Help first proper red wine from grapes!

[dean_wales]

Hello,

After aquiring a fermentation bucket and a half of red wine grapes from a colleagues conservatory I had a bash at making red wine.

History - I removed as much of the stalks as I could be bothered to and mashed the grapes. Campden tableted. I didnt know anything about tetsing or adjusting acidity so I just added what was suggested on the youngs pot. Gravity of juice was approx 1090 unadulterated.

Pitched wine yeast and fermented on the pulp for about 4 days. Stained through a sterile muslin bag etc and racked to fill 3 demi johns.

Fermented like hell for a couple of weeks and had a huge layer of sediment so racked it again to demi johns.

Present Day - Now I have tatsed some of the wine, abiviously its harsh but very very nice in flavour. My concern is that I dont want it to finish too dry. I addedd some sterile sugar water but this fermented straight out.

The wine seems to want to ferment out very dry. Do I keep adding sugar in stages as dad suggests until it finishes fermenting with some residual sugar or do I add some non fermentable sugar or do I campden it to stop fermentation and bottle early? Confused!

Thanks,

Dean.

[Kev888]

Hi,

yes with beer we tend to rely on the fermentables being used up to cause it to stop, but with wine thats only suitable for very dry stuff (I think more of the fruity ingredients are fermentable by the wine yeast), so its more a case of ballancing fermentables to the alcohol tollerance of the yeast and using this as the point at which fermentation ceases.

So, if the yeast is still viable but you want to make it sweeter you can keep feeding it with boiled cooled sugar solution (or boiled cooled concentrated grape juice) until the alcohol reaches the point at which the yeast gives up the ghost due to alcohol levels, and then add a tiny amount more. I used to do this with country wines anyway, and it can take a long while if you used a high alcohol tollerant yeast.

Or you can cheat a little and let it finish the fermentables then just add non fermentable artificial sweetener (in the old days saccarin but I believe there are better tasting modern alternatives around now). Or as you say, stop it at the point where you have the sweetness that you like. Maybe not for the purist but it can take many months to feed the wine gradually with frequent hydrometer testing to make sure you don't overdo it. And lots of opportunity for off tastes to develop or infections to get in or the temperature to change and it stick and so on - my favourite seemed to be to let the airlock go dry after several months of nurturing!

Cheers
Kev

[danbrew]

Or you can use potassium sorbate to bring fermentation to a halt and then sweeten with sugar/ grape juice to suit.