Real Fruit Wine SG reading?

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cherryfrench

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Hi

I've made a few juice wines before and was easily able to take an SG reading.

However...I'm trying my first batch with real fruit and I've read you are supposed to keep in mind the potential sugar when you take that first reading. My question is, what kind of numbers are we talking here?

Specifically, I'm making strawberry wine. The SG was 1.07 when I measured it before adding the yeast. That sounded a little low to me, but since I was following a recipe I figured the sugar in the strawberries would make up the difference.

In my moment of doubt I added another 1.5 c of sugar the day after the yeast. The SG came to exactly the same reading even though it had been fermenting for 2 days.

6 days later I checked the SG again and it was .999.

Now 1 month later, I just racked it and it smells good. It seems completely fermented out, but I'm letting it go until another batch is ready for bottling.

My question is, am I going to end up with a very low alcohol wine, almost a strawberry cider? Is this something that will need to be drunk within a year? (oh heaven forbid!)
 
With that initial sg and the addeds sugar you are looking at about a an abv of 10.3 which is a little low, how much fruit did you add and we can give you a close range but brix of fruit can vary quite consireably so it will be a rough estimate. Can you tell us what the sg was right before you added the extra sugar. A good starting sg for a fruit wine is 1.085. If this wine is too low a abv for you you could add a little vodka or everclear grain alc.
 
Cherryfrench,
starting SG minus ending SG divided by .00736 equals approx alcohol.

You have just discovered that all fruit off of the vine are not equal in sugar. If you plan on making a lot of wine with fresh or frozen fruit a good investment would be an ATC refractometer. Squeeze that berry on the lens and read Brix. You can convert to SG. You can also just put juice on the lens. Use both the hydrometer and the refractometer and you will find yourself using the refractometer more and more and leaving the hydrometer in the drawer. They cost about $50 but well worth the cost.
 
Hi
Specifically, I'm making strawberry wine. The SG was 1.07 when I measured it before adding the yeast. That sounded a little low to me, but since I was following a recipe I figured the sugar in the strawberries would make up the difference.

Cherry according to my SG-table 1070 will give about 9%
alcohol already.

Next you added some more sugar (I do not understand the 1.5c).
So I presume you will get around 10-11% sugar, and that is really good for a strawberry wine.

I aim mine always at around 11%.

Let it age, it will get better in due time.
6 Months the least, preferably a year.

Luc
 

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