Sweetening and SG

[maddog]

I want to backsweeten some wine before bottling. I tend to like things sweeter than most regular wine drinkers. If I sweeten to taste I usually make something that no one else will drink. Can I use SG to measure the amount of sugar added? Is there a range of SG that wineries use to label their wine as dry, semi sweet, and sweet etc? I read enough to know that acidity has something to do with the amount of sugar needed. I do not have a meter to measure acidity, just the dip strips that give a rough ph.

 

[hobbyiswine]

My suggestion would be to measure the SG of the finished wine then sweeten to your desired taste and measure the SG again. Generally wines of 1.002 or less are considered dry. Off-dry wines will have less than 5% residual sugar and sweet wines more than 5%. A search on this forum for residual sugar and how that works might be worth a look for you too. Since you can have wine finish "dry" with different SG readings you can have two wines with the same SG actually have two different sugar contents.

 

[Rocky]

I want to backsweeten some wine before bottling. I tend to like things sweeter than most regular wine drinkers. If I sweeten to taste I usually make something that no one else will drink. Can I use SG to measure the amount of sugar added? Is there a range of SG that wineries use to label their wine as dry, semi sweet, and sweet etc? I read enough to know that acidity has something to do with the amount of sugar needed. I do not have a meter to measure acidity, just the dip strips that give a rough ph.

Maddog, here is something I found in my literature:

Sweetness SG
Dry <1.000
Medium dry 1.000-1.010
Medium sweet 1.010-1.020
Sweet 1.020-1.030
Dessert 1.030-1.040


This is from The Home Winemaking Book by Michiel Pesgens.