Finishing/SG Question ...

[oldschool]

Been making wine 3 years. Learned “old school” from my Dad … no chemicals, hydrometer checks, etc just fruit, yeast, sugar and water. Wine always comes out good but started researching ways to make it better when I found this site. So here’s the situation … first ever strawberry. 5 gal batch, worked in bucket 11 – 18 May then transferred to carboy, racked to carboy every 30 days after that, bottled 25 Aug. Didn’t own a hydrometer when I started so I have no idea what the beginning SG was. Checked after bottling, off the scale … quesstimate would be 0.984 based on where it measured above the 0.990 mark. Have no way to measure temp. Keep the house at 73 so I’m guessing that’s what the wine is. Allowing for temp SG might be 0.986? Wine has a very good taste but has a pretty strong “bite” to it. Added sugar to half the bottles (they’re actually mason jars … old school!!) to raise SG to 1.000. Better taste, took the edge off. Checked SG last night … sweetened bottles now all have an SG between 0.990 and 0.0996 … which would indicate there’s still some fermentation going on? Looking for thoughts/advice …

 

[salcoco]

if you did not add sorbate and sulphur, you definitely started fermentation again. Be careful bottles do not explode.

 

[seth8530]

Yep, fermentation definintly restarted, you need make sure your wine is clear and sorbated before you add sugar back to a wine or it will most likely start refermenting.

BTW, some of those readings sound kinda wonky from the hydrometer. What does it measure in room temperature water?

 

[djrockinsteve]

This will help you. It's one of many tutorials I did for the forum.

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f5/basic-juice-fermentation-wine-18266/

 

[oldschool]

seth - was wondering that myself. SG of room temp water is 1.000. Anybody have any thoughts as to why it finsiched so dry?

 

[jswordy]

It's not unusual for wine to finish below 1.000. Usually means you started out with a lower SG so the yeast were able to clean up all the sugar. Alcohol has a SG that is lower than water.

 

[seth8530]

1.000 is about perfect for room temp. Like jswordy, it is not unusual to fall bellow 1.000. The lowest I have gotten was really close to .990.