Replacing Sugar with Raisins

my guess is you would first have to pulverize the raisins into a slurry, take a brix reading and determin sugar content. Determine how much sugar a pound of raisins offers and accept that as a standard. Then treat that as your sugar and apply the raisins to the wine as you would when chaptalizing. Determine the brix of your current must, determine how much sugar is needed for your potential alcohol, and prorate it for the raisins.

I'm guessing you'll need a lot more raisins by volume than sugar if you're going to completely replace all sugar with raisins alone.

Jeff

Look at Ben McCune's site

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Thanks, will use that as a rule of thumb and adjust it as required.

Thomas

Just a suggestion. Rather than using raisins, you might consider using frozen white grape concentrate. That way you can easily add the concentrate and determine the SG. I would not replace all the sugar with grapes. That may be a bit too much acid, tannin and other things. Raisins and eating grapes are more acid than wine grapes. You might try replacing 1/2, then be careful of your acid additions.

Ray