finishing questions

I'll leave it to the experts to answer your questions (and take note of those answers also)... and ask one of my own: Why freeze the must?

Bart

The must would be better (IMHO) but sugar will bring out the fruit too. With only 1 liter of frozen must you may have to do both. Thaw the must and add sugar to it until you get what you want.

BTW, the Campden may not be enough to prevent the added sugars from fermenting. You should probably consider using Potassium Sorbate too.

Yes.

Yes I do, but also to make sure the fermentation doesn't kick in again.

You can. I usually, add Pot. Meta (or campden in your case), wait a day and then add Sorbate, wait a day, add the sweetener, wait to make sure fermentation doesn't kick in again and that the wine is still stable, bottle. Just make sure that if you use Sorbate that you keep the SO2 (campden) level up.

I usually don't have to worry about the wine clearing because I don't start this process until the wine is very clear although some times the addition of sweet reserve causes problems.

Yes.

I just gently mix it using my wine thief. I usually take the hydrometer reading the next day or just right before bottling, but I use a bench trial to figure out how much sugar I'm going to add so I usually don't adjust. Just measure and add. The hydrometer reading is more for the records than to adjust further.

Not that I'm aware of but it isn't too hard to calculate. Beer brewers do it by using the numbers to the right of the decimal point. Multiply this by the volume, sum them, then divide by the new volume.

For example, If you have 1 gallon of liquid at 1.050 that you are adding to four gallons of liquid at 1.010;

1*50 + 4 * 10 / 5 = 1.018 - your new SG.

For wine, just subract 1 from the measured SG so a wine with a SG < 1 is accounted for.

For example, If you have 1 gallon of liquid at 1.050 that you are adding to four gallons of liquid at .995;

1*(1.050-1) + 4 * (.995 - 1) / 5 = 1.006

If the addition is in cups, just convert the gallons of wine to cups and it should still work. 16 cups to the gallon.

Just remember that this is an estimate and is only as good as your SG and volume measurements. This also is hard to do when using dry sugar because you have to take into account how much the sugar will raise the volume of the wine. There were some numbers floating around here a few years ago about this, a search may turn something up.

Andy

well maybe must isn't the right word. The fruit was all in strainer bags. What I did was to siphone off some of the liquid prior to pitching the yeast. I read on a site somewhere that this could be frozen and added back as a sweetener when finishing?

Dan

Dan, I've been following the directions on Jack Keller's wine site for finishing a wine,

. Since I like semi-sweet wines, when I'm ready to finish a wine (after bulk aging), I stabilize the wine, sweeten to taste, wait 10 days (or bulk age for 30 days), and then bottle. This gives the wine time to drop any yeasts sediment. Remember to rack before bottling. So far, I'm happy with the results. Darlene

Thank you for the replies. I have spent quite some time reading Jack's finishing pages. They are full of information but I was still fuzzy about where and how long the finishing takes. In a carboy or in a pail, how long to wait when sweeting to taste it etc. All the little things I can spend the whole day worring about while I wait a few more months until the time comes :)

You know Dan, I never thought about that. Now this is the way I've been doing it - At about 6 months, I rack the wine to a new jug, siphoning off about a cup or so into a clear glass measuring cup. To this I add my crushed campden tablet. After stirring until it is mixed, I pour back into the gallon jug. Then I pour another cup or so out of the gallon jug - add my stabilizing agent, stir to make sure it is dissolved, and then pour back into the jug. Then I pour some more out - add the sugar, stir until dissolved, and pour back into my 1 gallon jug. I've been known to use my big stir stick to stir the contents of the entire jug, to make sure everything is mixed. Then I put the bung and airlock back on and let it sit for a month before I rack again and then bottle. I do it all at once. It seems to work. Maybe someone will offer a different approach. Darlene

I always do it in the carboy. Even if I use plain granulated sugar to sweeten, it's always been disolved into the wine within a couple of hours, usually as soon as I add it and give a quick, gentle stir.

Andy