1. Home
  2. Winemaking Craft Forum
  3. I am about the bottle yhe plum wine, but....

I am about the bottle yhe plum wine, but....

but I have a lot of pears on the old cat farm and big rock farm. I made pear wine before, but it was extremely sweet. very potent!, but too sweet. It was my first attempt and I want something else for the first batch and have decided that the first batch had too much sugar.

question is how soon should one add the sugar to the must to maintain the proper balance for fermenting? I base this question on the idea that different fruit have different sugar contents and when I made this batch I just followed the written verbatim.

pk

Reply to
p k
Loading thread data ...

I understand where you're coming from. When making wine from fruit, you don't really know how much sugar is in the fruit, so you can end up with a very potent or too sweet wine. To avoid that, I tend to hold some sugar back during the primary fermentation. For example, if the recipe calls for

5 cups of sugar for a 1 gallon recipe, I will just add 4 or 3 1/2 cups depending on how sweet I think the fruit is. Do you have a hydrometer? I've been shooting for 11% or 12 % alcohol by volume - or a starting SG of 1.090 with the fruit wines I do (high enough to preserve the wine, but not rocket fuel). If you hold back some sugar, then check your SG; if it is around 1.090 then I wouldn't add anymore sugar. If the SG is less than that, then add sugar in increments of 1/2 cup (stir until dissolved & take the SG reading again) until you get there. Hope this helps. Darlene
Reply to
Dar V

Two things are essential when making wine; knowing the specific gravity or potential alcohol, and knowing the acidity. If you are not testing for both, you are really taking chances....

Reply to
Bob

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.