Tag Archives: Waitrose white juice 2013.11

Nothing says “Happy Valentines Day” like Waitrose Grape Juice Wine

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This started life as four cartons of Waitrose Grape juice.  Just an experiment really.  It was drinkable as-is, but we played around with some “non-fermentable wine sweetener” (aspartame I think), and found it was more drinkable with a little of that in.

So here we are.  Six bottles and one glass of drinkable plonk, for about £4.50.  I don’t think I would offer it to my father, but for every day knocking back, it is fine.

Storing the Pinot Chardonnay

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So I syphoned it off in to my carboy-with-tap and decanted it in to four demijohns, two bottles and a massive puddle on the floor when I got frustrated by the tap being so high above the bottom of the carboy and upended it for the last demijohn.  Oops.

The last one and the two bottles were so vigorously poured they were frothy, so I chucked a campden tablet in to the demijohn and an eighth of a tablet in to the two bottles.

The wine is obviously not clear!  The one on the right on the picture above is the wine I made from Waitrose grape juice that I also racked off today for comparison.  With the wine in the demijohns it should clarify slowly, but I think I will buy a filter for next time.  They are not that expensive (£25) and would make a big difference.  Filtering out the yeast would also guarantee fermentation to stop.

The Waitrose one is rather dry, so some sneaky sweetener might be popped in before serving.

Off to the cellar

The white Waitrose grape juice (or wine juice as I keep calling it) has been stopped and I’ve been shaking it regularly for a couple of days. Carbon dioxide has stopped bubbling off so off to the cellar it goes. I’m supposed to rack off in a week or so after adding finings, but since this started as clear juice it is already pretty clear.

Mass specific gravity check and moving the wine on

After posting about demijohns, I thought it might be an idea to actually check the specific gravity of the quince, grape and perry.  Here are the results.

Quince

Quince Wine 2013.11

DateSpecific GravityAlcohol Content
4th November 20131,1100%
13th November 20131,0705.3%
27th December 20131,0389.5%
15th February 20141,0359.9%

The recipe says “When fermentation has ceased, rack the wine into a clean jar and place in a cooler environment and leave. When the wine is clear and stable siphon into bottles”.  Fermentation is slow but visible (and the utility room is 16°C), and with alcohol of 9.5% I am happy to leave it going as is.  Back to the utility room.  It is still rather cloudy, so I wonder if I should not have added pectolase at the start.  I looked at whether you can add it later and it looks like you can, so I’ll wait and see what happens when the fermentation really slows down (you can still see obvious bubbles).   If it does not stop being cloudy I will add some pectolase and see if the fermentation speeds up again.

Waitrose Grape Juice

DateSpecific GravityAlcohol Content
22nd November 2013
(Grape Juice)
1,0660%
22nd November 2013
(Juice + 100g fructose + 100g caster)
1,0780%
27th December 201399610.9%

According to my “wine from white grapes” recipe, I need to act on this, rack it off and degas it. So I got one of my father-in-law’s recent gifts, sterilised it (it was already clean – thank you David), and syphoned the wine in.  Weirdly the new demijohn was significantly smaller in volume than the old one and I didn’t realise until I had a fair sized puddle on the floor.  This is actually good news, because there is no air gap.  At the same time I put in a Campden tablet and some potassium sorbate to knock the yeast out and allow the carbon dioxide to come out with a shake or two over the next few days “degassing”.

Old Manse Perry

DateSpecific GravityAlcohol Content
21st October 20131,050?0%
7th November 20131,0105.7%
27th December 20131,0105.7%

Very confused about this one, that has been slowly fermenting for weeks without changing its alcohol content.  I think I might just bottle it without adding much sugar for the fizz – the bottles from the first round of cider I made are rock hard and I suspect I will need wellies when I open them.

Newport Mixture Cider

DateSpecific GravityAlcohol Content
7th November 20131,0500%
19th November 20131,0006.6%
19th November 2013
(after apple juice)
1,0046.1%
27th December 20131,0046.1%

Another that has been fermenting slowly without much change in alcohol.  Probably needs bottling like the perry.