My calculations were wrong...added more sugar than I normally do as a test

[pightr]

So thats pretty much the gist of my problem. I'm making a island mist kiwi pear souvgnon blanc and I wanted to up the alc content to roughly 12%. I have made three other island mist kits (all strawberry white merlots because they have been such a huge hit, two were for weddings) and have always added 4 pounds of corn sugar to the mix. The starting SG should be between 1.048-1.052 per the instructions. The 4 pounds of corn sugar brings the starting SG up to 1.074 which was nice but now I was trying to bring it up to about 1.090 with this kit since it was for me.

Now before I say anymore I was a little under the wine glass at the time of making my calculations and tried to add just enough sugar to bring it up to this level, well my thought was adding 1 pound of sugar brought the sg up .006 so I figured out how much sugar in a measuring cup for one pound. When I measured it with the first 4 pounds it came out to about 3/4 quarter cup was roughly a pound of sugar. So I added 2 and a third quarts cup of sugar again figuring this was roughly 3 pounds more. Well when I checked the SG it came out to a vamping 1.114!!!!

Now I'm not to bummed about that to be honest haha its just going to be a very potent kiwi pear wine but my question is**** do I need to add additional yeast to eat up this extra sugar I used?? Or will it still be able to take down 7 pounds of addition sugar with just one packed of yeast? By the way the yeast I used was a Red Star Premier Cuvee if that matters.

Thanks in advance for the help! Glad to be back to making wine again and having my fun experiments go completely upside down on me somehow hahaha Got to love it!

 

[Julie]

not sure how you got your calculations but i am not thinking your yeast will ferment to dry, if it goes dry you abv will be very high.

just bumping this up to see what anyone else has to say.

 

[ffemt128]

I agree, you will likely be able to ferment this to dry, It will be very high alc. No additional yeast is needed, what yeast was used?

 

[pightr]

Thanks for the inputs! Lol the way I got my calculations were a bit rash. The yeast I used was a Red Star Premier Cuvee.

So just to be upfront I was a bit drunk ( and thats being modest) when I started this kit and half way through my brother and I thought it would be fun to experiment a bit. So I had a 4 pound bag of corn sugar and we measured how many quarts 4 pounds of sugar is which came out to 3 quarts and 1/2 cup in our measuring cups. So we figured 3/4 of a quart was 1 pound of sugar so after we finished the 4 pound bag we had only a 10 pound bag of sugar left so we decided to try it out. Also we came up with that 4 pounds of sugar added 0.024 on the hydrometer because of previous kits made that were supposed to have a starting SG of 1.050 and we added 4 pounds of sugar to those which brought it up twice to 1.074 so thats where the numbers came from. So we added 3 pounds of sugar thinking it would raise the SG up to about 1.092 but boy were we wrong haha.

Glad you guys think it will ferment dry this will give me a chance to really test my back sweetening at the end of the process here

 

[djrockinsteve]

Even if it doesn't ferment dry that will be less alcohol and less you will have to back sweeten.

 

[pightr]

Even if it doesn't ferment dry that will be less alcohol and less you will have to back sweeten.

Good point! Has anyone ever brought their wine up to over 1.100 and had problems with fermenting dry? And if so what did your wine SG finally end fermentation at?? Just curious as to what I might be looking at in a few days.

Thanks again everyone for the advice and information.

 

[djrockinsteve]

There are a few who will continue to feed their musts sugar until the yeasts die from too high an alcohol content. Maybe 16%

 

[pightr]

Thank you guys for all the information and help with this matter... yet now I have run into another problem. While having some drinks with my brother he wanted to help and is very interested in home wine making so I told him to grab the F-pac and add it to the carboy yet I didn't realize he had grabbed the wrong f-pac for this wine kit.

So now what was supposed to be a strawberry white merlot it has the kiwi-pear sauvignon blanc f-pac in it and now I have a strawberry f-pac extra.

Both kits are from Island Mist but the strawberry white was for a wedding next month so thats not going to happen, but my next question is what shall I do with the Sauvignon Blanc?? Make a new F-pac with kiwi and pear? Or should I just completely experiment and add the strawberry f-pac that was supposed to go into the strawberry white merlot into it? Any ones opinions is greatly appreciated again and thanks in advance! Hope everyone had a good rest of the weekend.

 

[pightr]

So now I've left the wine in the primary for 12 days now and the fermentation now and the process has slowed downed dramatically. Not sure if I should add some more yeast to continue the fermentation process down to under 1.000 or what I should do at this point? It has slowed down in the last few days from doing .008-.010 a day to .002 to nothing yesterday so I will check it again tonight and see where it is at but as of right now its sitting at 1.028-1.030 and it started at 1.134.

Any help is greatly appreciated again. Thanks

 

[SBWs]

second kit of the same

The only idea I could come up with would be to buy a second kit the same as the first and make it following the direction and then mix the two together and use the one f-pac on both kits. With island mist kits I think you could get by using one f-pac on two kits.

One other thing, while checking the specific gravity degas the sample. If it has a lot of gas it will give a false reading. Red Star Premier Cuvee according to Red Star will go to about 18% ABV, with a staring S.G. of 1.134 you are very close to that limit. Yeast nutrient and bumping the temp up some might help keep it going.

Good Luck!!!

 

[pightr]

Thanks for the info. I'm just going to try and give it some yeast nutrient and heat it up a bit more and see what happens and hopefully I can get it dried out.

 

[Arne]

If you have some a little yeast energizer won't hurt a thing either. Arne.