recipes online way too sweet

[Quacker]

I've looked for recipes online, and ended up cutting the sugar away back, because otherwise they end up undrinkably sweet.

Is there a reliable source of recipes online which dependably results in wines of a typical dryness which most wine drinkers would choose, and it makes clear when a recipe is for a dessert wine?

 

[Johnd]

I've looked for recipes online, and ended up cutting the sugar away back, because otherwise they end up undrinkably sweet.

Is there a reliable source of recipes online which dependably results in wines of a typical dryness which most wine drinkers would choose, and it makes clear when a recipe is for a dessert wine?

You can use any recipe you find, just make sure the initial SG will yield the ABV that you want, use a yeast capable of fermenting to at least that ABV, and ferment it dry. Any added sweetness after that is in your control.

 

[Scooter68]

Johnd - NAILED IT ! Exactly. A wine won't turn out too sweet if you start with the proper SG and a Yeast capable of attaining the ABV that your starting SG will yield. Anytime you are pushing the limits of a wine yeast the ferementation might not attain the maximum capability of that yeast. (Don't use a yeast like Red Star Montrachet in a batch with a starting ABV of 1.100)

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Quacker - I would reject any recipe for any country wine whose starting gravity was much above 1.090. Wine is all about balance and given the often subtle flavors of berries, stone fruit, flowers, or vegetables no country wine with more than about 12% alcohol is going to be balanced.

Very few lab cultured yeast will not be able to ferment to absolute dryness a wine that has about 2- 2.5 lbs of sugar (the starting gravity I mentioned) so any such wine should not be sweet unless you stabilize and back sweeten. Tricks such as deliberately adding more sugar than the yeast can (nominally) ferment are as likely to fail as work -So you will adding more and more sugar to the wine to try to kill the yeast by poisoning them with alcohol. OR you will have killed the yeast long before you imagined they might succumb and your wine will be so sweet it will peel the enamel from your teeth.

Your aim should be to aim for a good ABV given what you are fermenting; your aim should be to provide everything the yeast needs to ferment those sugars brut dry; and your aim should be to sweeten (or not) the resulting wine to your taste. Any recipe that suggests otherwise is a waste of your time , your money and your energy.

 

[hounddawg]

Hi Quacker - I would reject any recipe for any country wine whose starting gravity was much above 1.090. Wine is all about balance and given the often subtle flavors of berries, stone fruit, flowers, or vegetables no country wine with more than about 12% alcohol is going to be balanced.

Very few lab cultured yeast will not be able to ferment to absolute dryness a wine that has about 2- 2.5 lbs of sugar (the starting gravity I mentioned) so any such wine should not be sweet unless you stabilize and back sweeten. Tricks such as deliberately adding more sugar than the yeast can (nominally) ferment are as likely to fail as work -So you will adding more and more sugar to the wine to try to kill the yeast by poisoning them with alcohol. OR you will have killed the yeast long before you imagined they might succumb and your wine will be so sweet it will peel the enamel from your teeth.

Your aim should be to aim for a good ABV given what you are fermenting; your aim should be to provide everything the yeast needs to ferment those sugars brut dry; and your aim should be to sweeten (or not) the resulting wine to your taste. Any recipe that suggests otherwise is a waste of your time , your money and your energy.

aw, pineapple and lemon will both balance with much higher ABV, as for the others, i like 12 to 13% ABV.
Dawg

 

[Scooter68]

I have made several "Country Fruit wines" with ABVs above 14% and they were made to be Dessert wines. It all depends on the fruit - Blackberry, Black Raspberry, Black Currant, Tart Cherry are just a few of the fruit wines that make excellent dessert wines with a higher ABV - It all comes down to what you want and how you balance that wine. I would never try to make a dessert wine with peaches, or any number of other delicate flavored fruits.

Beware blanket statements

 

[hounddawg]

I have made several "Country Fruit wines" with ABVs above 14% and they were made to be Dessert wines. It all depends on the fruit - Blackberry, Black Raspberry, Black Currant, Tart Cherry are just a few of the fruit wines that make excellent dessert wines with a higher ABV - It all comes down to what you want and how you balance that wine. I would never try to make a dessert wine with peaches, or any number of other delicate flavored fruits.

Beware blanket statements

i agree with with you very much with what you say,, mainly, but you must remember i deal with only about 20% of the paillet as you do, due to my tracheostomy, so i tend to go 1 to 2 percent higher than you, and a tad sweeter, but you do this to please yourself, or your much better half, and i do as i do, to suit myself. as for very light flavored fruits, you dead on,,
Dawg

 

[Quacker]

Thanks so much for all your replies. This information is extremely useful, and will cut out the guesswork. I was worrying about the fact I had more than halved the quantity of sugar in some of the recipes, but BernardSmith has reassured me, because I cut the added sugar to around 2lb to 2.5lb of sugar per batch which seemed about right to me. I was a bit worried that they wouldn't keep properly because I'd done that.

I need to learn how to use the hydrometer now. :/

Many thanks again.

 

[salcoco]

the normal sweet spot for wine is a sg=1.092 which gives a abv of about 12% the supposed optimum aging level. The Winemaking Home Page
this site has a number of recipes that might work for you ,

 

[sour_grapes]

I need to learn how to use the hydrometer now. :/

Here ya go:

 

[Quacker]

the normal sweet spot for wine is a sg (specific gravity)=1.092 which gives a abv (alcohol by volume) of about 12% the supposed optimum aging level. https://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp

https://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp

Hi Salcoco, thank you for this information. Do you mean that the SG of the fermented wine should be around 1.092? which should therefore be around 12% alcohol? Does the hydrometer show the number to be 1.092 when put into the wine? or do I have to do some sort of calculation from the reading? I am sorry to sound ignorant, but I read somewhere that a calculation has to be made using the readings from the hydrometer, and now I am totally confused. LOL

The Winemaking Home Page

this site has a number of recipes that might work for you

Brilliant, thanks. I'll take a look at those.

 

[Quacker]

Sour Grapes.. many thanks. Isn't she so cute and adorable! I will have to save that link to watch again. I would have counted from the bottom upwards, so I am glad I've learned otherwise. LOL

 

[sour_grapes]

The Winemaking Home Page

Hi Salcoco, thank you for this information. Do you mean that the SG of the fermented wine should be around 1.092? which should therefore be around 12% alcohol? Does the hydrometer show the number to be 1.092 when put into the wine? or do I have to do some sort of calculation from the reading? I am sorry to sound ignorant, but I read somewhere that a calculation has to be made using the readings from the hydrometer, and now I am totally confused. LOL


The Winemaking Home Page

Brilliant, thanks. I'll take a look at those.

Let me step you through the logic. Water starts with a density (SG) of 1.000. When you dissolve sugar into it, it raises the density (to something like 1.085 to 1.105). This is what your hydrometer will show before fermentation.

During fermentation, yeasts eat the sugars, and excrete alcohol. Alcohol is less dense than water, so the SG goes down. If you start at about SG = 1.100, and fully ferment all the sugars, the final density will be about SG = 0.990 to 0.998, roughly speaking.

You can get a pretty good idea of the alcohol content (alcohol by volume, or ABV) by considering the difference between the starting and final densities. The formula is:
ABV = (Starting SG - Final SG)*131 .

 

[Quacker]

Hi Sour Grapes.. Thank you so much for this information. I really appreciate the time everyone is giving. May I ask a further question. Doesn't the presence of fruit pulp influence the hydrometer reading? Would a significant amount of pulp not register as more dense?

 

[sour_grapes]

Not to an extent you need to worry about.

Suspended solids, do, in fact, alter the density of the liquid as measured by a hydrometer. However, if the solids are much denser than the liquid, then they will generally sink to the bottom (and then they don't affect the measurement at all). There are exceptions -- you can make slurries of minerals that can be quite dense. In practice, you won't need to worry about this in winemaking. If you are worried, you can put a sample through a kitchen strainer before testing.

 

[Quacker]

Thanks for the clarification of that issue, Sour Grapes, it's much appreciated.