NoSnob
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2011
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I have found winemaking references that recommend the use of Clinitest tablets to determine if your wine is dry. It is a measure of residual sweetness. Prior to dip sticks, Clinitest tablets were used by diabetics to test for the presence of sugar in their urine.
Maybe those tablets are an older more traditional winemaking practice since I see little reference to them on this board. We seem to use hydrometer readings to give us a ballpark idea of dryness. The idea is that the further below SG of 1.000 we get the dryer the wine is. The practical limits for kit wines seems to be around SG of 0.993 or so. Jack Keller considers SG at or below 0.999 as Dry.
The simple test consists of placing one tablet (about the size of an aspirin) in a test tube, mixed with a few drops of wine and given 15 sec. or so to attain a color that is compared with a color chart. Readings are given as % sugar, like .50%, .75%, or 1.0%, etc.
So using the Clinitest tabs I tested two of my 3 month-old juice bucket wines now aging in the carboy.
=>The Petite Syrah had SG of 0.980 and residual sugar of 1.0%.
=>The Pinot Noir had SG of 1.000 & residual sugar of 0.25%.
I would have thought that the wine with the lower SG would also have the least sugar but that was not the case. That I cannot explain.
I am interested in whether any of you have used Clinitest tablets and whether you find them to be useful in assessing residual sugar in wine.
NS
Maybe those tablets are an older more traditional winemaking practice since I see little reference to them on this board. We seem to use hydrometer readings to give us a ballpark idea of dryness. The idea is that the further below SG of 1.000 we get the dryer the wine is. The practical limits for kit wines seems to be around SG of 0.993 or so. Jack Keller considers SG at or below 0.999 as Dry.
The simple test consists of placing one tablet (about the size of an aspirin) in a test tube, mixed with a few drops of wine and given 15 sec. or so to attain a color that is compared with a color chart. Readings are given as % sugar, like .50%, .75%, or 1.0%, etc.
So using the Clinitest tabs I tested two of my 3 month-old juice bucket wines now aging in the carboy.
=>The Petite Syrah had SG of 0.980 and residual sugar of 1.0%.
=>The Pinot Noir had SG of 1.000 & residual sugar of 0.25%.
I would have thought that the wine with the lower SG would also have the least sugar but that was not the case. That I cannot explain.
I am interested in whether any of you have used Clinitest tablets and whether you find them to be useful in assessing residual sugar in wine.
NS