My SG tonight is at 1.040

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geek

Still lost.....
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I posted on a different thread that I bought my pails and left the cap open Saturday.
I had to "interrupt" fermentation because I needed to mix the juice (merlot, grenache and white risling). Juice came with yeast already.

I mixed my juice last night and tonight is when I used the hydrometer.

All 4 mix-juice pails had a reading of 1.040. All in active fermentation process.

I want my wine not really that much dry but a bit sweet. Based on different posts here I see that sweet wine needs a SG of around 1.000~1.010 (give or take)

Is this a bad or good "start" reading? I know I should've checked the SG Saturday.....but I couldn't. My friend said to stop the fermentation process at around that range.

I did read the sticky about the hydrometer but unsure on the alcohol level....:slp
 
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Geek, I am not exactly sure what you did. Sorry. It seems you bought three pails of juice (Merlot, Grenache and Riesling), removed the tops and let the fermentation start in the pails. Then you mixed the three (?) wines into four pails and took an SG reading which was a consistent 1.040 for all four pails. Did you do an initial reading of each pail? You want the final SG of the finished and sweetened wine to be between 1.000 and 1.010, which would be sweet, but not too sweet. The way to do this is to ferment all the wine to dry (i.e. SG = 0.992-0.995), stabilize the wine with K-meta and K-sorbate and then sweeten with sugar dissolved in wine (preferred) or water to your target SG. When you say "start reading" I assume you are referring to the 1.040. This would indicate that your wine had fermented quite a bit prior to mixing because they probably started out between 1.085 and 1.095, or so. The fact that the SG is now consistent is what one would expect with a blend of the three (?) wines into a homogenous mixture. I doubt that all of the wines were at 1.040 when you mixed them, so some were above that number and some were below it.

If I am all wet on understanding what you are doing or what you are going for, I apologize.
 
thanks Rocky,

I bought 4 pails :
2merlot,
1 grenache
1 white risling

I said "start" reading b/c this is the first time I used the hydrometer.

BTW - the white risling was not really moving but the red juices (merlot and grenache) were very active. I mixed them all up to have one recipe and all 4 buckets are actively fermenting and as mentioned the hydrometer read 1.040 in all 4 pails.

...
 
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