Sweetener suggestions for Loganberry

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Ceegar

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I have a 3 gal batch of Loganberry that is nearly bone dry now and I will be looking to sweeten it up when the time comes. I haven't tasted it yet so it might be hard to decide at this point which method to sweeten it but I was leaning towards a frozen concentrate of some sort. Does anyone have any suggestions for this fruit wine?

I also was thinking of possibly adding a natural fruit flavoring I've seen at Stomp Them Grapes, but of course they don't have Loganberry. I was thinking either blackberry or raspberry.

If I use a frozen concentrate I wouldn't need the flavoring but if I used sugar I could use that.

Suggestions and ideas are welcome - thanks.
 
Usually you sweeten to a specific gravity and use table sugar after you stabilize.

Dry wine = .990 - 1.000
Medium = 1.000 - 1.008
Sweet = over 1.008

Here is a calculator to help you with the amounts.
The Home Winemaking Page - WineCalc

Keep in mind that it sweetens more while it's in the bottle so don't use your taste buds or you will have overly sweet wine when you go to drink it. I speak from experience on that one. I know better but I did it anyway. :eek:
 
Nurmey said:
Usually you sweeten to a specific gravity and use table sugar after you stabilize.

Dry wine = .990 - 1.000
Medium = 1.000 - 1.008
Sweet = over 1.008

Here is a calculator to help you with the amounts.
The Home Winemaking Page - WineCalc

Keep in mind that it sweetens more while it's in the bottle so don't use your taste buds or you will have overly sweet wine when you go to drink it. I speak from experience on that one. I know better but I did it anyway. :eek:
Click to expand...

Just to get a grasp on the relationship of the SG reading in comparison to residual sugar percentages what would 1.008 equate to in terms of residual sugar percentage?

Doesn't seem like a whole lot of difference between .990 and 1.008.
 
To go along with what Nurmey said- what i do when I sweeten wines (after proper stabilization, of course) is to make several sample glasses. Set them up from less sweet to more sweet. When you find one you like, go down one sample.

What I mean is this- if you have samples set up from 1.000- 1.010, taste them. Then, when one is perfect, sweeten the whole batch to a bit less. Say like you prefer the one at 1.010, while the one at 1.008 is just quite not sweet enough. Then, sweeten the whole batch to 1.008. As Nurmey said, it'll taste sweeter after it's been bottled. I don't know why this is, but it's happened to me and I've oversweetened.

You can use honey, sugar, juice concentrate, etc, whatever you'd like as long as you stabilize the wine with sorbate and sulfite first.
 
Yuri_Rage said:
It takes nearly 2 lbs of dextrose to increase the SG of a 5 gallon batch by 18 points. That's pretty significant!
Click to expand...

Ok, so if I have a dry as possibly can be wine and I increase the SG to 1.008, what will the residual sugar percentage be in the finished wine?

When we are on the wine trail and tasting wines most of the wineries will list the wine's respective residual sugar percentages (e.g. 1%, 5%, etc.) on the lis.
 
The wine labs/wineries use an enzymatic test to determine glucose and fructose residual in the wine. This uses a Spectrophotometer machine.

In a home setting, there are a couple of ways to determine residual sugar-
Accuvin residual sugar test measures sugar between 0.01 to 0.20%
Clinitest tablets measures sugar between 0 to 1%

To figure it out without testing, you can keep in mind that:
1% residual sugar would be 1 gram per 100ml
or 10 grams per litre (1000ml)
7.5 grams per 750 ml bottle


Or, think of it like this- one cup of sugar (more or less) will raise 5 gallons of wine +/- one degree Brix.

I'm not too much into math, so I just use my SG measurement as a guideline. That's good enough for me.

If you enter the wine into competition, no one case what the residual sugars % is- use the SG scale as a definition of sweet, semi-sec, dry, etc.
 
YooperBrew said:
The wine labs/wineries use an enzymatic test to determine glucose and fructose residual in the wine. This uses a Spectrophotometer machine.

In a home setting, there are a couple of ways to determine residual sugar-
Accuvin residual sugar test measures sugar between 0.01 to 0.20%
Clinitest tablets measures sugar between 0 to 1%

To figure it out without testing, you can keep in mind that:
1% residual sugar would be 1 gram per 100ml
or 10 grams per litre (1000ml)
7.5 grams per 750 ml bottle


Or, think of it like this- one cup of sugar (more or less) will raise 5 gallons of wine +/- one degree Brix.

I'm not too much into math, so I just use my SG measurement as a guideline. That's good enough for me.

If you enter the wine into competition, no one case what the residual sugars % is- use the SG scale as a definition of sweet, semi-sec, dry, etc.
Click to expand...

OK thanks - only reason why I ask is I know I like wines between 3%-5% residual sugars, and I even like some of the dessert wines with as much as 16%. That's the only thing I have to gauge my tastes on - I'm just trying to figure out how to get there now. I'll mull this over a bit - the math frazzles me too sometimes.
 
YooperBrew said:
You can use honey, sugar, juice concentrate, etc, whatever you'd like
Click to expand...

OK, not meaning to beat a dead horse, but I really want to try some sort of frozen juice concentrate, at least with maybe a gallon of this 3 gal batch I have. I guess the real reason for my post was to get some suggestions as to what frozen concentrate would compliment Loganberry wine - do you have any suggestions?
 
Ceegar said:
OK, not meaning to beat a dead horse, but I really want to try some sort of frozen juice concentrate, at least with maybe a gallon of this 3 gal batch I have. I guess the real reason for my post was to get some suggestions as to what frozen concentrate would compliment Loganberry wine - do you have any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Sorry, no. I don't know what "loganberry" even is- we don't have them around here. I guess if it tastes like a raspberry, you could use a raspberry/apple concentrate, for example, depending on what you were trying to acheive.
 
YooperBrew said:
Sorry, no. I don't know what "loganberry" even is- we don't have them around here. I guess if it tastes like a raspberry, you could use a raspberry/apple concentrate, for example, depending on what you were trying to acheive.
Click to expand...

Thanks anyway - Well we don't have them here either. They are native of Oregon and they are a cross between European raspberry and Californian blackberry. I think I may have to either try a raspberry frozen concentrate, or I was even thinking of red grape. I'll have to experiment a bit. There's a winery that makes a Loganberry wine close to home here but it's more of a "wine beverage flavored with loganberry juice from concentrate" - so I'm not sure how they make it but it's pretty good. Mine is actually made with loganberry packed fruit, so maybe it will turn out even better - we'll see.
 
What about using some of the juice from the packed fruit? Or maybe ask the lcl winery to sell you some of their loganberry concentrate? I just bought 20lbs of blackberries from a lcl winery, (a smokin-good deal) so some of them will sell to home winemakers. Just a thought. Regards, GF.

EDIT: Since loganberry is a cross between blackberry & rasberry, I would think you could add a bit of one or the other, or both & get a good result. Also, I just remembered that the lcl winery I bought the blackberries from actually does use a small percentage of red rasberry in their blackberry wine, which is pretty tasty. Regards, GF.
 
gratus fermentatio said:
What about using some of the juice from the packed fruit? Or maybe ask the lcl winery to sell you some of their loganberry concentrate? I just bought 20lbs of blackberries from a lcl winery, (a smokin-good deal) so some of them will sell to home winemakers. Just a thought. Regards, GF.

EDIT: Since loganberry is a cross between blackberry & rasberry, I would think you could add a bit of one or the other, or both & get a good result. Also, I just remembered that the lcl winery I bought the blackberries from actually does use a small percentage of red rasberry in their blackberry wine, which is pretty tasty. Regards, GF.
Click to expand...

I can't use any from the packed fruit because I used the whole 96 oz can but asking the winery to sell some loganberry concentrate is a possibility - my son's girfriend's mother works there so the chances might be good. The color of theirs is more reddish then what my batch looks like - mine is a lot more on the pinkish side, so maybe using the loganberry juice from them might help with the coloring too.

I didn't think you could buy blackberry juice anywhere - I've never seen it anywhere before.
 

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