My first grape wine

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Vronsky

Junior
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Hi everyone,
Im new here and just put my first batch of white table grapes (10 kgs) for primary fermentation. I don't have a hydrometer (ordered one online which will take some time to be delivered) and want to know what will be the approximate end-alcohol-volume of my white wine? I did not add any sugar in it. Thanks
 
From my understanding, without knowing what the sugar content of these grapes were before fermentation started it's going to be difficult to know what the end abv will be.

When you say "put my batch of white table grapes for primary fermentation", what processes did you use to get them from grapes to must?
 
I crushed the grapes with a clean pestle and mortar in my kitchen and then put them in a pail with loose lid for primary fermentation. Also included three grams of yeast.
 
Thanks alot sour_grapes for your help; I'd be grateful if you could suggest how much sugar should I add to bring the ABV to 12%. Its just 24 hours old must.
 
You want to drive up the SG to about 1.085 with sugar. If you get down to .994 that will put you at about 11.9% ABV. The way you figure it is subtract you final SG from your start SG and then multiply x 131. If you get down to .990 you'll be at 12.4%. I usually try and shoot for a little bit higher so if I want to add stuff later I don't have to worry about diluting the ABV lower than my target.
 
I am using FermCalc, which you may want to familiarize yourself with. (http://web2.airmail.net/sgross/fermcalc/fermcalc_applet.html)

I stress that my numbers are very approximate. You need a starting sugar content of about 22 Brix to get ~12%. I am assuming you have 10 L of must. If you started at 18 Brix (an assumption!), you would need to add about 0.4 to 0.5 kg of sugar to get to 22 Brix.
 

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