Back Sweetening and residual sugar

[RobertChartier]

I have a 5 gallon carboy of raisin wine.

the SG after secondary fermentation, stabilizing and clearing is 0.998.

Since my wife and I both like our wines off-sweet, I'm looking to back sweeten.

How much sugar would be needed to increase residual sugar by say, 0.5%?

I can extrapolate from there.

I still haven't gotten a clear understanding of what constitutes an off-dry, off sweet and sweet dessert wine. Dry is pretty self explanatory.

I googled the idea and got multiple conflicting answers;

I've seen off-dry and Off sweets listed as SG from 1.01 to 1.025
but I've also seen some that specify a sweet as anything with an SG over 1.01

 

[REDBOATNY]

Based on many wine tastings at over 100 wineries in NY finger lakes region, I would say dry, up to 1.5 brix, semi dry, up to 2.5 brix, sweet: as high as 8. It all depends on the acid of the wine and the balance. I keep a 2 ltr. bottle of sweetener (ratio of 2 cups sugar, 1 cup water, dissolved over heat) in the fridge most of the time. I add some to the wine, stir in and taste. Repeat until YOU are happy. Then check the gravity and record.

 

[bkisel]

I use the Polish method... Back sweeten 6 gal. with either 500ML of Wine Conditioner or 2:1 simple syrup or 2:1 inverted syrup... Bada bing, bada bang you've turned your dry wine into an off-dry wine. Works for me... KISS

 

[RobertChartier]

ok, since I lean heavily towards math geek, I did some calculations. Based on % of residual sugars being 10grams in 1 litre, this is what I come up with.

%RS vol (Gal) Vol (L) sugar (g) Sugar (cups)
0.50% 5.00 18.93 94.635 0.378
1.00% 5.00 18.93 189.271 0.756
1.50% 5.00 18.93 283.906 1.134
2.00% 5.00 18.93 378.541 1.513
2.50% 5.00 18.93 473.176 1.891
3.00% 5.00 18.93 567.812 2.269
3.50% 5.00 18.93 662.447 2.647
4.00% 5.00 18.93 757.082 3.025
4.50% 5.00 18.93 851.717 3.403
5.00% 5.00 18.93 946.353 3.781

Please, poke any holes in my calculations you like. I'm still on the steep edge of the learning curve with Winemaking.

 

[Turock]

REDBOATNY has a good response there. The reason you're having a hard time finding info on exactly WHAT constitutes a semi-sweet wine or a sweet wine is dependant on so many factors of a specific wine. The basic idea behind back sweetening is to balance the acids in the wine. A wine that has acids well-adjusted for the fruit, may not need as much sugar in order to give the PERCEPTION of sweetness, as the same wine with more acid content.

We make a Nigara/lime wine. Because the lime is SO tart, we need to get the SG up to about 1.050 in order to balance out the acid. We've tried bringing the sugar content down--the result was a wine that is too tart, AND the flavor of the lime wasn't as forward as it should be. At an SG of 1.050, the tart/sweet perception was just right on the tongue AND the lime flavor was "right there."

At a wine tasting with my cousins I found the comment, on our concord wine, really explains this better than anything. We sweeten everything,basically, the same. After many years of doing this and receiveing hundreds of comments on the level of sweetness, we discovered that most people like a semi-sweet wine the best. Somewhere around 1.040 SG. But one of the cousins said,"Oh, this concord wine is drier than the fruit wines." Well, no it wasn't. But what she was perceiving there is the tannins in the concord which give you the PERCEPTION that it's drier--even tho the SG was the same as the fruit wines.

So it's only thru experience that you find you're way around this sweetening issue. It's just so dependant on WHAT you're doing--the fruit you are using--the tannin levels you have in the wines--the acid content.

 

[Runningwolf]

Attached is a spread sheet I use for all sugar additions for bench trials and large batches. I actually have it laminated so it's always handy.

View attachment Sugar chart.pdf