Specific Gravity of Month old Wine

[DuaneLovett]

I should start by saying this is my second try at making wine so I may be jumping to conclusions or maybe not. I just racked my peach wine for the first time since removing it from the primary. I ran some in my test tube and inserted my hydrometer and it has a reading of only .9860. I thought it must be wrong so I checked plain water in it and it registered .9990. So unless I am wrong I would be better off drinking the water instead of the wine. Any help would be appreciated. Can I save it or do something with it? Thanks guys,
Duane

 

[sour_grapes]

I am not sure what problem you are thinking you may have. Fermented wine is SUPPOSED to be less than 1.000 SG. Alcohol is a lot less dense than water. Most wines finish in the 0.990 to 0.996 range. 0.986 sounds low, but not ridiculously so.

 

[Julie]

Hi Duane, welcome winemakingtalk. Why do you think you would be better off drinking the water? What size batch are you making? At this point you need to add k-meta.

 

[Julie]

Paul!!!!!!! you need to slow down your fingers! LOL, we posted at the same time but you were faster than me.

 

[cintipam]

Duane everything seems to be fine. It is possible your hydrometer is a touch off, but the reading needs to be adjusted based on the temp of what you are testing. Even if it's off, it's not off by much, so your wine reading might be a bit low. The wine reading is right in the ballpark of what you want in month old wine. You start wine with a lot of sugar in it which is what the hydrometer measures for you. Then you ferment. During ferment the yeast eats that sugar and turns it into alcohol. Once ferment is done, meaning when the reading is 1.0 or lower and has remained the same for 3 days, it is time to meta the wine. Some wines drop as low as .92 or so. It just means the yeasties did a really good job of clearing out that sugar and now there is alcohol instead. Hopefully this helps. But to answer your question water is indeed very good for you!

Pam in cinti

 

[cintipam]

Ok I came in third, but in such good company!!

Pam in cinti