Hi Paul.

I had a bit of a google for you and found the following outlining the very problem you are having.
http://www.homewinemaking.co.uk/cgi/...m=11088071 69

It sounds like boiling won't help - sodium benzoate has a melting point of 300c apparently and a boiling point beyond
that. Nothing I could find would help degrade or eliminate the sodium benzoate from the Ribena (nothing safe to consume
at least)

One correspondent mentioned that making a must containing half the amount of Ribena produced a fermentation. You could
try this, but I wouldn't hold out much hope that it would ferment very fast or taste very rich.

I don't know your location Paul, but last year I went to a pick-your-own place in South Staffordshire hoping to pick
blackcurrants for a gallon of wine as affordably as possible. Unfortunately when I got there, I had missed the final
pick. Fortunately they pick and freeze a portion of the crop at its prime and charge a fair bit less for the frozen
berries which you scoop from a bucket of loose berries (so you can see what you are getting). I figured that since we
often freeze fruit before use in wine to help extract the flavour within, buying recently frozen fruit couldn't hurt...

I think it worked out at about £8.00 for enough blackcurrants to make the 1 Gallon Jack Keller recipe - once upscaled to
quantities for a UK Gallon (google black currant wine jack keller) It is smelling very good several months down the
line

Good luck whatever you try, Jim

"Paul" > wrote in message ...
> Would boiling the ribena get rid of the preservatives
> I have bought 4 litres of the stuff and do not want to waste it
>
> thanks
>
> "Paul" > wrote in message ...
>>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
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
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