How sweet is too sweet?

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Hokapsig

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I need to pick your brains if you dont' mind and I realize to each his own on taste and sweetness, BUT...

I have been backsweetening my wines to 1.010, but I checked a nice Niagara that we recently procured and and its at 1.020 which is a little sweet, but not sweet enough to be overly sweet

I've got a Seyval blanc to 1.010, but still isn't there and just seems to missing the fruity taste of a good Seyval. Its a little bitey on the back side. What would you go to on this one?

I have a Muscat with the same issue (1.010) but I am hesitant to overly sweet.
 
I sweeten mine to taste. Some are 1.010 some are as much as 1.030. When its yours and you go by taste then that's all that matters.
 
The "sweet spot" might depend on the level of acidity and concentration of alcohol but the perfect sweetness is the sweetness that you prefer..
 
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Bill listen to the top two posts. Sweeten by taste and not numbers. When you got it then measure for reference. I posted an excellent spreadsheet a week ago on amounts to use for bench trails. I use that everyday. I can't look now I off to Split Rock for the weekend.
 
My idea of sweetening a wine is to think about balancing the acid with the perception of sweetness. You mentioned Niagara. We set our PH on Niagara to 3.2 At that PH, an SG of 1.020 will not taste too sweet because of the acid content. We sweeten our Niagara to about 1.015 Anything less, and it seems too acidic--you don't get that nice play on your tongue of acid/sweet. And this wine is so different from other grape wines because it has more of the profile of a FRUIT than it does as a grape. Niagara is a whole 'nother animal in the grape world.

If you think your other wines could benifit from more sugar to balance them, then I'd experiment with one bottle of them. Sweeten them a little more, cork them and let them rest a week or so. Then give them a taste and see what you think. It often takes experimentation to find out where you think you should take a wine. We're ALWAYS experimenting!

My personal taste is that a wine with an SG of 1.010 will taste fairly dry to me. I'm OK with dry wines, but don't enjoy them as much as a wine that is a bit sweeter. Sugar brings out a taste profile that is missing in dry wines. The best Muscat I ever had was made by a member of the Ohio Wine Guild and it was on the sweet side, with high flavor and it was a delight to drink!! It was the best I ever had. Just don't get them too sweet because that has the effect of tamping down the flavor, especially if the flavor is more on the delicate side.
 
I want to make sure the fruitiness of the Muscat comes out and people arent' tasting just sugary sweetness.
 
I think I'm the odd duck here...I like my wines dry compared to most folks here...I just backsweetened (to taste) a citrus wine at 3.2 and was happy with it at 1.005. Another citrus wine at 3.4 was right for me at 1.001. I don't think I've ever gotten any of my wines over 1.010.

We opened a wine from a nearby vineyard (can't recall...traminette?) which was "3 grapes" on their 7 grapes sweetness scale and it was utterly undrinkable to us. :<
 
philipanth, Assuming that you are asking how to measure SWEETNESS and not how to measure how much sugar is in a wine, you need to use what social scientists call an inter-subjective test (the test is subjective but you use a statistically large enough number of tests so that you are confident that the subjective result is shared by a specific population). I believe the standard test is to stipulate that sucrose has a sweetness rating of 1. You then take a sample of the substance you want to measure for sweetness and you assemble a large group of tasters. You then ask those tasters to compare the sample you have to your control sample (the sucrose). You then continually dilute (or concentrate?) the sample you are measuring until the vast majority agree that the sample being tested is as sweet as the control sample (sucrose). If you had to dilute it so that it is 1/100 of the original concentration then it is 100 times sweeter than sucrose. If you never had to dilute it because the vast majority agreed that it was as sweet as sucrose then it has the same sweetness as sucrose.
If you are asking a different question: for example, how much sugar is in a fruit you can use a refractometer to measure how much a drop of juice bends light compared to a standard (say a drop of water) or if you are asking how do you measure the amount of sugar in a must (the wine before fermentation) you can use a simple hydrometer to measure how much more buoyant the liquid is compared to water. But neither a refractometer nor a hydrometer can tell you how sweet the fruit or the wine is. They tell you how much sugar it contains (or how much residual sugar it contains after fermentation). It may contain a significant amount of sugar but your taste buds may say that it does not contain enough sugar to please you. Which leads me to the last point:
If you are asking how can "I" measure the sweetness of anything the quick and dirty answer is that you taste it. If it is too sweet for you then it is too sweet. If it is not sweet enough, then it is not sweet enough and if it is just right, then it is just right. Sweetness is ultimately subjective and (as far as I know) there is no objective or mechanical way of measuring sweetness except by mouth.
 
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