hello, new to brewing

[feathers]

Hello,

I'm relatively new to home brewing, I started last year with a basic white wine from our grape vine. I used a recipe which is at least 60 years old and it's a really sweet wine, to sweat for most.
I'm just about to bottle some parsnip wine, again from my old recipe book and it's still quite sweet.
Any tips on creating a dry wine would be great.
I'm Maree from Harwich in Essex.

 

[Luc]

A sweet wine is created when too much sugar is added.
Yeast consumes sugar and produces alcohol from that.
Now if the alcohol percentage gets too high yeast can
not survive anymore and die off.
If there is any sugar left in that case you will end up with a sweet wine.

To prevent that it is necessary to calculate the amount
of sugar you are going to add to a must.
A hydrometer is an instrument to measure sugar in a must, therefore that is a must have for winemakers.

Next I suggest you do some reading on basic winemaking
you can find free downloadable books on my web-log in the column on the right side:

wijnmaker.blogspot.com

Luc