I prefer dry wines in general, but am going to start a blush wine from a kit and I thought that it might be nice to add some sweetness for consumption next summer. I bought some wine sweetener & conditioner. It comes in plastic bottles and contains a syrup and potassium sorbate. There are no instructions stating how much to use. I was wondering if these syrups come in a standard strength, and how much I would need to add to a 23 l batch to raise the sweetness from a zero to a 1 or 2. I also thought it could come in handy to add a little to part of a batch of white wine, to take the edge off and make it drinkable early, while the rest ages.
I bet what you have is just a sugar/sorbate mix. The problem is that you will probably add it to taste. You might get the sweetness you need but if you do not add enough sorbate it could start fermenting on you. I would suggest using sugar and sorbate and do it yourself.
The hydrometer is only effective for measuring pre-fermentation sugar, because it indicates the specific gravity relative to water (which has an SG of 1.000 at standard temperature and pressure).
After any fermentation has taken place, there will be alcohol and (possibly) residual sugar in addition to water. Since alcohol has an SG less than 0.970 (I can't remember the precise figure), the alcohol content will lower the sg, while the residual sugar will still increase it. A truly dry wine, with about 12% alcohol, will have an SG closer to 0.990. One with more alcohol will have an even lower SG. On the other hand, one could have a high-alcohol wine with considerable residual sugar, with an SG of 0.995-1.000!
A fermenting wine at 1.000 will continue to ferment for some time, until all the sugar is converted to alcohol, or until all the yeast die or go into hibernation.
So, if you want to test the residual sugar after fermentation, something like Clinitest is needed.
The best method, in my opinion, is to allow the wine to ferment to dryness, and then add your sorbate and sugar by weight per volume, rather than by hydrometer measurement.
Rather than adding sorbate, commercial wineries use a very fine ("sterile") filter, but the equipment and filter pads are quite expensive, and (IMO) impractical for homewinemakers with relatively small batches.
Another option is to pasteurize the wine prior to adding the sweetener. This will radically and adversely affect the flavour and body, and I don't recommend it if there is an alternative.
They also manufacture artificial sweeteners. I would be wary of these on "purist" grounds, and also because of the various health hazards they are continually discovering with whatever artificial sweeteners are currently in vogue.
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