# How Sweet Do You Like Your SP



## fsa46 (Oct 27, 2019)

What SG do you prefer after back sweetening your finished Skeeter Pee ? Most of my wines are back sweetened to SG 1.014 and some to SG 1.02 which is my plan for the SP.

Sure would like to hear your preferences. Thanks


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## Rice_Guy (Oct 27, 2019)

There is a general trend which I have seen, TA and gravity of finished wine follows a straight line. _(yes there are a lot of outliers, , we each have different flavor goals)_




fsa46 said:


> What SG do you prefer after back sweetening your finished Skeeter Pee ? Most of my wines are back sweetened to SG 1.014 and some to SG 1.02 which is my plan for the SP.
> 
> Sure would like to hear your preferences. Thanks


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## fsa46 (Oct 28, 2019)

I was hoping for a better response from those that have made this.


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## Jal5 (Oct 28, 2019)

Mine is off dry around 1.02 IIRC. HAVE MADE TWO 5g batches. Love it. The DB mixed frozen fruit type.


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## cmason1957 (Oct 28, 2019)

I follow the directions from the skeeter pee site and add 6 cups of sugar (or whatever it says). I haven't ever measured what the resulting sg is. In a full disclosure, I almost never drink it. To sweet for me, but I have lots of folks that clamor for it fairly often, it is cheap to make, so I make it for them.


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## jgmillr1 (Oct 31, 2019)

fsa46 said:


> What SG do you prefer after back sweetening your finished Skeeter Pee



I shoot for about 10% sugar. As @Rice_Guy implied, the higher the TA (more acidity), the sweeter it is usually made for balance.


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## crabjoe (Nov 1, 2019)

jgmillr1 said:


> I shoot for about 10% sugar. As @Rice_Guy implied, the higher the TA (more acidity), the sweeter it is usually made for balance.



How are you measuring sugar or are you just fermenting to dry then adding back 10% by volume?

For example.. if you have a 100 gallons of SP that's fermented dry, you add 10 gallons of sugar? Or possible just adding sugar till you hit 10 brix on a refractometer?


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## jgmillr1 (Nov 2, 2019)

I go by volume of the liquid as a guide for the sugar. For 100gal of liquid (378L), 10% would be 37.8kg or 83lbs of sugar. Once it is sufficiently dissolved then the refractometer should read about 10brix higher. 

I don't keep adding sugar to hit a brix value. This burned me once before because I had not mixed in the sugar well enough and ended up adding more sugar than I wanted.

Of course, the sugar addition itself adds to the liquid volume but it is close enough.


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## crabjoe (Nov 14, 2019)

jgmillr1 said:


> I go by volume of the liquid as a guide for the sugar. For 100gal of liquid (378L), 10% would be 37.8kg or 83lbs of sugar. Once it is sufficiently dissolved then the refractometer should read about 10brix higher.
> 
> I don't keep adding sugar to hit a brix value. This burned me once before because I had not mixed in the sugar well enough and ended up adding more sugar than I wanted.
> 
> Of course, the sugar addition itself adds to the liquid volume but it is close enough.



Never used the metric system so I need some help with this. I'm confused how volume is the same as weight.. Are you saying 378 liters actually equals 378 kg or is this just a formula you use that works for you, when it comes to back sweetening SP?


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## Johnd (Nov 14, 2019)

crabjoe said:


> Never used the metric system so I need some help with this. I'm confused how volume is the same as weight.. Are you saying 378 liters actually equals 378 kg or is this just a formula you use that works for you, when it comes to back sweetening SP?



That's the beauty of the metric system, 378 liters of water does weigh 378 kg. It makes the conversion between units super easy, you just gotta get the US system out of your head. Having fooled with wine for long enough, nearly all of my measurements are metric, though you do need to learn to convert back and forth to gallons, pounds, etc. when you are using additives that are measured as such. 

For instance, with VP41 malolactic bacteria, instructions are to rehydrate the bacteria in 20 times its weight in water, the small packet contains 2.5 g, the math is easy. 2.5 g X 20 = 50 g of water. 50 g of water is 50 ml of water, super simple.


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## jgmillr1 (Nov 14, 2019)

crabjoe said:


> Are you saying 378 liters actually equals 378 kg



Yes, for practical purposes. It assumes the specific gravity is exactly 1.00. The SG of dry wine is about 0.99, so rounding to 1.00 does not introduce significant error.


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## crabjoe (Nov 14, 2019)

jgmillr1 said:


> Yes, for practical purposes. It assumes the specific gravity is exactly 1.00. The SG of dry wine is about 0.99, so rounding to 1.00 does not introduce significant error.



Let me see if my math is straight because to me, it seems like you're adding a lot of sugar to back sweeten. Since the original SP recipe is for 5 gallons, that's what I'm going to based this on...

5 gallons = 18.9l
18.9l = 18.9kg
10% of 18.9 = 1.89kg of sugar.
1.89kg = 4.17lb of sugar
4.17lb = 9.36 cups (assumption being 2.25cups = 1 lb).

Based on my math, it seems you're adding about 50% more sugar than what the original recipe calls for.. If I'm right, it really surprises me that the general public likes their wine so sweet.


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## jgmillr1 (Nov 14, 2019)

crabjoe said:


> it seems you're adding about 50% more sugar than what the original recipe calls for.. If I'm right, it really surprises me that the general public likes their wine so sweet.



I don't follow the original recipe and the wine ends up with a fairly stout TA of 12-13g/L. So it can tolerate a fair amount of sugar without seemingly overly sweet. And somewhat surprisingly, the wine is also a hit with our dry wine drinkers.


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