How much sugar

[farmhorse62]

How much sugar per gallon of crushed grape juice is the rule of thumb? I fermented my crushed muscadine grapes for 9 days in a bucket. Strained the juice out of the pulp and seeds and put in 5 gallon carboy. Had about 3 gallons of juice and I added 1 gallon of distilled water. Added 10 lbs of sugar and a pack of yeast. So I added 10 lbs of sugar to 4 gallons of liquid. Is that enough??

 

[Rice_Guy]

Welcome to wine making talk! Do you have a hydrometer? ,,, any readings?

The rule of thumb is if you are adding water, you add heated (melted in) and then cooled sugar water which has roughly 25 to 27% sugar in it. For what you did if you added a gallon of water it would require 2.28 pound sugar +/-, and wind up producing 1.34 gallon of volume (12% alcohol goal). We assume that grapes get picked at this sugar ratio, so we are only matching what was “natural” for grape juice.
We assume there are natural yeast on the muscadine so after nine days in a bucket at room temperature that juice will have fermented and be at 11% or 12% alcohol already, unless it was refrigerated.

you will have some strong hooch.

 

[farmhorse62]

Welcome to wine making talk! Do you have a hydrometer? ,,, any readings?

The rule of thumb is if you are adding water, you add heated (melted in) and then cooled sugar water which has roughly 25 to 27% sugar in it. For what you did if you added a gallon of water it would require 2.28 pound sugar +/-, and wind up producing 1.34 gallon of volume (12% alcohol goal). We assume that grapes get picked at this sugar ratio, so we are only matching what was “natural” for grape juice.
We assume there are natural yeast on the muscadine so after nine days in a bucket at room temperature that juice will have fermented and be at 11% or 12% alcohol already, unless it was refrigerated.

you will have some strong hooch.

Thanks. Yes it was fermented in a warm room and it was smelling high! Wife wanted it out of the house! Lol! I stirred it everyday while fermenting. I had found a recipe for making wine that called for 3 lbs sugar per gallon of liquid. I didn’t know to heat it up, I just poured it in the carboy and stirred up real good. Am I supposed to stir everyday for a while in the carboy on 2nd fermentation? I do have a hydrometer and will get reading tonight and post. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Johnd]

How much sugar per gallon of crushed grape juice is the rule of thumb? I fermented my crushed muscadine grapes for 9 days in a bucket. Strained the juice out of the pulp and seeds and put in 5 gallon carboy. Had about 3 gallons of juice and I added 1 gallon of distilled water. Added 10 lbs of sugar and a pack of yeast. So I added 10 lbs of sugar to 4 gallons of liquid. Is that enough??

I ran some numbers for you on FermCalc, with the assumption that your BRIX for the muscadines was 17, which seemed to be about average for muscadines when I looked them up. Given that, you are in the following range:

3 Gallons of juice @ 17 BRIX + 1 gallon of water + 10 pounds of sugar yields a must of 4.75 gallons with a BRIX of 32.276, or SG of 1.14. This concoction, if it fermented dry to SG .990, would yield a wine with an ABV of 20.5%, well above the alcohol tolerance of most yeasts.

Whether the juice fermented prior to adding the sugar / water doesn't make a difference in the calculation of the ultimate BRIX. If your yeast was something like EC-1118 with an alcohol tolerance of 18%, you'd end up with a pretty high alcohol content wine with some residual sweetness.

Typically, what we do to produce a wine with a predetermined ABV%, is measure the BRIX of the fruit, calculate and add the amount of water (if any) and sugar to be added to get to the starting BRIX we desire to produce the alcohol we want. After the wine is fermented dry, it is stabilized (with sulfite and sorbate) to prevent refermentation, then sugar is added to taste. There's not a rule of thumb, it depends upon how much sugar is already in the fruit that you are using, and how much (if any) water is added to the must. Hope this helps..................

 

[farmhorse62]

I ran some numbers for you on FermCalc, with the assumption that your BRIX for the muscadines was 17, which seemed to be about average for muscadines when I looked them up. Given that, you are in the following range:

3 Gallons of juice @ 17 BRIX + 1 gallon of water + 10 pounds of sugar yields a must of 4.75 gallons with a BRIX of 32.276, or SG of 1.14. This concoction, if it fermented dry to SG .990, would yield a wine with an ABV of 20.5%, well above the alcohol tolerance of most yeasts.

Whether the juice fermented prior to adding the sugar / water doesn't make a difference in the calculation of the ultimate BRIX. If your yeast was something like EC-1118 with an alcohol tolerance of 18%, you'd end up with a pretty high alcohol content wine with some residual sweetness.

Typically, what we do to produce a wine with a predetermined ABV%, is measure the BRIX of the fruit, calculate and add the amount of water (if any) and sugar to be added to get to the starting BRIX we desire to produce the alcohol we want. After the wine is fermented dry, it is stabilized (with sulfite and sorbate) to prevent refermentation, then sugar is added to taste. There's not a rule of thumb, it depends upon how much sugar is already in the fruit that you are using, and how much (if any) water is added to the must. Hope this helps..................

Thank you very much for the advice! I have made a couple batches of wine in the past by just putting juice in carboy and adding yeast and sugar and not touching it for 3-4 months. Got lucky on one and it turned out ok, not so much on the other one. I am trying to learn now the proper scientific way to make wine and I really do appreciate the help and advice that I am getting. I don’t like a dry wine at all. I like a little sweetness. Not too sweet. I inherited an enormous muscadine vine from my mother. It produces a lot of grapes every year. My mother passed away last Dec and I feel close to my mother when I am making this wine because she loved the outdoors and fruit trees and nature so much. She had apple trees, plum trees, peach trees, fig Bush, muscadine, scuppernongs, etc, and now I have all these. My mother would be upset I know if I didn’t keep up the fruit trees and vines and use the fruit that they bear and I wouldn’t want to disappoint my mother.

 

[farmhorse62]

Thank you very much for the advice! I have made a couple batches of wine in the past by just putting juice in carboy and adding yeast and sugar and not touching it for 3-4 months. Got lucky on one and it turned out ok, not so much on the other one. I am trying to learn now the proper scientific way to make wine and I really do appreciate the help and advice that I am getting. I don’t like a dry wine at all. I like a little sweetness. Not too sweet. I inherited an enormous muscadine vine from my mother. It produces a lot of grapes every year. My mother passed away last Dec and I feel close to my mother when I am making this wine because she loved the outdoors and fruit trees and nature so much. She had apple trees, plum trees, peach trees, fig Bush, muscadine, scuppernongs, etc, and now I have all these. My mother would be upset I know if I didn’t keep up the fruit trees and vines and use the fruit that they bear and I wouldn’t want to disappoint my mother.

My SG is at 1.090. Sugar percentage is 20%. Alcohol potential is13%.