Fruit wine ending up too sweet--why???

[cottonwoodks]

Hey folks,

I started making a bunch of different fruit wines last winter, and we drank a bottle of one of them last week, and I was amazed at how delicious it was. It was pineapple cherry (with cherries from my Montmorency cherry trees that I'd frozen in the summer). I had bottled it last December. It wasn't sweet at all, and had some really nice flavors, including a definite pineapple one.

But I had three other gallons of blueberry, blueberry/apple, and pineapple/peach, which I just bottled today, and all three of them are sickeningly sweet (I'm not into sweet). I measured the specific gravity, and it was below 1.000 for all three of them (0.985, 0.990, and 0.996). So what's going on? I thought if the SG was at one or below, it wouldn't be sweet, and these clearly are. They're also plenty alcoholic, so SOMETHING fermented.

 

[Mr_S_Jerusalem]

Are the other ones made of fruit juices from cartons?

 

[cottonwoodks]

Are the other ones made of fruit juices from cartons?

They were made from frozen fruit (plus sugar). I followed recipes......

 

[Mr_S_Jerusalem]

ah i was thinking it could be artificial sweetener in in fruit juice.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hmmm. I wonder if the chart in your hydrometer may have shifted and the reading is inaccurate. Do you have any distilled water that you can use to take a reading? And then add a known amount of sugar to a known volume of water and take that reading.

 

[cottonwoodks]

Hmmm. I wonder if the chart in your hydrometer may have shifted and the reading is inaccurate. Do you have any distilled water that you can use to take a reading? And then add a known amount of sugar to a known volume of water and take that reading.

Good idea. I'll do that.

 

[Coffee49]

You may want to monitor the cork depth of those bottles, there may have been some yeast left that awoke burning bottling, if your corks start to push out slowly you may have to transfer the wine back into a vessel, good corks are .75 ea. But if you can save the wine it is a win win

 

[cottonwoodks]

You may want to monitor the cork depth of those bottles, there may have been some yeast left that awoke burning bottling, if your corks start to push out slowly you may have to transfer the wine back into a vessel, good corks are .75 ea. But if you can save the wine it is a win win

I was only just now bottling it. They'd been in a gallon jug with an airlock.