residual sugar for a muscat

[mendozer]

my first white will be 100% muscat (it's the only white the vineyard owner has left). I'm trying for a late harvest type of white. His Brix is at 24 now. Is that enough for a sweet wine normally or will i have to kill the yeast at a certain % before it ferments fully out?

furthermore, what's a good range of residual sugar in a sweet white (thinking like between a dessert moscato and a sweet riesling)

 

[Rocky]

Mendozer, at 24 birx, you will have a very powerful Muscat, something in the 13-14% range. In order to make the wine sweet, it is best to ferment it fully to dry (i.e. abouit SG = 0.992 or so), stablize the wine with k-meta and k-sorbate and then back sweeten. I think the sweetness you are describing is SG 1.010-1.020. The best way to hit what you want is to ferment fully, stablize and add sweetener slowly to a sample size of the wine until you hit the level of sweetness you want and then sweeten the whole batch.

 

[mendozer]

Is corn sugar the g-to sweetener for back sweetening or will table sugar work?

 

[Rocky]

mendozer, I make up a simple syrup with 1 part water to 3 parts sugar (regular table sugar). I heat the water is assist in dissolving the sugar completely. Start slowly in adding the syrup. Once it is sweet, it is difficult to make it "not so sweet."

 

[mendozer]

Ok. After I stabilize it I'll try that syrup and add like 1/2 cup at a time or something.

 

[Rocky]

Mendozer, I had a typo in my message! It should have said "1 part water to 2 parts sugar." If you made it 1:3 as the original post said, it probably will not hurt anything except getting the sugar to dissolve would be a trick. Sorry for the mistake.

Another way to sweeten the wine would be to use this calculator: http://web2.airmail.net/sgross/fermcalc/FermCalcJS.html In this case, I would take a quantity of the wine and dissolve the sugar in the wine. You could warm the wine slightly to help with dissolving, but don't get it anywhere near the boiling point of alcohol (173 degrees F). I did a quick sample calculation and if your initial SG is 0.992 and you have 6 gallons and want to raise it to 1.010, you would add about 2.4 lbs of sugar. You could dissolve this in about a half gallon of wine.

 

[mendozer]

also, this syrup can be used for chaptalization yes? I want to boost my red wine up by 2% soon

 

[Rocky]

Mendozer, please clarify what you mean by "boost my red wine up by 2% soon." If you are saying the wine is finished and you want to raise the alcohol by 2%, chaptalization is not what you want. You would have to add ethyl alcohol in some form to the wine. If, however, you mean that you have not started the wine and you want the wine to be 2% higher when it is done, you would need to increase the starting SG by about 0.015, and chaptalization using syrup would be a way to go. You could also add grape juice concentrate, a complementary fruit concentrate, raisins, an f-pack, etc.

 

[mendozer]

sorry i meant sweetening the wine during fermentation to boost PA by 2%. my original numbers projected 10.4%. I want it to be at least 12% ABV.