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Hi,

sorry if this has been answered elsewhere I have done a search and can't find the answer. I want to make wine and have seen plenty of people on here make it from fruit juice, but what exactly do they mean

Am i right in thinking that it is juice that you buy in cartons usually from concentrate and normally in 1ltr tetrapacks? Eg tropicana orange juice. I wasn't sure if people meant this or juice that is concentrated that you dilute eg ribena or apple and blackcurrant. I know you can make it from both as I have seen the recipe for ribena wine which I may try, but i am curious for the fruit juice.

I work in a shop and often get almost out of date things for about 20p so it would be worth my while to buy the juice for that!

Many thanks

Fluffy
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Proper fruit juice, not cordial and not 'juice drink' which is mostly water and sugar!

I have just used some Welch's purple grape juice - not finished yet and wont be drinkable for at least 6 - 9 months.

Thanks very much for your reply Ruth, I have started some fruit teabag wine for now, but am seriously thinking of doing the fruit juice one. I love welches grape juice!

Fluffy
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(Tropicana is pure juice rather than concentrate as far as i know)

Good question!

OK - you can make wine from even "artificial" fruit juice - the stuff which was never anywhere near the fruit it's named after - but I wouldn't do it unless you like strange tastes. Apart from that, any juice which really is made from fruit can be used - even the "from concentrate" ones. But fruit juices designed to be drunk as is will produce only light-bodied wines. It's a temptation to increase the amount of juice to overcome this, but that doesn't work - all you get is a very over-flavoured wine.

So if you want a light-bodied wine, the usual amount is a litre to a litre and a half of juice per gallon and not more than 2 lbs of added sugar. The best thing to do is dilute the juice to your proposed recipe amount and taste it. What you're looking for is a hint of the flavour (ignoring the sweetness) - it should be recognisable, but not too much more than that. That will give you something like a 10 to 11% ABV result - a perfectly decent quaffing wine, but don't expect Chateau Neuf du Pape.

If you want to increase the strength, you need to add body (as well as more sugar). You can do that by adding bananas (but you'll have to mature that for a reasonable time) or sultanas/raisins (depending upon the required colour) or, if you want to go the expensive route, grape concentrate. Or any other real fruit, for that matter.

Orange juice makes a nice wine. Apple juice, in my opinion, is good only as an addition to something else. Pineapple juice is good, but the result bears no relationship to the pineapple taste. Mixed fruit juices are probably best of all (Fruits of the Forest - that kind of thing). Tropicana, as SEIsher mentioned, is OK.

The one problem you will come across is that fruit juices (other than those you extract yourself from real fruit) look like plain water to a yeast cell. So you really need to add nutrient to your recipe and (I do keep on saying this ) some vitamin B1 (a quarter of a standard health food shop B1 tablet is fine). If you can't do that, the fermentation will still go on - but it may be very slow.

Mike