High final gravity... DRY!?

[xzarfna]

Hey everyone!
I just came back from a 2 week visit to my parents to my strawberry jam wine. It's had some ups and downs and troubles with online calculators but it's finally ready to bottle.
I took a sample and taste tested it, rather dry.

Here's the thing, the hydrometer reads 1.020...

Here's the problem I had with it:
I started off putting the amount of sugar in the jam into brewtarget, which have me a estimated abv of around 13% - perfect.
I went along with the process, took my 6 jars of jam, added pectolase to them at the ideal temp, and left the jam overnight. I then boiled the jam, let it cool and put it in a DJ along with a sachet of lalvin champagne yeast and another spoon of pectolase.
Then the fermentation stuck.. It got to 1.050 from a very high SG of over 1.100. Didn't move for days. I added the only thing I had in the house, a sachet of bread yeast and hoped for the best. I came back to find a very clear (all things considered) dj of wine. I later found that due to the program's way of calculating alcohol conversion and yeast attenuation, that the wine was more likely to get around 17% if it went dry.

So back to the topic - how the hell can this batch taste nice, and taste dry, when the hydrometer reads a measure of 1.020!?

Could it be leftover proteins such as pectin still in the wine, or other fruit stuff from the jam? I'm very confused!

 

[djrockinsteve]

Most yeasts can't survive that high an alcohol %. Don't know why it tastes dry at 1.020

 

[Arne]

I will bet the high alcohol is covering up the sweet taste. Just a guess, Arne.

 

[JohnT]

Did calibrate your hydrometer?

Perhaps the pectin in the jam made the wine a little heavier??

A champagne yeast is bred to survive higher alcohol environments. Bread yeast, on the other hand, is not. I do not know for sure if the bread yeast did you any good.

A sg of 1.02 translates to about 5% residual sugar. Unless you have no pallet, at that level you would definitely be able to taste the sugar regardless of the amount of acid or alcohol.

 

[seth8530]

Unless the density is getting thrown off by pectin from the jamification process, it is definitely not dry at 1.020. It could taste a little rough from being young. But, dry is not likely the word I would use to describe it.

 

[xzarfna]

I think the pectin may have something to do with it. When i took my initial hydrometer reading, it was actually a fair bit higher than the amount of sugar in the jam should have caused it to go to, not quite 20 marks more, but certainly at least 10.

 

[Tom_S]

Yeah, I'm going to guess the pectin is throwing the SG off a bit, too. You should taste the sweetness at 1.020.