Post by danwathers on May 3, 2018 15:39:53 GMT
Basic Process
The first thing that needs to be understood is that any sugar you add at the beginning of a fermentation should have nothing to do with how sweet your wine will turn out. This sugar is added simply for the wine yeast to turn into alcohol.
The "Potential Alcohol Scale" that is on almost all wine making hydrometers are used to verify that the correct amount of sugar is being added to obtain the alcohol percentage you desire. If the fermentation goes as planned, the wine will be dry (without sugar) or close to dry when done fermenting, but more importantly, at the specific alcohol level you intended.
Sweetening can then be added to the wine to taste. A stabilizer such as Potassium Sorbate should also be added at this time to inhibit any re-fermenting that the new sugars may unintentionally feed. By adding your beginning sugar in this way and then sweetening later on, you gain complete control over both the wine's sweetness and its final alcohol level.
Now granted, if you add more sugar to the fermentation than the wine yeast can handle, the remaining sugars will contribute toward the wine's sweetness. This would be alright except that quite often the wine ends up too sweet for most peoples taste with no way of correcting it. Secondly, if a stabilizer is not added to wines prepared in this way, they may decide to ferment again, sometimes even several months after being bottled. This can be an equation for a big mess.
The highest level of alcohol I would ever depend on obtaining from the initial sugars added to a fermentation is 13%, and that's assuming you have a healthy, vigorous fermentation. Shooting for alcohol levels that are beyond this is possible, but always in question.
So as you might start to see, piling on the sugar at the beginning of fermentation, in reality, gives you little control over how sweet the wine is actually going to be.
The first thing that needs to be understood is that any sugar you add at the beginning of a fermentation should have nothing to do with how sweet your wine will turn out. This sugar is added simply for the wine yeast to turn into alcohol.
The "Potential Alcohol Scale" that is on almost all wine making hydrometers are used to verify that the correct amount of sugar is being added to obtain the alcohol percentage you desire. If the fermentation goes as planned, the wine will be dry (without sugar) or close to dry when done fermenting, but more importantly, at the specific alcohol level you intended.
Sweetening can then be added to the wine to taste. A stabilizer such as Potassium Sorbate should also be added at this time to inhibit any re-fermenting that the new sugars may unintentionally feed. By adding your beginning sugar in this way and then sweetening later on, you gain complete control over both the wine's sweetness and its final alcohol level.
Now granted, if you add more sugar to the fermentation than the wine yeast can handle, the remaining sugars will contribute toward the wine's sweetness. This would be alright except that quite often the wine ends up too sweet for most peoples taste with no way of correcting it. Secondly, if a stabilizer is not added to wines prepared in this way, they may decide to ferment again, sometimes even several months after being bottled. This can be an equation for a big mess.
The highest level of alcohol I would ever depend on obtaining from the initial sugars added to a fermentation is 13%, and that's assuming you have a healthy, vigorous fermentation. Shooting for alcohol levels that are beyond this is possible, but always in question.
So as you might start to see, piling on the sugar at the beginning of fermentation, in reality, gives you little control over how sweet the wine is actually going to be.