Sweetening a finished wine with honey

I'm planning on making a dessert muscat, and I'm aiming for as much as

5% residual sugar. As suggested in this group, the easiest way is to add back sugar and sorbate AFTER everything else is finished. But rather than add a wine conditioner or just cane sugar, I've been thinking of adding an infused honey such as a lavender honey. Has anyone had experience with sweetening a finshed wine with honey? I tried it on a small sample of one of my dry rieslings, and it's not easy getting the honey dispersed and thoroughly mixed with the wine...it took a lot of shaking and stirring to get rid of the glop of honey...and that was only 1 test glass. I'm working with a full 6 gallon carboy.

Any thoughts? I've had similar sweet wines from Provence and, in small quantities, they're pretty good.

Lee

Reply to
Lee
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My first suggestion is to use a wine yeast with the alcohol toxicity for which you are targeting for a dry wine and then calculate how much honey you need for 5% residual sugar. If you go this route, I would suggest adding the honey in stages during primary fermentation.

Now if you've already brewed the wine and the FG = 1.000 or less, my trusty calculator says to add 8.5 lbs of honey. However, a gallon of honey should weigh 12 lbs so if your 6-gal carboy is full, you will need to split it and do some Quality Assurance Sampling. If you do split it, put the honey into the original carboy so that it may get some fermentation. Also put the honey and the wine in a santize pot and heat it to 100F to get the honey to blend into the mixture more readily

I know almost nothing about wine, but I do know honey.

Dick

Reply to
Dick Adams

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