I think you are looking for simple answers where there aren't any.
An apple ain't an orange, a lemon ain't a grape, and I can't get
much juice from a dandylion. And while I might drink fresh pressed
apple juice without modification, I certainly wouldn't want lemonade
made from straight lemon juice. A lot of ifs, ands, and buts.

Hmmmmmmm....... Maybe you could look at it this way:
The fruit/flower/whatever is only there for the flavor. You decide how
intense you want the flavor to be for the style of wine you want to
make, and adjust for that. Then, consider the alcohol/acid as seperate
issues. In order for a wine to "keep" (not spoil), alcohol and acid have
to fall within certain ranges. Alcohol needs to be greater than 9%, and
acid should be between ~3.2 to3.6 pH. So you adjust for that.

The trick comes in assembling a must which meets all of these criteria.
Since folks don't usually brag about their mistakes, it's pretty safe to
assume that the recipes you find were successfully done at one time
or another by the writer. And the writer decided that the outcome
was good enough to be passed on.

As Jack Keller once said he "...cooks
follow recipes, chefs create their own...."

HTH

Frederick


"Charles E" > wrote in message
...
> Good comments Erroll. It does seem strange that water is added to
> reduce acidty but then most recipes also call for the addition of
> acid. Has anyone else made fruit wines using chemical acid adjustment
> without adding water? If so, how did it turn out? Was the fruit
> overpowering as the rumor goes???
>
> And finally, I assume adding water will raise the pH. Do most fruit
> wines start with a low pH and adding water conveniently brings it into
> balance or is pH typically ok to begin with and must then be lowered
> (chemically?) after adding water? If so, it just seems like your
> trading one evil for another. Perhaps pH is the lesser of two evils...
>
>
>
> On 5 May 2007 11:04:39 -0700, Erroll Ozgencil >
> wrote:
>
>>On May 4, 8:45 pm, Charles E > wrote:
>>> most of the recipes on Jack Keller's web site call for the addition of
>>> water
>>> Why would one want to intentionaly ameliorate a wine must?
>>
>>Back in the day, Ben Rotter and Jack Keller debated this topic. As I
>>remember it, Jack argued that many fruits had an overpowering flavor
>>that would have been more like alcoholic fruit juice than wine if
>>undiluted. Ben felt that most fruit could make very good full flavored
>>wine and that the idea of using 2-4 lb of fruit and a gallon of water
>>was more about economy. I don't think it's about acid, as most country
>>wine recipes call for adding water, sugar, *and* acid. Ben has a great
>>web site too, check it out at:
>>
>>www.brsquared.org/wine/
>>
>>I was just about to suggest searching the archive for this thread, but
>>I can't find it anymore. In fact, all my Google Groups searches this
>>morning turned up results from this year only. I know I used to be
>>able to find threads from many years past; has there been some change
>>in the archive that I missed? Some preference that I need to set?
>>
>>Anyway, I made blueberry and cherry wine, last year, as though they
>>were red wine. That is, I crushed the fruit, added sugar to SG =
>>1.090, and fermented. I haven't bottled yet, but they seem promising.
>>
>>Erroll
>>www.washingtonwinemaker.com
>