Sweetening 100% Strawberry

It sounds like all you are trying to do is balance it out, you can add sugar until the tartness is mellowed and it not taste sweet in my experience. The predominant acid in Strawberries is citric, I doubt it will mellow over time, at least not from cold stabilization.

Strawberry tastes great a little sweet by the way. (Not Boones Farm sweet, just a little...) :o) You could try some trials to figure out where to stop.

I make a lot of northern white from grapes and the acid is usually pretty out of control, especially when it's a rainy season. I get rid of as much acid as possible, shooting for a range of 7 -8 grams/liter with a pH under 3.6.

The higher the acid the more sugar I need to balance it in the end. It can be set up so that most people would not know there is any sugar, they are pleasantly balanced.

I have a high alcohol Riesling right now that everyone likes and thinks is a little sweet. It's bone dry, less than 0.2% RS. The alcohol makes it taste sweet.

Just some thoughts.

Joe

JJ -

I made a 100% strawberry in 2003. It is now in the bottle for one year. I too was shooting for as close to dry as the wine would allow. This turned out to be 3.8% RS or about 1.010 on the hydrometer. It is only slightly sweet, which as Joe points out does bring out the flavor of strawberry.

The wine had just a tad of harshness that did take the full year to soften. It is quite a lovely wine and I enjoy it (cold) with acidy 'red' foods like pasta w/marinara, pizza, or even hamburgers.

Roger Quinta do Placer

If you only like dry wines I would not reccomend making strawberry. It NEEDS residual sugar and can not be realistically palatable as a dry wine. It would taste like eating a fresh strawberry that has no sweetness.

Sweetening is about the easiest way to ballance out a acidic fruit wine. If it is very acidic, you may need to do a lot of sweetening. As a side benifit, sweetening will also bring out the original flavor of the fruit used. So your strawberry will probably be far more strawberry-ie.

As a comment, I got a bottle of very strong strawberry wine made from 100% juice some time back. It was nicely ballanced but was far too sweet for my taste. What to do with it? I had a brain storm and mixed it 2/3's wine with 1/3 cream. Strawberries and cream. It was delighful as a dessert beverage. If you find you need to sweeten it more than you want, this would definately be something I would suggest you try.

Ray

Thanks to all for the help. It sounds as if it is a good idea to sweeten it a bit. I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks again.