I have just started out and on following the recipe below nothing is
happenning, After adding the yeast the next day I added some yeast nutriant
but still nothing, help. I am new so any advice welcome

thanks


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RIBENA WINE



Before I explain how easy it is to make wine with ribena let me point out
that this famous syrup of excellent quality could well be added to
fermenting 'musts' made up from of the fruits to get special results. The
rate to add it would be one to two bottles per gallon.

When making wines from dried fruits the addition of one or two bottles of
Ribena per gallon would make a vast improvement to the flavour and quality
of the wine.

Similarly, when making wines from fresh fruits that give a red wine, one
or two bottles or Ribena could well be added to make up for other fruits in
this wy, you mar disregard the SO2 preservative (more about this later)
because the amount in the Ribena will not be enough to stop fermentation,
but it would be best to add it at the vigorous fermentation stage-during the
first ten days.

If you propose to use Ribena in this way, bear in mid that each bottle
contains approximately eight ounces of sugar, so you should reduce
accordingly the amount of sugar in whichever recipes you are using.

Undiluted Ribena is not readily fermentable, because it contains just over
seven pounds of sugar per gallon and is Preserved with 350 parts per million
SO2-either of which is capable of preventing fermentation.

Obviously, our aim when making wine with Ribena will be to reduce the
amount of sugar to about three and a half pounds per gallon, by using half
Ribena and half water. In doing this, we shall reduce the SO2 preservative
to around 175 parts per million. This amount is unlikely to prevent
fermentation, though it could do so.

My trials with ribena were carried out with the above point borne in mind
and it will be seen that I began with a good deal less than equal parts or
Ribena and water, gradually bringing them up to equal parts.

Because I did not want to overwork the yeast by giving it too much sugar
to work on at the start, and because I wanted to reduce the SO2 content to
below 175 parts per million (without heating with the risk of spoiling the
flavor of the syrup), I decided to work to the following method. The method,
incidentally, met with the approval of V. L. S. Charley, B.BC., PH.D.,
technical director of the Royal Foresty factory of the Beecham group and
one-time director of the Long Ashton Research Station, Bristol.

All water used in the process was first boiled and allowed tocool
naturally.

STAGE 1:
Two bottles of Ribena were diluted with twice the amount of water (four
Ribena bottles full). Yeast in the form of a nucleus was added and the
mixture allowed to ferment for ten days.

STAGE 2:
After ten days' fermentation, two bottles of ribena and one Ribena bottle
of water were added and the mixture allowed to ferment for a further ten
days.

STAGE 3:
After a total of twenty days' fermentation, two bottles of Ribena and one
more bottle of water were added. Fermentation was then allowed to carry on
to completion, taking, in all, three months. The result was a good, round
wine flavored delightfully but not too strongly of fresh blackcurrants.

At stage 3 it was borne in mind that, while most of the SO2 would have
been driven off during fermentation by adding those last two bottles, I was,
in effect, bringing the total SO2 content up to 175 parts per million.
fearing that the yeast might be just a little weakened at this stage I
decided to drive off the SO2 in the last two bottles by raising the
temperature of the to 70 deg. C. If you want to do this and have no suitable
thermometer, stand the bottles in a saucepan of water and slowly raise the
temperature until the Ribena in the bottles has increased in volume enough
to reach the rims of the bottles. The temperature is high enough to drive
off the SO2 and the heat should be cut off at once. The caps of the bottles
must be removed before heating. The whole of fermentation was carried out in
narrow-necked bottles plugged with cotton wool, fermentation locks being
fitted after ten days. Racking was not carried out until one month after the
last addition. Monthly racking followed until fermentation ceased. Even at
this early stage the wine was nice to drink, but it had improved vastly at
the age of six months.

At first it might seem expensive to make wine with Ribena, but against the
cost one should set the fact that no sugar need be added and that one has a
top-quality product all ready for the job in hand. Apart from this, there is
no expensive fruit to buy, no messy crushing-in fact nothing much to do at
all. And, most important of all, Ribena has been treated with a
pectin-destroying enzyme, which means that you could boil it if you wished
without fear of pectin clouding the finished wines. Such boiling would, of
course, drive off the SO2 and give you a wine flavored slightly to cooked
blackcurrants.

It will be seen that a sweeter wine may be made by using one bottle more
of Ribena or one less of water, while a dry wine would result if less Ribena
were used. A dry wine would lack the fuller flavour, but this would be
offset to some extent by to dryness.

If eight bottles of Ribena are made into one gallon by adding water, the
gallon will contain roughly four pounds of sugar and the equivalent of four
pounds of blackcurrants. This amount of fruit is ample for a gallon of wine
and, provided one likes a fairly sweet wine, this proportion of sugar to
fruit is not too much. On the whole, I feel that seven bottles of Ribena
would be the limit you could use to make a gallon of wine without it being
too sweet.

It will be clear that my trials with Ribena, using six bottles to make
just under a gallon of wine, have been most successful and I do urge readers
to have a go.

A point to bear in mind is that a good light wine is often made with as
little as two pounds of blackcurrants to the gallon, therefore, if you made
four bottles of Ribena into a gallon of 'must', you would have used the
equivalent of two pounds of blackcurrants and two pounds of sugar. This
would give you a wine of about twelve percent of alcohol by volume. Such a
wine would be dry, but by adding half a pound of sugar during the process
you would get a sweeter wine of one or two percent more alcohol.