Sugar Q.

This will be my 1st batch of wine. I am using blackberry concentrate. I do not like sweet wine. Can I decrease the heavy sugar content to make a less sweet wine? Thanks.

Sharona said:

This will be my 1st batch of wine. I am using blackberry concentrate. I do not like sweet wine. Can I decrease the heavy sugar content to make a less sweet wine? Thanks.

Click to expand...

The amount of sugar you start with determines the amount of alcohol you end up with, as long as there isn't so much that the yeast die of alcohol toxicity before they can finish their job. Start off with a hydrometer reading of no more than 1.100 or a Brix reading of no more than 24, use EC 1118 yeast and you'll not have that problem, all sugar will be gone.

If you don't want sweet wine, don't add sugar after fermentation has ended.

Thanks John. That helps a lot.

Sharona said:

Thanks John. That helps a lot.

Click to expand...

You are welcome. There's a lot more than the direct answer I posted, if you have any other problems or questions, there's a ton of folks here who can help guide you down a solid path.

If you'd like, you can post your recipe and the process you plan to use and get some comments, do's and don'ts, before you pitch your yeast.

Good luck!!!!!!!!

Sharona said:

This will be my 1st batch of wine. I am using blackberry concentrate. I do not like sweet wine. Can I decrease the heavy sugar content to make a less sweet wine? Thanks.

Click to expand...

@Sharona,

Welcome to the hobby!

You'll add yeast, which will essentially eat all the sugar until there's none left, and creating alcohol in the process. That will mean a reading on your hydrometer of around 0.990, which is referred to as "dry" for it's lack of sugar. At that point, add potassium metabisulfite to the batch (1/4 teaspoon for 6 gallons); this is the stabilizing phase.

As long as you ferment all the way to dry, your wine will not be sweet. To get sweet wine, one has to stabilize with potassium metabisulfite and also add potassium sorbate, then add sugar of some kind to back-sweeten.

If you don't add those two chemicals, the yeast will just keep fermenting whatever sugar you add, making more alcohol, up to the limit the yeast can tolerate, which is most often around 18% alcohol.

Be sure you have a hydrometer before you start the batch, as that is a critical tool. Most folks take a starting gravity reading prior to adding the yeast.

Best of luck, feel free to ask questions along the way.

heatherd said:

Be sure you have a hydrometer before you start the batch, as that is a critical tool.

Click to expand...

@Sharona
Best advice you will read.

Blackberries will make a great wine - very dry when the fermentation is completed. Recommend that you take a small sample and try a very little bit of backsweetening to see how that affects the flavor for you. You can stop well short of being a sweet wine or even semi-sweet.

Sometimes the blackberry flavor hides until there is just a little sweetening done to bring it out. But it doesn't have to become a sweet wine to do that. My first batch was really pretty dry - to the point of parching my tongue. I added a little white grape concentrate to make it a semi-sweet wine. The aroma of the white grape was fantastic but the flavor was ALL blackberry. I actually over shot my goal of semi-dry but everyone that tried it loved it.

As the experienced heads have said - Just let it ferment all the way to .990 and you will have that dry wine you want.

Is that concentrate from wild blackberries or do you know?