Topic: Specific-Gravity
Strategies for a Chaptalization Mistake
FREEIt sounds like you’re doing a lot of things right, especially being that your grape wine has taken off, but your plum wine is just plum tuckered out. Seems like you’ve got
Chaptalization
FREEChaptalization is the act of adding sugar to juice or must in order to increase alcohol content post-fermentation. Learn the basics of this technique.
Judging Fermentation Completion
MEMBERS ONLYWhile the density of water at room temperature is 1.000 standard gravity, finished dry wine should be less dense than that. Photo courtesy of Tim Vandergrift It certainly sounds like you are getting into the dryness zone. Specific gravity is the ratio of the density of a liquid in relation to the density of water,
Sugar Conversion Tables, Making Wine from Sugar Cane: Wine Wizard
MEMBERS ONLYSugar solution I am fairly new to home winemaking having only made a few kits and three batches of Muscadine wine. I have been using Daniel Pambianchi’s book Techniques in Home Winemaking as my primary reference and have recently acquired The Winemakers Answer Book. My confusion arises from a disparity in the Brix/SG/PA tables. Techniques
Sugar Conversion Tables
FREEFor the WineMaker’s Answer Book I referenced the Table 1-2, Appendix 1, from Wine Analysis and Production, Zoecklein et al, 1995 for the Specific Gravity to Brix tables. Note that this conversion
Back Sweetening Wine Techniques
MEMBERS ONLYIn ancient Greece and Rome, honey was sometimes stirred into wine just before serving. Maybe they just liked the taste of honey. More likely, though, the sweetness of the honey corrected some fault of bitterness or sourness. It might have enhanced fruitiness or rounded out mouthfeel. Honey, sugar, or other sweeteners can still make those
Adding Sugar to your Wine
MEMBERS ONLYStep 1: Measuring What You Have The first step in figuring out how much sugar to add is to find out how much is present in the starting material/juice. These days, most suppliers of grape juices provide the buyers with the sugar concentrations of the juices we buy — either as weight percent or (equivalently)
Using a Hydrometer
FREELearn the basics of how and when to use a hydrometer in your winemaking process.
Sugar and Acid Wine Adjustments
MEMBERS ONLYPerfectly ripe. That is how most winemakers — amateur and professional — want the grape crop to come in for every vintage. “Perfectly ripe” involves a whole host of factors. For home winemakers, the first one we usually look at is the sugar content in degrees Brix or specific gravity (SG). With some target in
Understanding Brix Readings
FREEOne of the most important measurements a winemaker must stay on top of from the time grapes begin to mature in the vineyard through the end of fermentation is degrees Brix. Brix,
Testing for Dryness, Empty Airlock: Wine Wizard
MEMBERS ONLYTesting troubles I’ve been frustrated with the use of Clinitest tablets for measuring the end point or final dryness in my homemade wine and have been wondering and reading about the use of electronic blood glucose meters that diabetics use. There have been several discussions in various forums and some scholarly work from UC-Davis back
How Sweet It Is: Chaptalization
FREEChaptalization — the practice of adding sugar prior to fermentation — has numerous benefits to wines with low sugar content. Chief among those is increasing the potential alcohol of the resulting wine, which can impact mouthfeel, help protect against spoilage, and more.
Measuring Residual Sugar
FREEYou are interested in your friend’s opinion on your most recent vintage — most likely a wine you have assessed to be your best ever. You meticulously withdraw a sample and pour
I am getting different gravity readings in my just-crushed juice from samples taken from the top and bottom of the vessel. What’s going on and is there a proper place to take these readings?
MEMBERS ONLYYour question is a valid one — one that many winemakers before you have wondered about. As you have discovered, where you take a sample from in a tank can give you varying readings and you find yourself wondering which reading is the most accurate. The specific gravity (or degrees Brix, or Baume, depending upon
How do I allow for suspended solids when taking hydrometer readings?
MEMBERS ONLYYou’ve hit the nail on he head — a hydrometer reading does depend on the amount of suspended solids in the juice that you’re measuring. As sugar is more dense than water, the more sugar (the riper your fruit is) in the juice the higher up the hydrometer will float in your sample. It’s easy
Your Home Wine Lab
MEMBERS ONLYSooner or later, most serious winemakers conclude that it isn’t good enough to simply follow a recipe blindly. That’s a bit too much like painting-by-numbers. The expression of one’s own skill and artistry makes the difference between an ordinary wine and something uniquely personal. But to do that, it’s necessary to understand a bit about