Dougan
Well-Known Member
Worked this equation out today, figured I'd share. At the advice of others in this forum, when making various ciders that need to be sweetened, when I rack the cider I take a sample, find the FG and then sweeten it until I like it and then find the gravity of that mixture. Then I have to figure out how much sugar to put into the entire batch (after stabilizing) to achieve this gravity:
[sugar (lb)] = ([volume(gal)] * (DG-FG))/.046.
In this equation, "DG" represents your desired gravity after sweetening, and FG is of course the gravity once fermentation is complete. The .046 comes from the specific gravity of 1 lb of sugar in 1 gallon of water (1.046).
So for example, if you have a 5 gallon batch of cider that fermented down to 1.001 and you've found that your cider tastes best when you add sugar up to 1.015,
sugar (lb) = 5*(.014)/.046 --> sugar (lb) ~= 1.56 lb.
This is probably not exact because I doubt that every form of sugar has the same specific gravity. However, for the level of accuracy I demand, I'm sure this will be fine.
Hope someone finds this helpful!
-Scott
[sugar (lb)] = ([volume(gal)] * (DG-FG))/.046.
In this equation, "DG" represents your desired gravity after sweetening, and FG is of course the gravity once fermentation is complete. The .046 comes from the specific gravity of 1 lb of sugar in 1 gallon of water (1.046).
So for example, if you have a 5 gallon batch of cider that fermented down to 1.001 and you've found that your cider tastes best when you add sugar up to 1.015,
sugar (lb) = 5*(.014)/.046 --> sugar (lb) ~= 1.56 lb.
This is probably not exact because I doubt that every form of sugar has the same specific gravity. However, for the level of accuracy I demand, I'm sure this will be fine.
Hope someone finds this helpful!
-Scott