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using to much sugar
I am a novist in brewing at home, however i found an old recipe for plum wine which i have decide to try,
however it says 1lb of plums to 1lb sugar, which is fine, I don't want the wine to end up really sweet like a sherry, i want more of a every day drinkable wine, that isnt sweet, can any one advise?
cheers toscamyra
Well if your fermentation goes well the 1lb of sugar you add will completely ferment out, so there will be no added sweetness from that addition.
The only sweetness you'll get will be from any unfermentables from the plums.
I don't make wine, but 1lb seems low to me for flavor purposes.
Hopefully deafcone will chime in.
He has spent some time in the 'big house' himself. So he knows alot more about this stuff than me.
Goodluck with it. Use a highquality yeast BTW.
Actually I just made 10 gallons of plum wine. The recipe I used asked for 2 lbs of sugar per gallon and I used 4 pds of plums per gallon also. How much of the sugar that ferments out will depend on the yeast you use. I have pretty much used bread yeast for most of my wines and it ferments it very dry. I end up adding sugar to sweeten it before bottling.
one pound of sugar to one pound of plums sounds a little high on the sigar from what I've done in the past. Most sugar i've ever used was 15 pds in a 5 gallon batch of elderberry wine and it was way too sweet and elderberries don't have any sugar in them to add to the wine. Plums have some but mostly you'l lget a mild tartnes from plums, not much sweet at all.
Here's the recipe i used for the plum wine if you want to use it:
It's for one gallon so it's easy to convert if you want to make more:
3 1/2 QTs water
2 pds sugar
4 pds plums
1 1/2 tsp acid blend (if using wild plums you don't need acid blend)
1/8 tsp tannin
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 campden tablet, crushed
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
1 packet yeast
Boil half the water, add sugar to dissolve. Wash, pit and stem the plums and cut into 1/4 pieces saving the juice. Put plums in fermentor (you can use a nylon straining bag if you want. tie it up and leave it bag and plums in all in the fermentor)then with a sanitized potato masher, mash the plums.
Pour most of the water over plums, if using a glass fermentor pour the room temp water in first them the boiled sugar water next. if needed add water to get to one gallon mark. If you add too much don't worry you can always add sugar to get to gravity target.
Take a gravity reading using hydrometer. it should be close to 1.090, if not the add sugar, stir and retake reading till you get there. You can put reading sample back into fermentor. Campden tablet will sterilize the wine.
When the contents in fermentor are room temp add acid blend, tannin, yeast nutrient, and crushed campden tablet. Cover or fit with an airlock, Wait 12 hours and add pectic enzyme, then 24 hours later add the yeast. If you add the yeast too soon the campden tablet will kill it.
Stir daily for a week.
After a week remove the bag of fruit, let the bag drain back into fermentor. Once fermentation slows take a gravity reading. If it's near 1.010 or 1.00 then rack off into secondary fermentor.
At this point I lwt the wine clear in the secondary fermentor. Once it clears, I taste it and take another reading. If it is at 1.00 or lower and it tastes dry I decide if I want to add sugar to sweeten.
If you like semi sweet to sweet wine you will need to stablize the wine before adding sugar to sweeten it or else the sugar will just ferment into alcohol again.
you can take the long approach of adding suger and letting it ferment and repeat until it no longer ferments whgich will take a looooong time, 6 months or more. Or what I do is add potassiun sorbate to stabilize the wine (1/2 tsp per gallon) wait a half an hour to an hour then add sugar to sweeten it to my liking. Once I get it like I want it I then add 1 campden tablet per gallon to the wine, then bottle. The potassium sorbate will slow the fermentation down but not stop it entirely. The campden tablet will kill the remaining yeast in the wine and make it safe to bottle.
Need advice feel free to PM me or just post here again.
By the way, there's an excellent book called "The Joy of Home Winemaking" by Terry Garey. I have it and the recipe above is from it. Here's a link to Amazon.com and the book. you can get it cheap (about $4 plus shipping). It's a great book for beginners.
DC
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