off a ton of the flavor compounds during primary fermentation. For this reason, a lot of people have taken to adding their fruit to secondary. This is fine but it will just kick off a secondary fermentation which will also blow off a lot of the flavor profile of the fruit as well. I'm wondering if anyone has had experience they could share in regards to reserving a portion of the total volume of fruit (guessing 1/3 to 1/2) to add AFTER primary fermentation is complete and AFTER the wine has been stabilized with with Kmeta and Ksorbate? Seems this approach would greatly improve the flavor profile for a fruit wine. Seems it would allow for a drier wine as well as the whole point of sweeteing fruit wines is to try and bring back some of the flavors of the fruit?
The same approach could be used for a Melomel as well. Anybody gone down this road?
I think we've all experienced that adding fruit in the primary will scrub off a ton of the flavor compounds during primary fermentation. For this reason, a lot of people have taken to adding their fruit to secondary. This is fine but it will just kick off a secondary fermentation which will also blow off a lot of the flavor profile of the fruit as well. I'm wondering if anyone has had experience they could share in regards to reserving a portion of the total volume of fruit (guessing 1/3 to 1/2) to add AFTER primary fermentation is complete and AFTER the wine has been stabilized with with Kmeta and Ksorbate? Seems this approach would greatly improve the flavor profile for a fruit wine. Seems it would allow for a drier wine as well as the whole point of sweeteing fruit wines is to try and bring back some of the flavors of the fruit?
The same approach could be used for a Melomel as well. Anybody gone down this road?