Reserve 1/2 the fruit post stabilization

[BWRIGHT]

When making fruit wines, I have been reserving an amount of the pre-fermented must for backsweetening. I add my fruit and water to the bucket with the appropriate amount of campden tabs prior to adding any pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, etc. I normally let it go for 2 days rather than 1 so that I can extract more flavor from the chosen fruit. I then reserve 1/2 to 1 gallon of this must and refrigerate it and use it to backsweeten after its cleared and has been stabilized.

I think we've all experienced that adding fruit in the primary will scrub off a ton of the flavor compounds during primary fermentation. For this reason, a lot of people have taken to adding their fruit to secondary. This is fine but it will just kick off a secondary fermentation which will also blow off a lot of the flavor profile of the fruit as well. I'm wondering if anyone has had experience they could share in regards to reserving a portion of the total volume of fruit (guessing 1/3 to 1/2) to add AFTER primary fermentation is complete and AFTER the wine has been stabilized with with Kmeta and Ksorbate? Seems this approach would greatly improve the flavor profile for a fruit wine. Seems it would allow for a drier wine as well as the whole point of sweeteing fruit wines is to try and bring back some of the flavors of the fruit?

The same approach could be used for a Melomel as well. Anybody gone down this road?

 

[bernardsmith]

No expert on this but I think that that is the original method of "back-sweetening" - hence the name. But adding so much liquid would tend to reduce the ABV considerably. And that may not be an issue for you. If it is an issue for others one strategy might be to hard freeze that must and then collect about 1/3 of the total volume as liquid as you allow it to gently thaw. That way you remove 2/3 of the water but you collect 100 percent of the sugars and flavors.

 

[BWRIGHT]

I may try that freeze distilling method on current batch and see how that goes. When reserving only fruit though, I wouldn't be adding any amount of liquid that would add to the total volume (very little anyway). My plan was to reserve say 1/2 of the total volume of fruit. So if I was making a 3 gallon batch, I may reserve 6 lbs of fruit to add to the secondary once it's been stabilized. This is the technique I was curious if anybody had any experience with.

 

[BWRIGHT]

Just added the fruit after stabilizing yesterday. Could only fit 5 lbs into the carboy, which topped it off. I'm also curious how the fruit flavor profile/intensity ends up using this technique. I normally use 3-4 lbs fruit per gallon when making melomels or fruit wines. I would think I could get away with maybe 25%-50% less fruit. I'm at 2 lbs/gallon on this so I'll know soon enough. If the flavor isn't there, I'll backsweeten with fruit juice.