Back sweeting

[cnsfarms]

Question, recently read somewhere to mix a sample to taste ,then read sg ,then mix batch with sugar to match sg of sample, great id a but question is, is there a standard for dry semi and sweet in sg?
I.E. Lest say after fermentation its 1.000 what would a good rule be for semi and sweet is sg?

 

[acorn]

According one of my books (Techniques in Home Wine Making by Daniel Pambianchi), it gives the following guidelines in grams of sugar per liter of wine.

Dry wine is up to 2 g/L of residual sugar (RS) = up to 0.999233 S.G. (technically =< 1.000)
Off dry is 2-10 g/L RS = 1.000 - 1.004
Medium-sweet 10-50 g/L RS = 1.004 - 1.019
Sweet 50-200+ g/l RS = 1.020 - 1.077 or more

I used this tool for conversion from g/L sugar concentration to S.G. (I rounded off to 3 decimal places)
http://www.winebusiness.com/tools/?go=winemaking.calc&cid=43

This article in Wikipedia gives a table that classifies the wine by final sugar content, which is higher than in respective categories I listed above, but that's according to European standards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness_of_wine

I hope my conversion approach is correct and is helpful. Can somebody confirm whether or not it sounds right? Thanks.

 

[DoctorCAD]

Wow...I think anything over 1.004 is undrinkably sweet. Guess its all in the taste buds.

 

[BernardSmith]

Wow...I think anything over 1.004 is undrinkably sweet. Guess its all in the taste buds.

I tend to agree with you. I find some ostensibly dry meads I have made taste "sweet" when they are below 1.000 but some fruit wines do need to be back sweetened to about 1.004 to bring forward the fruitiness I am looking for.

 

[acorn]

Some unanticipated sweetness can be the result of both high initial sugar content and high final alcohol content. Once a total noob, I made a "monster" rose wine that ended up being around 16.5% alc./vol. but still quite sweet (I chaptalized too much), despite hydrometer reading of 0.994. Higher alcohol would make the hydrometer sink more relative to some residual sugar that still remains in the wine, with yeast no longer able to process it under the high alcohol conditions. That's why to figure out how sweet my wine will be, aside from tasting it, of course, I use both hydrometer readings as well as Clinitest tablets to test the residual sugar. I find that the combination of the results from the two methods allow you to make a more accurate judgement.