High alcohol in a white

[wfournier]

I have a 3 gallon batch of wine made from Itasca grapes that we grew and after racking I found that they ended up fermenting down to .992 from a starting sg of 1.102. This gives me about 14.4% alcohol. It definitely seems a bit on the strong side and I'm wondering if I should try to adjust this and if so should I work on it now of give it more time and evaluate it again and make that determination later. I plan to cold stabilize which will hopefully drop the acid a little more (sitting at 9.3 g/l now), not sure if that will change the equation at all.

 

[Chuck E]

I have a 3 gallon batch of wine made from Itasca grapes that we grew and after racking I found that they ended up fermenting down to .992 from a starting sg of 1.102. This gives me about 14.4% alcohol. It definitely seems a bit on the strong side and I'm wondering if I should try to adjust this and if so should I work on it now of give it more time and evaluate it again and make that determination later. I plan to cold stabilize which will hopefully drop the acid a little more (sitting at 9.3 g/l now), not sure if that will change the equation at all.

I don't think adjusting the acid will change the alcohol. When this happened to my first batches of wine, my solution was to aerate the bottle into a decanter. Then let it sit for about 45 minutes. I think some of the alcohol evaporates which leaves the wine in a better place.

 

[wfournier]

I don't think adjusting the acid will change the alcohol. When this happened to my first batches of wine, my solution was to aerate the bottle into a decanter. Then let it sit for about 45 minutes. I think some of the alcohol evaporates which leaves the wine in a better place.

Thanks my thought on that was to see how the profile changed as the acid went down to see if it had an effect that might make the alcohol level less objectionable. I'll have to look at the options for reducing the alcohol, I think I had read that generally the approach is to add some water but I'm not sure I love that option.

 

[Johnd]

Let it sit a while and evaluate it later. If it’s still a problem, try sweetening it up a smidge, that can help bring out the fruit and make the wine taste more balanced.

 

[salcoco]

agree with @Johnd

 

[wfournier]

Thanks, I'll avoid the temptation to mess with it