SG and alcohol

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eazzo

Junior
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can someone please tell me if the alcohol level can be determined without knowing the initial SG as I started a few months ago making my own wine and in the first experiments I had no hydrometer but now I realized that I needed to take the SG in the beginning .....
 
Drink a whole bottle. If you get drunk then you have to much alcohol. LOL
 
You can do it, but is it worth the trouble? If the wine is dry, you can use a vinometer which is a cheap tool (although generally considered worthlessly unreliable). There are also techniques that have you boil down a sample.
 
Drink a whole bottle. If you get drunk then you have to much alcohol. LOL

LOL that being said mine has got way to much because half a bottle of mine will get most people drunk....:d
 
If you feel the alcohol content is too low, dump in a bottle of Everclear before bottling.
 
If you give the recipe, someone will probably figure it out reasonably close for you.

Debbie
 
Try this....

Take a measured amount of wine and slowly heat it to just before the boiling point (say 210 degrees f). Remove the wine and measure the remaining volume.

Alcohol boils at a much lower temerature than water. By heating the wine, the alcohol will be the first thing to go.

You can assume that the missing volume is mostly alcohol. You alcohol percentage is therfore...

amount missing / amount you started with * 100.

Of course, this method is not exactly acurate, but will at least give you a rough idea of the APV.
 
JohnT, that seems simpler than the "Honeyman" method that I posted. One could actually keep the temperature just under 200 F. The water would not boil and the alcohol would start to boil off at about 173 F. Worth a try.
 

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