Thread: Cherry wine
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Joe Sallustio
 
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Default Cherry wine

It's hard to say because you did not mention how much cherry juice
really went in. It sound like at least 3 quarts. The better way to do
this might be for you to get a hydrometer, it's about $6 US and will
tell you how much sugar is in the cherry juice. Once you know that,
you can figure out how much sugar to add.

These are rough calculations:

2 ounces of sugar per gallon = 0.5% Sugar;

You added 32 so you had around 16 brix.

A ripe cherry can be anywhere from 9% to 12% sugar, so you may have
had somewhere at least 25 and 28% brix to start (I don't know the real
amount of sugar in the cherries or the starting volume, but a best
guess is better than nothing.) If that ferments all the way to dry,
it would be pretty alcoholic, but I doubt it will. Most winemakers do
not make fruit wines at a higher alcohol content, it seems to hide the
fruit in the wine. You may have added a little too much sugar and the
lemon may have been unnecessary, but I have made only one cherry wine
so I'm not in a position to say. Some lemon concentrate has a
preservative that may inhibit the yeast as an FYI.

Let it go and see what happens. All that matters is whether you like
it at the end of the day. I would not use ballons anymore. Airlocks
are better and the cost is about the same. That said, my grandomother
used ballons and made good country wines.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
Joe



> We just picked a bunch of cherries and after sorting them out for canning, I
> juiced the rest. When I got done, I put some yeast, 4 cups of sugar, and a
> couple tablespoons of lemon concentrate into a gallon apple juice jug, mixed
> it all up till the sugar was dissolved, and filled it the rest of the way
> with strained cherry juice.