Mango wine - too sweet

Feb 08, 2005 10 Replies

Hi. I am brewing some mango wine and took a sample the other day. It was very flavorful, sparkling (still a bubble or two in the lock) and terribly sweet. We made it from 11.5 kg of fruit, 18 litres of water, 6kg sugar, Pectin enzyme. Will adding more water allow it to ferment further ? I failed to take an initial SG (unforgivable I know, but it was very thick with fruit). Currently 1.050 - how can I get it down ? Perhaps only good for distilling ?


What yeast did you use? Is it still bubbling? Ken

By my calculations you added about 5.3 lbs of sugar per gal of water (forgive my US units) before you ever added the fruit. Normally you would only add about 2.5 to 3 lbs. It is really hard to tell without a beginning SG. It might work to water the wine down and let it ferment out. but it may be way out of balance. It is not going to ferment out the way it is. You may have to adjust the acidity and other constituents. But then the alternative is to use it as alcoholic syrup. If you are going to do this, do it soon, before it stops fermenting entirely.

Ray

If your fermentation is going at 10 bubbles per minute it's far too soon to worry about the wine being too sweet.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

I see you beat to the answer. Ah well. Ken

Plus mangoes are very sweet and there is about 25lbs of them in the must, so this batch might already be at the port level of alcohol now! Definitely, water it down immediately. For the balance, consider adding more mangoes, in proportion with the added water.

Pp

Thanks guys, have watered it down a bit and it is still bubbling away. Stacks of mango falvour - may hit it with a bit of lemon juice later to see what that does. Will post in a few months time when it has settled down. Thanks again, RexT.

What yeast did you use? You could always pitch a more butt-kicking yeast.

Sounds like you are right on schedule IMO.

Lalvin EC1118 is a great one for that!

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