adding sugar in increments

[duffrecords]

Many of Jack Keller's fruit wine recipes call for mixing half of the sugar during the must preparation and then adding the remaining sugar several days later. What effect does this accomplish and how does one recalculate the specific gravity once additional sugar has been added? Do I add the differences of each hydrometer reading or is it more complicated than that? One of the most inevitable questions people ask me about my wines is "What's the ABV?" so I want to know the right answer.

 

[GreginND]

I'm not sure what the specific recipe you are reading calls for. But many people feed sugar in lots for a wine that will end up sweeter so they don't have to start the fermentation with a gravity that might be too high for the yeast.

One method to get a sweet wine without sorbate to stabilize it is to keep feeding sugar to the wine until the alcohol level overcomes the yeast.

As for calculating the alcohol just adding the differences before and after addition of more sugar to get, in the end, the total change in gravity is close enough for our purposes.

 

[mmadmikes1]

I add sugar(step feeding) to entice the yeast to exceed it normal tolerance for alcohol. Jack recipes seem to go light on fruit and heavy on the ABV. Step feed will not make a sweeter wine unless you exceed the tolerance of the yeast. I max out yeasts so I dont have to add sorbate and K meta to control refermentation

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

Duff, easy way to step feed is to start out at a target OG like 1.100, wait until the gravity drops to 1.01and feed back enough sugar to raise it to 1.02, wait until the gravity goes back down to 1.01 and add enough to raise it back to 1.02. If you add in small steps its easier for the yeast to eat it all and you dont accidentally add to much, stop the yeast and get stuck with a wine that is too sweet. Then clear, KM and sorbate if there is any sugar left because you have selected for the toughest yeast and with any sugar left over then can restart. Then you just add up all the additions to determine your ABV, if you add dry sugar it will be pretty close, if you add syrup it wont be as close because of the dilution effect. WVMJ

Many of Jack Keller's fruit wine recipes call for mixing half of the sugar during the must preparation and then adding the remaining sugar several days later. What effect does this accomplish and how does one recalculate the specific gravity once additional sugar has been added? Do I add the differences of each hydrometer reading or is it more complicated than that? One of the most inevitable questions people ask me about my wines is "What's the ABV?" so I want to know the right answer.