I've searched the topic but do not understand what is happening.
I'm making a plum wine now, I have 30 lbs of pitted plums, frozen, thawed, topped with 3 gallons of boiling water with 10 lbs sugar dissolved. This is so far going like my first wine (blackberry) that the fruit is in a sack, I add sugar and water and all the little addatives, get out the hydrometer, and the SG is way over 1.100. ( between 1.120 and 1.150). The thing is I'm following jack kellers recipe that says 6lbs of fruit/gal, I'm just under, but between his two recipes you can use as little as 9lbs sugar to 20 lbs sugar in 6 gallon batch. I'm at 10 lbs and my readings are high. Everywhere I read on this forum says to add the ingredients and check SG to be close to 1.090. In my blackberry wine I added water to correct it, but after its completely fermented, using a vinometer it's only 10abv, based on SG it should be 14%abv.
So I'm unsure how to move forward. I haven't added the as much sugar to my plum must as I'm supposed to per the recipe, but with all the fruit in there I'm at the 6 gallon mark, I don't want to add any more water. Is there a lot of water that comes out of the fruit? What am I missing here? I'm trying to just slap this together by a recipe, but the SG is not adding up?
I'm making a plum wine now, I have 30 lbs of pitted plums, frozen, thawed, topped with 3 gallons of boiling water with 10 lbs sugar dissolved. This is so far going like my first wine (blackberry) that the fruit is in a sack, I add sugar and water and all the little addatives, get out the hydrometer, and the SG is way over 1.100. ( between 1.120 and 1.150). The thing is I'm following jack kellers recipe that says 6lbs of fruit/gal, I'm just under, but between his two recipes you can use as little as 9lbs sugar to 20 lbs sugar in 6 gallon batch. I'm at 10 lbs and my readings are high. Everywhere I read on this forum says to add the ingredients and check SG to be close to 1.090. In my blackberry wine I added water to correct it, but after its completely fermented, using a vinometer it's only 10abv, based on SG it should be 14%abv.
So I'm unsure how to move forward. I haven't added the as much sugar to my plum must as I'm supposed to per the recipe, but with all the fruit in there I'm at the 6 gallon mark, I don't want to add any more water. Is there a lot of water that comes out of the fruit? What am I missing here? I'm trying to just slap this together by a recipe, but the SG is not adding up?
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