adding sugar

Invite some friends over. Pour same measured abounts in containers and add measured amounts of sugar to each. Then have everyone try it and get a concensus of opinion on which is best. This is fun and shows your friends that you value their opinion. Then after they leave, add the amount that you liked best ignoring thier opinion. A lot of wineries use this techneque for evaluating blends. Yea, blending parties are fun too!

If you used 100 ml samples and you are scaling up to 23 liters, then add 230 times the amount of sugar you added to the 100 ml sample.

Ray

First make sure the wine is stabilized, either chemically (by adding potassiums metabisulfite and sorbate) or by sterile filtration. My preferred way to sweeten to taste is to siphon off a sample and slowly add sugar as simple syrup, stir, allow it a few minutes to assimilate, and then taste it. If not right, add more and repeat. Simple syrup is two parts sugar to one part water, dissolved to water's clarity.

I like to use a 380-mL sample size for a gallon-sized batch. This is

10% of the overall volume and whatever amount I add to it can be easily calculated for the remainder (multiply it by 9 for the remaining 90%). For a 5-gallon batch, I use a one-liter sample and multiply by 18 for the remainder.

After sweetening the whole, take a hydrometer reading (make a note of the reading) and to keep the wine under airlock for at least two weeks and preferably three to ensure it does not start refermenting.

If you stabilized with chemicals and it shows signs of refermentation, just wait it out. The yeast in the wine will not reproduce, but the ones still in there will continue fermentation until they die out. When the wine goes still, wait for the final dusting of dead yeast cells to form on the bottom. Then add enough simple syrup to restore the wine to the post-sweetening hydrometer reading, stir, let it sit a few days for the dead yeast to drop out again, and carefully rack the wine into bottles.

I like to mark the cork of the last bottle with an "L" so I know it is the last one. This is the one that may have picked up a few of the dead cells and throw a light dust in the bottle. I just like to know which one it is so I don't give it to someone or bring it to a competition.

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page