I too would like to make 1 gal of this.
could someone please clarify how many lbs of raisins + how much sugar per gal of water = 1 gal of finished wine?
thanks in advance
Mine was the previous post before yours but I never got round to making this raisin version of my ginger wine. I missed the grapes again this year so I've got to do the raisin thing like NOW if I want it ready for Christmas/New Year.
In answer to your question, I quoted a post that mentioned 11lb of raisins for a 5 gallon batch WITHOUT sugar. The idea being you use enough raisins to get your desired abv without adding unnecessary sugars, since obviously they have as much sugar as your undehydrated grape.
The weight ratio between fresh grapes and raisins is ABOUT 4:1 (perhaps a bit more - Google "raising drying ratio"). So that would suggest that to get your "wine" (raisins + water) for a 19L (5 gallon) batch, around a quarter of that would need to be raisins: 19L = 19kg, i.e. 4.75kg of raisins, or 10.4 lb. That's actually not at all far off the 11lb figure the previous poster gave, so I think we're onto something there.
Note, this of course would be to get a completely dry "white wine" (it wouldn't win any awards, to be sure). I want to make ginger wine, for example, which is pretty sweet. I think this is where backsweetening would come in and I might have to concede it would be easier to just add sugar to taste like OP did, though you could use more raisins of course. The added complication is that the yeast will probably handle plenty more sugar, so you will actually get additional fermentation and to get your desired sweetness you will just end up having to experiment anyway, so maybe all these calculations are pointless and you should just chuck in like 15lb of raisins and take it from there
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