How much sugar ferments out?

Let me see if I can calculate this in the right way.

The sugar in the must is dependable on the acid. So let us do the calculations:

1030 - 1000 = 30 At acid lower as 6 grams per liter (30 x 2.6) - 20 = 58 grams per liter At acid between 6 to 10 it will be (30 x 2.6) - 25 = 53 grams per liter

So the residual sugar will be between 53 and 58 grams per liter. It will be a sweet wine. Fermcalc converts this to .44 punds per gallon

There is another way of doing the math but that involves a lot of work and a very accurate hydrometer. There are special hydrometers called wine-weighers made for this purpose and available here in Europw but I bet a refractometer could do the same. If anyone is interested I can post the residual sugar measurement method here.

Luc Volders

Sure, post it.

I'm not sure this won't keep fermenting though. Is that OK? If you are making hard lemonade you might get better advise on rec.crafts.brewing.

Joe

I wouldn't expect it to keep fermenting as the wine/hard lemonade is now sitting in a keg in my fridge at 37F. I had a taste today and it is not too bad. A little sweet but it pours with a nice thick, creamy head.

Andrew

Thanks for the reply Luc.

Yes it is a little on the sweet side but it is very drinkable. I had taken no PH measurements so I have no idea which of your calculations is more correct. From the looks of things I'll have to moderate myself as I don't like ingesting large amounts of sugar. Perhaps next time I will attempt this recipe with less sugar. I'm also considering doing a similar recipe by fermenting malt extract and adding the lemon to flavour.

I'm just an amateur who's trying to ferment anything that doesn't move.

Andrew

Luc Volders wrote:

Go to:

Use chart (table) at the bottom for cross referencing.

Ok here is the procedure for measuring residual sugar in a must. Mind you the must may be fermenting or it can be a finshed wine.

I'll keep it simple.

First get a measuring jar with a good scale. Now fill it with 250 ml of wine (that is a quart liter or anything similar in us measurements).

Now measure the SG at 20 degrees celius (please do the conversion) And jot it down somewhere.

Now we put the must or wine in a jar and boil it until at least half of the must or wine is boiled.

Cool it down adn add distilled water or if that is not available tap water until you have again exactly 250ml.

So basically what you have done is boiled all the alcohol out of the must and added water until the exact amount of juice is reached before boiling.

So now we do the measurement with the SG meter again at 20 degrees celsius (the temperature is critical otherwise the measurements are not exact).

This last figure gives us the SG of a must with no alcohol and that is the SG of a plain juice with sugar. So the SG tells us how much sugar is in the must just like we are used to do.

So now we have the residual sugar. But there is a bonus.

We have the SG of the must with alcohol and we have now the SG of the must without alcohol. The difference can tell us the amount of alcohol in the must.

Here is the tabel with the figures:

Differnce in SG ; Alcohol by volume

1 ;0,66 2 ;1,34 3 ;2,02 4 ;2,71 5 ;3,42 6 ;4,14 7 ;4,88 8; 5,63 9 ;6,40 10 ;7,18 11; 7,98 12 ;8,80 13 ;9,65 14 ;10,51 15 ;11,40 16 ;12,30 17 ;13,20 18 ;14,10 19 ;15,10 20 ;16,00 21 ;17,00 22 ;18,00 23 ;19,00 24 ;20,00 25 ;21,00 26 ;22,00

With this method you can analyse all wine that you ahve around or even fermenting musts on which you forgot to take the readings. Because you will know the amount of alcohol in the must and the amount of residual sugar.

I hope this is not to technically and clear for all of you. Please feel free to ask questions here in this usenet group or e-mail me privately ( snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com) or contact me through my web-log

And OOOOOOOPPPPPPPSSSSSSS: I just read the original mail again. Andrew stated that the wine had as SG of 1030 when it finished. So the SG is the SG of the fluid with sugar and alcohol. So the alcohol has less weight as water so there will even be a bit more residual sugar in it........... So use the method above to get the right figures.

I resume: First measure some must. Boil it. Fill it up to the original amount with (preferably distilled) water and measure it again. The last figure gives you the residual sugar. The difference tells the amount of alcohol in it.

In the near future I will make a blog entry for this in my web-log with the decent tables.

Luc Volders

I don't understand your alcohol table. How did you get those numbers ??

What is the SG of pure alcohol ??

This not an absolute alcohol table. The table is suitable when measured the difference between the plain must and the boiled must.

When boiled there will be no alcohol left in the must.......

Luc Volders

I have no idea either.

Buy a bottle of Everclear and take the weight of one mililiter and you will have the SG. If you don't have the tools to do that, take the weight of a cup of Everclear and a cup of water. Subtract the weight of the cup from each to get net weights. Divide the net weight of the Everclear by the net weight of the water.

You could take a sample of the Everclear and stick an hydrometer, but I doubt you have an hydrometer that reads that low.

Southern Comfort has an SG of 0.97. Ethyl alcohol should be between 0.78 and 0.80, but acheiving that at home is highly unlikely.

Dick

Yes, I understand the rest of it. It's only the table I don't understand. Seems to me that such a table would have to be based on the number of gravity points difference between pure water and pure alcohol. The ABV column would then show the relationship for each of those gravity points.

If I can find some time later I will try to look it up. Or maybe someone else in the group would be kind enough to do the research for us. HTH

Frederick

...of Everclear, which is only (at most) 95% ABV. Due to alcohol's chemical properties, it's really tricky to get a higher concentration than ~96%.

Much easier is to look up the actual density of ethanol, which is 0.789 g/cm³

Sorry I misunderstood you.

This table I copied from an internet site. Now this could be bogus of course if it not was the same table (just a slight deviation of .1% at some point) which was supplied by the manufacturer of the wine-weigher.

I never re-checked or recalculated the figures myself, but as they were supplied by the manufacturer I presume they are right.

Luc

Thank you Paul

Here is my thinking. Assuming a water/ethanol mix. Pure water at SG 1.000 would be zero%ABV, and pure ethanol at SG 0.789 would be 100%ABV. This means that a 21 point spread would cover the entire range. Yet the table says that 26 gravity points equals 22%ABV. Without the formula the table is based on there is no way I can "back engineer" it, so I am left in a state of confusion. (which is not unusual for someone my age) ;o)

If anyone figures this out (or finds that formula) please let me know....... TIA

Frederick

Hi Andrew

No one in the group seems to use my methods but I thought it might be worth a mention here.

Interim SG (ISG) readings are any readings that are taken after the yeast has been pitched but before the wine goes bone dry. For these kinds of readings I find it easiest to use my hydrometer for cross referencing things (or an identical chart that I hung on the wall). I would do this as follows:

1. For ABV: 1.080 minus 1.030 equals 50 points used so far. So I would cross refernce 1.050 to the PA scale and see that I had about 6.6% alcohol.
2. For RS: Just cross reference 1.030 to the BRIX scale and and see that I had about 7.8%RS.
3. For sugar: Knowing that for readings below 1.030 it takes about 2 ounces of sugar in a gallon to raise the SG by about 5 points, I would calculate remaining sugar as follows: 30 divided by 5 equals 6, times 2 equals 12 ounces of sugar per gallon remaining in the wine/must.

There is of course an offset for alcohol, but for your purpose here these estimates are probably "good enough". I think these kinds of estimates are what most folks use anyway. HTH

Frederick