GRAPE WINE RECIPE

Wine Style: Rosé House Wine

	Aims:
	Flavour	Light
	Bouquet	Light/Medium
	Body	Light
	Alcohol	12%
	Starting SG	1.088
	Final SG	0.990 then sweeten to 0.998/1.000
	Acidity	0.75% as citric

NB All our recipes are for 5 gallons.  If you want to make a smaller quantity just scale everything down accordingly.

Ingredients
Yeast 22.5 kilos grapes 5 litre of fresh or tinned red fruit juice, or, alternatively, 1.25 litre red grape concentrate. 5 grams sodium metabisulphite	Pectic enzyme 15 grams ammonium sulphate Sugar and citric acid to adjust as needed. 5 gram potassium sorbate to use later (to kill the fermentation at the end)

WARNING! Many preservatives kill yeast.  Preservatives E211 (Sodium benzoate) and E202 (Potassium sorbate) are used in supermarket concentrates. These two are particularly good at killing yeast.  Make sure any concentrates or juices you buy are free from such preservatives.

METHOD

Sterilise a 5 gallon fermentation vessel. Mash up the grapes.  One can do this by hand, using a potato masher or similar.  If you use a food mixer be sure not to use a sharp blade, it my split the seeds and I suspect this will impart a slightly bitter taste to the wine.  Add the resulting mush to the vessel.  Add the fruit juice or grape concentrate. Add 5 gram sodium metabisulphate (to sterilisie the must), add the pectic enzyme as per instructions on bottle and add the ammonium suphate (yeast nutrient). Add 100 grams of citric acid Make up to 4.5 gallons with clean water, stir and leave to stand covered for at least 6 hours. Next the tricky bit: you need to get the SG to 1.088.  Read the current specific gravity.  You will need approximate 125 grams of sugar per gallon to raise the SP by 0.010.  Put the sugar in a saucepan and add sufficent water to make up to 1/2 gallon.  Heat gentle and stir until the sugar is fully disolved.  Add this to the vessel causiously as  you do not want to find that you haved raised the specific gravity too high because of a calculation error.  Best add 25% or so at a time, stirring and rechecking the SG after each addition.  The aim is to finish with 5 gallons of fluid with a specific gravity of 1.088. Stand in a warm place overnight and then add the yeast.  Note: to obtain a red wine you must ferment on the skins of red grapes for two to three days to extract the colour. After 3 days or so strain and let fermentation proceed to dryness.  Then, idealy, refrigerate for three days.  Unfortunately, few of us have a refrigerator large enough to do that - don't worry, just leave it in the coldest place you can find and then rack it. Sweeten to 0.999.  Calculate the sugar required as explained above, but use a small quantity of the wine to melt the sugar as you don't want to add more water at this stage.  Add the melted sugar carefully, stiring and checking regularly to make sure you do not raise the SG above 0.999.  Finally add the 5 grams of potassium sorbate to kill off any further fermentation. Leave in a cool place to clear.  Rack about once a week until no further lees appear at the bottom of the fermentation vessel and the wine is perfectly clear. Bottle and enjoy.