Residual sugars

[fletchy]

Hey everyone, I just joined the forum and have spent a lot of time reading old posts. Great info.! I am currenlty in the second stage of fermentation with my first wine.It is a vitners reserve reisling. Everything is going great so far. (just following directions - easy cheesy) Anyway, we live in the finger lakes region of upstate NY, so we go to a lot of wineries for tastings. My wife likes wines that are more fruity, and I am on the drier side. Recently we tasted several reislings around us and she likes the ones with residual sugars around 2.5 to 3.0 (according to the winery info.) the ones I like are 1.5 to 2.0. My question is, how do I tell what the residual sugars of my wine are; and can I change half the batch in a smaller carboy to suit my wifes tastes and still have half the way I like. Whoo, sorry this is so long I'm just having a great time making wine and am excited!

 

[masta]

Welcome Fletchy,


Residual sugars can be measured fairly accurately by two methods, using hydrometer or a glucose measuring kit (Clinitest used by diabetics and can be purchased at a drug store)


When using the hydrometer method you convert the specific gravity to Brix and the Brix is equal to the percentage of residual sugar.


For example:


A wine with a SG of 1.010 has a Brix of ~2.5 or 2.5% residual sugar


A wine with a SG of 1.006 has a Brix of ~1.5 or 1.5% residual sugar


(I used this link to help with the calculations) http://www.honeycreek.us/conversion.htm


Using a narrow ranged hydrometer (-5 to 5 Brix) will also help with the accuracy.


This isn't perfectly accurate since you are not figuring in the other solids in the wine and some wines that have more fructose than glucose will seem to be sweeter to the taste.


Bottom line is that after your wine is stabilized with metabisulfite and sorbate you can split the batch and sweeten each half separately to your liking.

 

[pkcook]

Welcome Fletchy,
You are among friends in this place!


I made 6 gallons of peach wine from concentrate and didn't want it all the same, so I bottled 5 dry, 10 semi-sweet, and 15 dessert style.After the wine was still and stablized, I transferred to bottling bucket and got my first 5 dry (.750) bottles. I sweetened the rest to semi-sweet, recorded an SG and transferred back to clean, smaller carboy/jugs and let sit for a couple of weeks to ensure no refermenting took place. Repeated the process and bottled 10 semi-sweet and sweetened to dessert style (my wifes liking) and racked back to clean/smaller carboy/jugs and waited again and bottled the final 15. I've done this on a few of my other wines as well and all have beengreat! I found that I'm not very fond of drypeach though

.


Good luck with your wine!

 

[fletchy]

Thanks for the help. I think the fun will be in experimenting with the sweeter batch to get the taste right. I guess the hydrometer is more versatile then i thought.

 

[fletchy]

Now what is the best way to "sweeten" the wine. Some say table sugar is good, others say the wine conditioner (appears to be the easiest) and one website I saw recommends honey to sweeten a reisling! How would I do that? Anyway if anyone has a tip I'd thank them during every glass!