I’m new to winemaking.

[winemaker81]

I’m I right in thinking the longer I leave it the more the sugar will turn to alcohol, or is that not true?

It depends on the sugar level. Each yeast strain has limits regarding how much alcohol it can tolerate -- if there is sufficient sugar, yeast can produce enough alcohol that it poisons its own environment. For commercial wine yeasts, the tolerance ranges from 10% to 18% ABV.

The recommendation for home winemakers is to plan to ferment wines dry. Start the wine where the SG will produce the desired ABV -- tables are available that provide a correlation between SG and the approximate ABV.

Use a yeast whose tolerance level is above the target ABV. If you have no idea what to use, choose EC-1118, which will ferment a rock if given the opportunity. It normally can hit 18% ABV, and members have reported step feeding it to a higher ABV.

Let the wine ferment dry, and at bottling time, stabilize with potassium sorbate and K-meta, and backsweeten to taste.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Normally yeast in a wine are able to ferment a 1.090 gravity down to dryness. There are variables in the “normal” which I sometimes describe as how high a fence are we building. Example; alcohol is toxic therefore if we run high alcohol as 1.120 sugar the yeast might stop. ,, OR pH keeps several microbe families out and if it runs below 2.8 will stop yeast but things work together so if we run high alcohol this point might be at pH 3.2. ,, OR yeast uses up DAP like candy so if we combine high sugar with the nitrogen is used up it could again stress the yeast. ,,, the system has multiple regulation inputs which are synergistic so farming yeast is an art.

with the new batch that I have on the go now I’m right in thinking the longer I leave it the more the sugar will turn to alcohol, or is that not true? This wine is from fresh berries and not a kit format so do you think it will be the same or will it not be as sweet?

OK,,, what can you do? alcohol and residual sugar and glycerol are sweet flavors. The first trick is to balance this sweetness with acid. Normal is to have 0.5 acid in the beverage to balance the flavor of 11% alcohol. Residual sugar (hydrometer reads over 0.992) contributes sweetness so lots of wines balance at 0.75% acid content. ,,, BUT flavors are synergistic so you could add a strong flavor as tannin or bitter or astringent AND less common ones as pepper or ginger or orange peel etc and come out with balance. Commercially this might be with a finishing tannin/ for home there are products as chestnut tannin which are added to the primary and liquid tannin that can be used to build balance before bottling.

Wine is like cooking. There is a lot of art in understanding ingredients and what flavor they give.