Dandelion wine - backsweetening?

Stressbaby · Nov 17, 2013

I've searched the interwebz and haven't found a consensus or general practice...

What have people found to be successful in terms of backsweetening dandelion wine?

Arne · Nov 18, 2013

Have you tried drawing a glass and adding a bit of sugar? Not enough, add some more, too much start again and not quite so much. Get the s.g. from where you like the taste and you can use that to do the rest of the batch. Or you can just add to the glass when you pour it out of the bottle. Arne.

DoctorCAD · Nov 18, 2013

Thats almost like asking which color is the best on a Harley (black, of course).

Everyones opinion will be different. Me personally...ZERO sugar in any of my wines. Dry...Sahara dry...dust bowl dry...inside the Great Pyrimids dry...well, you get the picture

Stressbaby · Nov 18, 2013

Thanks Arne and DrCAD.
Normally I do exactly what Arne suggests, and generally I end up with wines with somewhere between 0-75g of sugar/gallon. The SG varies, but I guess normally >= 1.005. However, you hear people talk about the transformation of dandelion wine while aging. I didn't think I could trust the "taste test" with this wine so I was looking for guidance.

BernardSmith · Nov 18, 2013

My local LHBS ran a dandelion wine competition recently. The owner was kind enough to invite me to taste the two winning wines after the winners were announced and the drier wine (turned out to be the winner) was significantly more full of flavor than the wine that was sweeter and which came in second place. Seemed to me that as far as dandelion wine goes there was no need for any sweetness to bring out the flavors and in fact IMO the sweetness (and it could not have been more than 1.005 or thereabouts) swamped some of the flavors. That said, I don't think the winning wine was dry as dust. If I had to guess I would say that it could not have had a gravity of more than about 1.000