BeerBorg

This is a simple twist of the many old Welch's Grape juice wine recipies out there. It has become a permanent member in my rotation. I used to bottle these in reg wine bottles then started using the 1.5 ltr magnums but decided to just keg it going forward. My current cost is $27.16 and would yield approx 25 regular bottles of wine or $1.09 per bottle.

I did a batch last night. Started at 6:15 and after clean up I was done at 6:55. Easy peasy

5 gal batch @ current pricing
8 - Aldi's White Grape Juice half gal bottles $2.69 each
1 - Aldi's Grape Juice half gal bottle $2.69
1 - Aldi's 4# bag Sugar $1.89
1 - Red Star Montrachet Yeast $1.06 (w tax)



Pour about 1/2 of each bottle into a sanitized fermenting bucket. Use a funnel to add about a cup of sugar to each bottle.



Reseal and shake the living hell out of it. Let it sit for a few minutes then shake again. Now pour this into the bucket.



Once you do this with all 9 bottles, give it a good stir then pitch your yeast.



I let it ferment for at least 60 days around 68*. Then bottle / keg.



I even made some simple labels for my wine bottles!

Hmm, sounds interesting. Does this end up being a sweet pale red wine or a dry one? Thx

TonyKZ1 wrote:Hmm, sounds interesting. Does this end up being a sweet pale red wine or a dry one? Thx

Tony - I'd say semi sweet. Definitely nothing fancy. It's just sooo easy to make and less than 1/3 the price of Franzia boxed wine.

Thanks for posting that. How hard does it ferment? Just wondering if I could do a whole 5 gal. batch in a 5 gal. carboy.

berryman wrote:Thanks for posting that. How hard does it ferment? Just wondering if I could do a whole 5 gal. batch in a 5 gal. carboy.

berryman - nothing too vigorous from what I can tell. I'll bet you can get your hands on some mighty fine juice up in WNY. We visit that area at least once a year - wife's from Freedonia - still has a few relatives up there.

I'm assuming you could modify/darken the color just by substituting the regular grape juice for some of the white ones? And was you able to get all the ingredients including the yeast at Aldi's? If so, that would make for a one-stop recipe.

brewnewb wrote: berryman - nothing too vigorous from what I can tell. I'll bet you can get your hands on some mighty fine juice up in WNY. We visit that area at least once a year - wife's from Freedonia - still has a few relatives up there.

I showed my wife this post today and she is interested in me making a batch. Fredonia is about 12 miles from me and we go down that way often. For some reason I knew you said your wife is from around here but Damm, I can't remember what post it was on. Sometimes I have a beer memory loss We will try this, wife will get the ingredients and I have 3- 5 gal and am going to slow down on beer making shortly anyways and can leave a carboy tied up for a couple months. Thanks again for the post................
Edit: do you carb it or drink it like Wine? I think it would to be nice to have a little of both..............

My daughter loves peach/mango juice. We buy Orchard Hills brand. It's 100% juice. Actually, it's apple juice flavored with the peach and mango. I wonder if that would work, don't see why it wouldn't. Things that make you go, HHmmmm.

TonyKZ1 wrote:I'm assuming you could modify/darken the color just by substituting the regular grape juice for some of the white ones? And was you able to get all the ingredients including the yeast at Aldi's? If so, that would make for a one-stop recipe.

yep all Aldis except the yeast! I've also done this with a one stop at Walmart

berryman wrote:

brewnewb wrote: berryman - nothing too vigorous from what I can tell. I'll bet you can get your hands on some mighty fine juice up in WNY. We visit that area at least once a year - wife's from Freedonia - still has a few relatives up there.

I showed my wife this post today and she is interested in me making a batch. Fredonia is about 12 miles from me and we go down that way often. For some reason I knew you said your wife is from around here but Damm, I can't remember what post it was on. Sometimes I have a beer memory loss We will try this, wife will get the ingredients and I have 3- 5 gal and am going to slow down on beer making shortly anyways and can leave a carboy tied up for a couple months. Thanks again for the post................
Edit: do you carb it or drink it like Wine? I think it would to be nice to have a little of both..............

Both - I've bottled it as wine and kegged with low psi co2. Gets a little fuzzy on tap but so much easier than corking / washing a bunch of bottles.

BlackDuck wrote:My daughter loves peach/mango juice. We buy Orchard Hills brand. It's 100% juice. Actually, it's apple juice flavored with the peach and mango. I wonder if that would work, don't see why it wouldn't. Things that make you go, HHmmmm.

As long as the juice is not preserved (ie: has no potassium sorbate or the like to stunt fermentation) you should be fine.

Check the number of grams of sugar per volume to build it into your brewing software.

This way you can approximate OG and FG easily...

I got a batch fermenting as per your recipe. I haven't made any wine in a long time and my daughter is all excited about it, but doesn't like the wait time and I said you have to have patience like I do when brewing.................

I hope she likes it. And remind her to go easy, it packs a punch.

I started mine on 2/22/17 so I have a ways to go as well. Worst part is we killed off our kegged batch. I may get a second batch going to manage the pipeline better.

I added a little twist in this batch. On April 1, (~5 weeks fermenting) I transferred the batch into one of my kegs and let it finish fermenting for the last 3 weeks. This weekend marked 2 months so I kegged up this batch. Shared some with the neighbors and they liked it.

I started another batch on April 1 and plan to transfer it on May 1 into another keg and start a new batch.

Hopefully I can have a constant rotation on / around the first of each month. One on tap, one finishing fermenting and one just starting.

I haven't bottled mine yet but getting close. I have all the ingredients ready for another batch and haven't even tried the first one yet, but sounds like you like it a lot. As I said I'm not much of a wine drinker but making it for others that don't like beer that good. I will let you know how it turned out in a few more weeks............