Apple wine from shop-bought juice: the winter batch for when the apples are gone

By Magnus von Kageneck, cellar master (who he is) · Updated: September 2026

By December your own apples are used up, and storing them doesn't pay: in storage the apple keeps breathing and uses up sugar and acid. In one series of measurements from October to February, Golden Delicious fell from 62 to 46 degrees Oechsle and from 5.6 to 3.5 g/l acidity. So in winter I set up a batch with shop-bought apple juice. It turns into a clean, dry apple wine as long as the juice, the sugar, the yeast with its nutrient and the temperature are right.

Which juice ferments

The carton has to say apple juice: a fruit juice, undiluted and without added sugar; it keeps without refrigeration because it has been heat-treated. Preservatives are only permitted in it in special cases, such as lemon juice. Clear or cloudy, pressed directly or made from concentrate, any of them can ferment. I use cloudy not-from-concentrate juice: the suspended solids help the yeast, while almost clear juice ferments more sluggishly.

Leave juice drinks, spritzers and lemonades on the shelf. They may contain sorbic acid or benzoic acid, listed in the ingredients as E 200, E 202 or E 210 to E 213, and then ferment poorly or not at all. Nectar contains water and often sugar; the label estimate below does not apply to it. I leave grape juice and grape juice concentrate out entirely: EU wine law prohibits fermenting them, and whether that also applies to your own cellar has not been settled.

Shop-bought juice starts fermenting more sluggishly than freshly pressed juice: it is usually heat-treated and almost free of solids, and both deprive the yeast of nutrients. For 10 litres you need a 15-litre demijohn, so there is room for the foam, and a second one of 10 litres for racking; for 25 litres it is 34 and 25 litres.

Warm it first, then measure

In winter, juice from the car boot or the garage is often below 10 °C, but the Oechsle hydrometer only reads correctly at 20 °C. If your hydrometer has a thermometer, like the Oechsle hydrometer with thermometer, the correction is usually printed right next to the temperature scale; then you don't need to calculate anything on top. Without such a scale, the rule is: reading plus (temperature − 20) ÷ 3.5. If the hydrometer shows 52 at 13 °C, the juice has 52 − 2 = 50 degrees Oechsle. This is only reliable up to a deviation of about 10 °C; so let cold juice stand overnight in a warm room, the yeast needs the warmth anyway.

The nutrition table gives a first estimate: for undiluted apple juice, 10 g “of which sugars” per 100 ml corresponds to about 50 degrees Oechsle (sugar in g/l = 2.6 × Oechsle − 30). The hydrometer has the final say (Measure, don't guess).

The acidity of apple juice is usually fine, 6 to 9 g/l being typical; so no water goes in. If the juice tastes flat, measure it with the acidometer. Below 6 g/l, raise it to about 7 g/l with 80 % lactic acid: per litre 1.5 g (1.25 ml) for each 1 g/l more, so for 10 litres from 5 to 7 g/l that is 30 g or 25 ml, never more than 3.75 g per litre. The acid goes into the juice, never the other way round, and only with safety goggles and gloves.

How much sugar: apple wine or apple table wine

First you decide what it is to become. Commercially, apple wine is only sugared up to 55 degrees Oechsle and has at least 5 % vol; sugar it the same way here and you reach about 6.7 % vol. It still ferments at 10 to 15 °C, so in a cool room in winter. An apple table wine has 8 to 11 % vol: you raise it to about 80 degrees Oechsle, 10.6 % vol on paper, and need a steady 15 to 20 °C.

The table allows for the fact that dissolved sugar takes up 0.6 ml per gram and so dilutes itself. Dissolve it completely in 2 of the 10 litres, or in 5 for 25 litres, add the solution to the demijohn at no more than 30 °C and stir thoroughly, because it sinks to the bottom. Then measure again: for each missing degree Oechsle, add just under 30 g of sugar per 10 litres.

Yeast and nutrient without cold shock

No living yeast is left in heat-treated juice. Juice from the chiller cabinet is not always heat-treated and may contain wild yeasts, which produce more acetic acid and often stop early; so add a cultured wine yeast in every case. For the cool-fermenting apple wine I use a neutral Steinberg yeast; for the cider yeast the manufacturer gives 12 to 20 °C, and it fits if your spot doesn't drop below 12 °C. According to its packet, a universal yeast works at 15 to 23 °C and is better suited to table wine (Yeast compass).

Rehydrate dry yeast beforehand: 5 g in 50 ml of water at 35 to 40 °C, for about 20 minutes, 45 minutes at most in total. Then add juice in small portions until the yeast is no more than 5 to 10 °C warmer than the juice. The instructions on your packet take precedence.

In winter, cold shock is the danger. If the yeast goes straight into cold juice, it can sometimes take more than five days for fermentation to start, and if it hasn't got going after three to five days, mould spores can germinate on the surface. So I set up a starter one to two days ahead: a colourless 1-litre bottle, half to three-quarters full of the same juice, plus the rehydrated yeast, closed with a wad of cotton wool. At 20 to 25 °C it often ferments vigorously after 12 to 48 hours; then it goes into the demijohn, at most 10 °C warmer than the juice.

The yeast nutrient makes up for what heat-treated juice lacks: 3 g per 10 litres, 7.5 g per 25 litres, dissolved in a little juice and added before fermentation. I don't use more; for commercial production, the German guidelines for wine-like beverages give up to 30 g of diammonium phosphate per hectolitre as customary, i.e. 3 g per 10 litres. Use a separate spoon: nutrient and potassium metabisulphite are both white powders, and 4 g of potassium metabisulphite added by mistake will stop fermentation from starting in 10 litres. Shop-bought juice is not sulphured before fermentation.

Holding the temperature through the winter

Let every batch start fermenting at around 20 °C until bubbles and foam show that it is under way, usually two to three days. After that the apple wine goes to a spot at 10 to 15 °C, the table wine to one at 15 to 20 °C. Carry the full demijohn in its basket or support it from the bottom, never by the neck.

Below 8 to 10 °C, fermentation can stall; the yeast survives and carries on as soon as it gets warmer, but you lose weeks. Swings of more than 5 °C between day and night also slow it down, so the demijohn doesn't belong next to the radiator; a thermometer beside it shows whether things stay steady. A bare glass demijohn loses the heat of fermentation quickly; in winter I wrap it in a blanket.

Frost is off limits: apple juice freezes at about −1.5 °C, and a glass demijohn can crack if its contents freeze. The garden shed and an unheated garage are ruled out in January (Winterising the cellar). And ventilate, even in the cold: 10 litres of juice release several hundred litres of carbon dioxide as they ferment. The gas is heavier than air and collects in hollows and in narrow, deep cellar rooms; that is no place for the demijohn.

If almost clear juice hardly foams in the cold, that is not a fault, and the airlock is no yardstick: it sometimes goes quiet even though there is still sugar left. In cool weeks, fermentation takes two to three months; a batch started in December is often not finished until February.

End of fermentation, racking and bottling

The Oechsle hydrometer shows when fermentation has ended. Shake the carbon dioxide out of the sample, because bubbles distort the reading, and measure twice a few days apart; if the reading stays the same, fermentation has stopped. Fermented fully dry, the wine sits at zero or below, a table wine at around −5 degrees Oechsle. Below zero the Oechsle hydrometer sinks below its scale and you can't read anything any more; that is not a defect. Then check with a residual sugar test or keep reading with a wine hydrometer whose scale goes below zero. If, on the other hand, the Oechsle hydrometer stands still clearly above zero, fermentation has stuck, and warmth is the first thing that helps (Emergency plan).

Once fermentation has ended, put the demijohn somewhere cool and raised, and rack the wine off the yeast after two to four weeks at the latest. Beforehand, dissolve 1 g of potassium metabisulphite per 10 litres in a little cold water and pour it into the empty demijohn; that gives about 50 mg/l of sulphur dioxide. Never mix the powder in a vessel that has held acid, or toxic gas will form (Sulphuring without fear). Fill the second demijohn up into the neck: at 5 to 7 % vol, apple wine barely protects itself, and without the carbon dioxide, film yeast grows on any exposed surface.

Kept cool and dark, it often clears in one to three months. In spring, rack it a second time, add 0.5 g of potassium metabisulphite per 10 litres, more only after measuring, and bottle it, even if it is still slightly cloudy. Leave it dry the first time, because sugar can re-ferment in the bottle and build up pressure (Stopping fermentation and sweetening). The whole process with freshly pressed apples is described in the booklet “Apple Wine and Cider” among the guides.

Safety note: potassium metabisulphite, 80 % lactic acid and the blue lye of the acidometer are hazardous substances; the signal word, the pictogram and the hazard statements (H) and precautionary statements (P) are given on the product page and the packaging. The label of the product supplied is authoritative.

Magnus von Kageneck is Maischewerk's cellar-master character. The texts in this series are written with the help of artificial intelligence and are checked for technical accuracy before publication.

Related in the shop: Cider & New Wine and Yeast Nutrients & Fermentation Aids