adding hot water is a bad idea?

How do you feel about adding hot water to the wine while fermenting? Or adding hot water to fill up the space between the wine and the carboy bung at the top of the carboy after racking?

This is something I would not do. That is how I feel about it.

Vernon - Although we do occasionally discuss winemaking here, it is not the focus of discussion here. This is mostly a forum for discussing wines that folks drink, but do not make. Over the past few days you've asked some very elementary questions about winemaking techniques that could better be answered in other places. First of all there is an excellent free publication, that you can download from a link on this home page as follows.
Click on “WineLovers Discussion Group” at the top of this page. Then, at the left of the screen, click on “Favorite Wine Links” “Home Wine Making”. Then select
Home Winemakers Manual. This excellent book on home winemaking will answer all your questions and more.
Another suggestion is an excellent site that is dedicated to wine making: http://www.winepress.us.
BTW - I never add water, either hot or cold to my wine. I always top up my carboys with wine.

I think that there are times when adding water may be acceptable but those times would be if one let the grapes hang longer to reach maturity and elevated sugars too high and you need to bring down the brix. In this case I would add the water before initiating fermentation. I would not add water during fermentation. If I could not properly top off a carboy, I would use a smaller carboy and store the excess wine in gallon jugs or wine bottle for topping up after any subsequent rackings.

we do occasionally discuss winemaking here, it is not the focus of discussion here. This is mostly a forum for discussing wines that folks drink, but do not make. Over the past few days you've asked some very elementary questions about winemaking techniques that could better be answered in other places. First of all there is an excellent free publication, that you can download from a link on this home page as follows.
Click on “WineLovers Discussion Group” at the top of this page. Then, at the left of the screen, click on “Favorite Wine Links” “Home Wine Making”. Then select
Home Winemakers Manual. This excellent book on home winemaking will answer all your questions and more.
Another suggestion is an excellent site that is dedicated to wine making: http://www.winepress.us.
.

Besides Howie's excellent suggestions, you might try the Usenet group rec.crafts.winemaking (if you don't have a newsreader account, try Google Groups)

we do occasionally discuss winemaking here, it is not the focus of discussion here. This is mostly a forum for discussing wines that folks drink, but do not make. Over the past few days you've asked some very elementary questions about winemaking techniques that could better be answered in other places. First of all there is an excellent free publication, that you can download from a link on this home page as follows.
Click on “WineLovers Discussion Group” at the top of this page. Then, at the left of the screen, click on “Favorite Wine Links” “Home Wine Making”. Then select
Home Winemakers Manual. This excellent book on home winemaking will answer all your questions and more.
Another suggestion is an excellent site that is dedicated to wine making: http://www.winepress.us.
.

Besides Howie's excellent suggestions, you might try the Usenet group rec.crafts.winemaking (if you don't have a newsreader account, try Google Groups)

I tend to believe that if adding water is somehow needed, then something must have gone awry in the vineyard. Growing an appropriate grape type for one's climate and balancing the vines during the growing season are things I'd personally prefer to do rather than add water and dilute the flavour and aromatic compounds, as well as those elements that give a wine its structure.

We've never added hot water to our wines at any stage. The only time hot water is used in our cellar is to rehydrate yeast for innoculation and we use luke warm water if and when we add things like DAP or Superfood during fermentations to allow for them to mix better.

We do add water occasionally at harvest time - and I will have to disagree with some of the other posters about 'bad vineyard management' or 'poor winemaking' . . . sometimes you need to let grapes hang to get the 'flavors' that you are after . . .

If you do water adds, always best to do during fermentation so that you do not dilute the wines . . . Just my $.02.

Good luck!