Back Sweetening with Non-Fermentable Sweeteners

Pumpkinman · Nov 6, 2012

I've been experimenting with Back Sweetening with Non-Fermentable Sweeteners, Splenda has been the best in my opinion, no off tastes or lingering tastes.
has anyone tried to back sweeten with any Non-Fermentable Sweeteners, and what was your opinion?
I promised my wife that I would make a sweeter wine for her and her friends.
I think that I am going to sweeten a batch of wine that I have going through MLF this way, after the MLF is finished and I rack over to a new carboy for bulk aging.
Right now I cannot see any negative effects, but I am open to discussion.

Tom

Julie · Nov 6, 2012

Hi Tom,

I actually thought about this as well. I know there were a couple of members who added the sweetener when they opened the bottle instead of adding and bottling.

Did you bychance try any with Truvia?

BobF · Nov 6, 2012

I haven't tried any and don't know much about anything anyone else might have tried.

I am curious about long term stability though. For example, sucrose breaks down into glucose and fructose over a period of about 3 mos when added to wine.

I wonder what longer term changes might take place with non-fermentable sugars.

Maybe one of our resident chemists will chime in with some insight.

Pumpkinman · Nov 6, 2012

Julie, No, but I will today, my biggest fear is off taste or residual taste that some artificial sweeteners can leave in your mouth.
Splenda didn't taste like I was drinking a Lollipop either, I don't want to alter the mouth feel of the wine.

Truvia is supposed to be the best of the stevia-based sweeteners, made by a refining process to extract rebiana from the stevia leaf. I am curious to see how the other ingredients will taste, it contains other ingredients besides rebiana, including erythritol (a sugar alcohol) and “natural flavors”,

Another Sugar alcohol non fermentable sweetener is Xylitol, although I don't know much about it, I've seen that it has been used by beer brewers and mead makers here and there

I'll pick up truvia today and try it out and report back.

Tom

deboard · Nov 6, 2012

This has come up before, I believe the general consensus is that if you want to use artificial sweeteners, add them at drinking time to a glass or bottle, not in the carboy.

Pumpkinman · Nov 6, 2012

I'm curious about that, beer brewer appear to use non fermentable sweeteners such as Spenda quite often.
What have the test results been like? Off tastes or something like that?

Thanks,
Tom

deboard · Nov 7, 2012

This thread seems to have a lot of information:
http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f6/sweetening-stevia-21627/

I didn't read it all, but it seems to be more on the side of it's ok for certain types. I can't find the older thread I based my reply on, but I think the reasons were based on aspartame mainly and some healthy caution.

Pumpkinman · Nov 7, 2012

Great Info! Very interesting!

I think that I will perform a test run on Spenda, I've tasted it in a glassful or two...or three, and it was fine, what I haven't done is add it to two or three bottles and let them age a few months, apparently 3 or 4 months may tell the tale if it is going to breakdown and ferment.
My wines are much too young to even consider this at this point. If anyone has wine that is ready and they are willing to test this for the community, that would be great! I would be willing to fund the bulk Splenda cost for them.

The following is a summary from the original post by SB Ranch:

-Sucralose: (Sold as: Splenda)
Again, sucralose is sold just like aspartame or saccharin, in little packets with maltodextrin and fermentable dextrose or in bulk from with only maltodextrin. So, stay away from the packets and stick to the bulk form.

Sucralose has advantages over asparetame and saccharin and I would consider it to be a superior product for sweetening wine than either of them.
Sucralose is made from sugar that has been put through a process that alters its molecular structure in a way that makes it approximately 600 times sweeter than real sugar and impossible to be metabolized by humans or fermented by yeast.

It taste remarkably close to sugar and it brings out the fruitiness in the same way real sugar does. It is very stable and will not lose its sweetness when put in acidic condition such as wine.

Because sucralose is made from real sugar there has been some concern about the possibility of it being fermented by yeast.
This is not an issue.
Sucralose has proven itself to be very stable even over time and is no more likely to ferment than asparetame or saccharin.

Stevia: (Sold as: Steevia, Sweetvia)
This is a sweetener that comes from a source that might be considered slightly more natural.
It is an extract from the stevia rebaudiana plant found in South America, mostly in Paraguay and Brazil. It can be found in health food stores in both powdered and liquid extract form.

The reason I bring up this sweetener is more for warning than anything else.
While stevia will not ferment in its sold form, when put in acidic conditions such as wine it will break down into a fermentable form.
Usually at about 2 months a fermentation can be noticed in wines sweetened with stevia at bottling time.

If you plan on drinking your wine within a month or so, you might be able to get away with using stevia, but we would recommend against this process, especially when such other options are available.

Others issues with stevia are if too much is used it can add an anise to licorice type flavor to the wine, and in extreme cases a metallic flavor can be present.
These flavors also become more predominant as the sweetness of the stevia is fermented away.
Also, as the stevia breaks down into a fermentable sugar it will take the polish off a wine's clarity, causing a brilliant lookingwine to become more dull in appearance.

Pumpkinman · Nov 9, 2012

Ok, How about Lactose? It is non fermenting, the only problem that I can see is for folks that are lactose intolerant...plus it is supposedly 1/5 as sweet as sugar?
I don't have any experience with it, but I'll pick some up next time I'm at the LHBS and test it out.
Tom

chitownwine · Nov 9, 2012

I have sweetened most my skeeter at bottling with truvia. It is sweeter than natural sugar so don't need nearly as much. Opened bottle recently after several months tasted like sweeter pee. No off flavors. My family likes the skeeter unsweetened actually with just a Swist of lime so haven't used in last few batches.

Pumpkinman · Nov 9, 2012

I think it really boils down to personal taste, we ran another test with Splenda and Truvia this time, out of 5 people, 4 of them preferred the Splenda.
It seems like Splenda masked any hint of tart better, at least for our tastes.

Tom

Back Sweetening with Non-Fermentable Sweeteners

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