Yet another newbie question. About sweetness and S/G.

The first one. Take a bit and begin addind sugar syrup until you like the ttaste, then repeat with the rest of the wine and mix the rest back in. Be sure to sulfite and sorbate the wine a few days beforehand.

The best way that I have found to sweeten a fruit wine is to make a syrup of 1 pound of sugar to 1 cup water, cook unit the sugar is dissolved, cool and put into a jar. Arrange 3 cups (100 ml) each, label as 0, 1/4, 1/2. Add 1/4 tsp (1.25ml) syrup to cup labeled 1/4, add 1/2 tsp (2.5)syrup to cup labeled 1/2. stir then taste starting with the driest to sweetest. My wife and I taste and then usually fine tune slightly drier that what she liked as it seems to get slightly sweeter the next day when we reevaluate after the syrup is added to the whole batch (you can always add more if it is not sweet enough but can't take it out. I have not had to add more that 2.5 ml per 100 ml wine but started testing with more until I got an idea of how sweet I wanted the wine.

Example: 2.5 ml syrup to 100 ml wine = 25 ml syrup to 1000 ml wine 475 ml syrup to 19,000 ml wine (5 gallons) if my math is correct.

As Droopy stated you need to make sure that you add Potassium Sorbate (1/4 tsp per gallon or per product instructions) and sulfide at least a day ahead ( I have done it at the same time but have been lucky). Good luck

no, it is easier to add it before bottling though...and more consistant.

This is very subjective. If you add sugar to wine before bottling you have to add potassium sorbate to prevent renewed yeast growth and fermentation. Some people can taste the K sorbate. You can sterile filter, and avoid K sorbate, but that's hard for home winemakers to do because everything downstream from the filter has to be sterile also. But, due to the acidity of wine, sugar hydrolyzes to glucose and fructose (invert sugar) in time and I believe the wine has a different and better taste than the same wine sweetened with sugar syrup at the time you open and pour from the bottle. It's a personal preference type thing.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

I agree with most everyone else to sweeten to taste. But I do find that when I sweeten to taste and the age it the sweetness seems to fall off and it ends up less sweet than I expected. I have found that it is better to stabilize and sweeten to taste. Then let it bulk age for another 2 months. Then I adjust the sweetness to taste again and bottle.

Ray

I have just the opposite experience. To me, sweetened wine taste sweeter after aging a bit and it is easy for me to oversweeten just based on taste at the time of sweetening.

Yeah, I find that sweetening with age as well.

It also seems to integrate better as it ages, but this is fairly minor.

In the original post there was thought about using honey, that may be a good idea. My meads are notoriously slow fermenters that look for any reason to stick; that might be a good thing when it comes to sweet wine. I have had sorbated wine restart on it's own even though i had bought the sorbate recently.

Same here, exactly. So it appears this is one more of those subjective things so common in winemaking...

Pp

It is possible that you are not getting the sugar solution completely stirred in?

The stuff is much denser and tend to sink to the bottom of the wine.

The only reason I say that is becasue the first wine I made that happened to me. That stuff was sweeter than koolaid.

I doubt it, I'm getting the same effect even when I sweeten with reserved juice, and in that case, the density is not that bad. Plus if that were the case, only the stuff at bottom should taste sweeter andnot the whole content.

It might just be a question of what mellows first - sugar or acid and/or how we each react differently to the aged blend.

Pp

Well, acid definately mellows out. Ester formation continues as the wine ages (esters are alcohol + acid)

Droopy:

I'm not sure but rereading our posts, it appears to me that we have the same experience with Paul that the wine tastes sweeter after ageing rather than less sweet. You've just given some reasons for that, which is great. Just wanted to clear up that I think we completely agree on these points...

Pp

Nope, we don't completely agree. I do not sweeten often but when I have, I have found that a couple of months after I sweeten, it is not nearly as sweet as I first thought. I have used different methods of sweetening. One was making a sweet sherry. I used sugar and it seemed over sweet when I bottled it. 6 months later, it is only slightly sweet. The next batch was a mead where I sweetened it with honey. Same result. The next batch was a mead that was too sweet and a batch of Niagara that was too dry. I blended them to my wife's taste which was too sweet for me. 2 months later, it only seemed slightly sweet and was very nice.

I do not doubt the observations that you guys are reporting but I can only report mine. It may be something in the procedure or what ever. It does indicate that you should probably adjust in stages and let the wine rest. Maybe add less than you think you need, wait a few months and then check it and make a final adjustment.

Anyway, I am glade I have the results I have rather than those you see. It is easier to add more sugar than take it out. ;o)

Ray

Man, I can't seem to get this thing cleared up :-0 ... What I meant was that I and Droopy agree in our experience with this issue, I didn't mean to imply that everybody should get the same results, If you ask me, that's one of the best things about winemaking that everything is so variable and life never gets boring!

As for the procedure, yes, I've started doing exactly as you suggested

- either in stages or just sweetening a portion to taste and then blending later if necessary. It seems to work better, but since I've started doing this fairly recently, I have to wait how things will change with aging.

Anw, on to some more experiments...

Pp

Ray Calvert wrote:

No offence taken or meant, pp. It was just that your response did fall under my response as well as Droopy's. The best bet would be to just figure that it might not come out the way you expect on the first adjustment so adjust accordingly. I think that is where you were going anyway.

Ray