I’ve made measuring mistakes too! It’s important not to panic, to document and measure as much as you can, then come up with a plan to fix things. If I had been following that recipe and noticed a PA of 25%, I’d probably double everything else. Hopefully that would nudge the PA to about 12.5%. It sounds like you tried something like that. Now that you’ve made your adjustment and its fermenting, I would let it run its course.

One danger in fermenting 8 gallons of must in a 10 gallon primary is overflow. If you can, I would transfer some of it to another primary. If not, try to keep an eye on the temperature. You’ll need to balance two things here: keep it cool enough to slow down fermentation (so there’s less foaming and less chance of overflow) but not so cool that fermentation get stuck. If you’re using Red Star’s Premier Cuvee, for example, you can ferment at 55 degrees Fahrenheit – that’s a cool fermentation, but its 10 degrees above the yeast’s minimum temperature.

Good luck Kimmy, and let me know how this little adventure turns out!

Erroll

By the way, The Joy of Home Wine Making was my first book on how to make wine. It got me started and I still love it!

I agree that adding the pectic enzyme right away will get you better extraction, and that’s what I would do. I would also add the campden tablets right away to keep wild yeasts and other undesirable microorganisms in check. Sulfite can inhibit pectic enzyme, but not in the concentratios winemakers normally use.

Good luck, and do come back to let me know how the wine turns out!

Erroll

I plan on making a little over 2 gallons of wine and I’m collecting recipes on the net right now. The most common technique I’ve seen is to soak the cherries in plain water for 1 to 2 days and then strain before adding the Campden tablets and the pectic enzyme.

It seems to me that the pectic enzyme would be able to extract a lot more juice if it were added while the cherry pulp was available. Do you have any advice on when to add the ingredients at the beginning?

Jerry

Erroll

No need to pit, just destem, crush, add sugar, water, and yeast. The trick is in knowing how much sugar and water to add. A country wine recipe makes that easy. Making it like an ordinary wine from grapes is more work, but if you can estimate the juice yield of the cherries (even if you aren’t juicing them) and measure the specific gravity and titratable acidity of a clear sample, then you can use my wine recipe wizard to get suggested amounts of water, sugar syrup, and acid.

Erroll