My wifes homemade wine

[DoubleJ]

The recipe I have says that the more sugar the more alcohol.  If I continue to add 3 tbs of sugar every 3 weeks during the fermenting, will it get stronger or does the sugar content to alcohol need to be the initial sugar amount?

[stormking]

Whats wrong with sorbate i use it all the time in my fresh fruit wines.i had a buddy who made blackberry wine and didnt sorbate and all his bottles started poping on him that was a big mess.

[stormking]

double j i had a water melon wine recipe that called for half the sugar at the start and the other half 1 week in to it and they say it would be 20 percent alcohol.

[DoubleJ]

No sorbate.  I tried the simplest recipe I could find.  This is fruit, sugar, distilled water and that's it.

I need a hydrometer

[stormking]

ya i have some buddys from the old country that make wine like that but they say u have to drink it in 30 days . i buy kit wine to that i make that stuff last for year or more the older the  better i think we wait about six mounths before we start drinking it. we get all our wine makeing stuff from the beer essentials in lakewood .i try and make 40 gal from fresh fruit and maybe 3 or 4 wine kits  the kits make 6 gal. we do white zinfandel and merlot.

[lokidog]

The recipe I have says that the more sugar the more alcohol.  If I continue to add 3 tbs of sugar every 3 weeks during the fermenting, will it get stronger or does the sugar content to alcohol need to be the initial sugar amount?

As long as there are live yeast, and no oxygen, additional sugar will produce more alcohol... to a point.  Different strains of yeast have different tolerances for the amount of alcohol they can survive in.  Also, if there are not enough nutrients for the yeast to reproduce, they may die off as well.  Alcohol is a waste product of anaerobic (w/o oxygen) fermentation along with carbon dioxide.  If you aerate your wine when racking it off the sediment, you will add oxygen.  Until that O2 is gone, the sugars will not be turned into alcohol.

It does not matter if the sugar is added at the beginning or along the way, except that if it is added too slowly, you will simply prolong the working of the wine without any benefit.  It will just take longer to reach it's alcohol tolerance point. 

To sweeten wine once the ferment is done, there are several methods.  The easiest are to add chemicals, including sulfites and sorbates, bleh.  The others are to freeze it, need lots of room in the freezer; filter it, not practical cost wise for the home vintner; wait and rack, and rack, and rack until all yeasts are dead and gone, which takes a lot of time.  You can also use the chemicals when the residual sugar meets your requirements (this is what the commercial guys do).

BTW, distilled water is probably not the best as there are no micronutrients for the yeast to use.  If you add your water to your fruit before you add your camden tablets, you can use whatever water you want as it will kill or slow the wild bacteria and yeasts enough to let your added yeast get a start.

A hydrometer will only tell you something useful if you read it before and after the ferment.  A vinometer will give you an approximation of the alcohol content of the wine.  Be sure to calibrate it with some known percentages of commercial wine, mine reads about 2% high.

Stormking, not sure why you would have to drink it in 30 days....  "They" say whites should be drunk young, but I have fruit wines that are 18 years old and are as good or better than when they were bottled, when I dare to open them.   

Hope this helps anyone out there thinking of vinting some wine.

[DoubleJ]

What I have done is this, to the letter:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4477182_delicious-homemade-wine-yeast.html

No yeast at all.  There is yeast in the jars though.  I can see it.  Natural yeast I guess

[lokidog]

Most fruit has natural yeasts on it.  The problem is that yeasts produce different byproducts and give different flavors to the wine.  Some yeasts are just nasty....  If you want any kind of consistency, store bought yeasts are the way to go.  The other problem with using naturally present yeast is that there are also naturally present bacteria and molds which can produce vinegar or worse, just ruin the wine.  The "sterilising" camden tablets often don't kill everything off but they reduce the numbers enough so that the added yeast which has a lot in a pack, can get a head start and outcompete the other stuff that will try to grow in there.  Also, I think natural yeasts tend to have a much lower alcohol tolerance and may not even get the alcohol level up to where you want it before dying off.

What I have done is this, to the letter:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4477182_delicious-homemade-wine-yeast.html

No yeast at all.  There is yeast in the jars though.  I can see it.  Natural yeast I guess

I am sorry, but that recipe just sounds nasty... "scrape the mold layer off the top"??  Eeww!  Hopefully this turned out for you, but for all you aspiring wine makers out there, there are a lot better, more sanitary, and efficient ways to make delicious tasting wine without breaking the bank.  Done this way, I can see why it would not last more than 30 days... the  wine will turn to vinegar, or worse.

I am not sure of the credibility of the author of that since right away he says "vinegar is basically wine made from apples..."  Vinegar is made from any kind of wine that has alcohol in it.  There are varieties of bacteria that turn alcohol into acetic acid, the stuff that makes vinegar vinegar.  Apples make good wine and if you bottle it before it is done working in capped bottles, you get hard cider.

Sorry if I am jacking your post.   

[lokidog]

Whats wrong with sorbate i use it all the time in my fresh fruit wines.i had a buddy who made blackberry wine and didnt sorbate and all his bottles started poping on him that was a big mess.

Your buddy bottled it way to soon.  If he had an airlock on his carbouy, he should have waited until absolutely no bubbles were being produced, at least six months in my experience.  I have not had a single bottle of wine explode in almost twenty years of making homemade wine.  I have never used any kind of "finishing" agent/chemical before bottling unless I was adding sugar to sweeten it.

[DoubleJ]

Lokidog, I sent you an urgent PM