# back sweetening using Alcohol sugar



## shanek17 (Apr 6, 2012)

hey fellow wine makers, I have a topic id love to discuss here, its about alcohol sugars. Now iv only recently heard about it and noticed very few sources talk about it, and the general consesus seems to be that everyone uses regular sugars and therefore has to add more chemicals to battle the extra sugar. Why is this ? Is alcohol sugar just not well known ? 

For those of you that dont know about it, basically alcohol sugars come in different varieties such as the well known Stevia and the kind Im going to use called Xylitol. Now these are not technically sugar they are alcohol sugars, so the yeast cant feed on them, which to me sounds like their perfect for back sweetening. Also these 2 kind i mentioned are a natural product there not that fake artificial stuff like Splenda. 

Anyways im interested if anyone has had experience using these, my first wine batches are nearly complete , i got apple wine and red grape wine!


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## hvac36 (Apr 6, 2012)

Xylitol has approximately the same sweetness as sugar. Xylitol provides the greatest cooling effect of any of the sugar alcohols. Xylitol has a pronounced mint flavor. These characteristics make xylitol the polyol of choice for sugar-free chewing gums, candies and chewable vitamins.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of xylitol in foods for special dietary purposes. The main application is foods formulated to meet the dietary needs of diabetics.

Not sure if I would want my wine to take on a mint flavor..


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## shanek17 (Apr 6, 2012)

Xylitol has a cool sugar flavour to it, but I dont know if I would relate it to mint. I see how they resemble it to the mint because its got that cooling sense when it touches the tongue. Its kind of hard to describe probably best to be tried for yourself. but all I know is it tastes great and am excited to try it out for sweetening.

But anyways I first heard about it from this website , and the author did not mention any off flavours in her apple cider or any reference to mint flavour. shes using the same brand of xylitol that i have. Maybe there are different types of xylitol which give different results? 

http://makinghardcider.com/rack-bottle.html

just scroll down half the page and youll see her section on sweetening.


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## JordanPond (Apr 7, 2012)

I make a hard cider that I like to bottle carbonate and want a sweet finish, not dry. Before bottling a back sweeten with Ideal brown, one of the alcohol sugar versions available at Meijers. at bottle time I add an appropriate among of dark brown sugar as priming sugar. This way the yeast ferments the real sugar and does not touch the artificial sugar. No mint tast in the hard cider and people have been very happy with it. By volume Ideal measures like sugar. By weight you have to use a lot less. 

When I back sweeten wine I have stayed with regular sugar. You could always do some bench trials.


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