TimTheWiner
Begintner
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2012
- Messages
- 307
- Reaction score
- 4
So I am only 3 months into my new wine making hobby and for some stupid reason I used a Niagara Mist Blueberry Pom Merlot Blanc for my first kit. After making the kit I am realizing that this is not really going to be paired with meals but seems to be more of a chilled summer/picnic/campfire type wine. With this, I would prefer it to have a higher ABV. My starting SG was 1.057 and ending .998 which calculates to an ABV of 7.85%. Not terrible, but being this is going to be a "summer outdoorsy" wine, I would prefer to be more around 10%.
After a bit of research and reading I found links to the Pearsons square for calculating how much hard liquor to use to attain a higher ABV. It seems that grain alcohol is the most recommended as you need the least of it to attain higher ABV and hopefully not effect resulting taste too much. I just want to be sure I am using the Pearsons equation correctly. I would like a final ABV of 10%, so with the formula 95 (ABV of grain alcohol) minus 10 = 85 parts wine. Then 10 (final ABV) minus 7.85 (current ABV) = 2.15 parts grain alcohol. So it appears I need 2.15 parts grain alcohol per 85 parts wine. If I try to break this down to how many ounces of grain I need to add. I believe I divide 760 (rough volume in ounces of wine in my carboy) by 85, then multiply that number by 2.15. When I convert that number from oz to mL it looks like I need about 521 ml or about 2/3 the bottle of grain alcohol to add to the carboy to get the final 10%.
Does this sound right? Seems good to me. If I added the whole 750 bottle of grain alcohol it seems like it would give me a final ABV of about 10.7%. IF THIS IS the correct numbers, do you think my end taste would be terribly off and would I really taste the alcohol a lot? It is a very sweet wine as is and I wouldn't mind giving it a little bite, but still needs to be drinkable by most people. Whole reason for this is after racking again I have to top up quite a bit (maybe 400 ml) as there is currently about 10" of diameter of exposed surface area at top of wine level. Also, do I or should I be mixing in the alcohol after adding or will it mix itself when I rack again??
After a bit of research and reading I found links to the Pearsons square for calculating how much hard liquor to use to attain a higher ABV. It seems that grain alcohol is the most recommended as you need the least of it to attain higher ABV and hopefully not effect resulting taste too much. I just want to be sure I am using the Pearsons equation correctly. I would like a final ABV of 10%, so with the formula 95 (ABV of grain alcohol) minus 10 = 85 parts wine. Then 10 (final ABV) minus 7.85 (current ABV) = 2.15 parts grain alcohol. So it appears I need 2.15 parts grain alcohol per 85 parts wine. If I try to break this down to how many ounces of grain I need to add. I believe I divide 760 (rough volume in ounces of wine in my carboy) by 85, then multiply that number by 2.15. When I convert that number from oz to mL it looks like I need about 521 ml or about 2/3 the bottle of grain alcohol to add to the carboy to get the final 10%.
Does this sound right? Seems good to me. If I added the whole 750 bottle of grain alcohol it seems like it would give me a final ABV of about 10.7%. IF THIS IS the correct numbers, do you think my end taste would be terribly off and would I really taste the alcohol a lot? It is a very sweet wine as is and I wouldn't mind giving it a little bite, but still needs to be drinkable by most people. Whole reason for this is after racking again I have to top up quite a bit (maybe 400 ml) as there is currently about 10" of diameter of exposed surface area at top of wine level. Also, do I or should I be mixing in the alcohol after adding or will it mix itself when I rack again??