southlake333
Member
Sooo...I recently bottled several 1 gallon sample batches of wine. Two were cider, one was welch's grape and one was welch's black cherry grape. Now that they have been bottled for a few days all I have to say is eww. The flavors are great but they are amazingly overloaded with sweetness. So let me explain what I did.
For the ciders, I sweetened each gallon with 1.5 cans of apple juice concentrate, then tasted. There was still a very bitter taste so I added half a cup of sugar. That sweetened it up just right (or so I thought). The SG was 1.020 of one and 1.024 of the other. Then I bottled. Now 4 days later they just taste like sugar.
For the Welch's I sweetened each with 1.5 cans of grape concentrate (no sugar). The black cherry wasn't quite done fermenting so it still had some original sugar in it (but these were tests anyway). The resulting SG was 1.034 for the grape and 1.042 for the black cherry grape. The grape was actually very good just too sweet as it was more like grape juice with a teeny after bite of alcohol. The black cherry grape just tasted like straight grape juice.
Now I don't like dry, I'm more of a wine cooler type person (I know, very manly) but obviously I went overboard on the sweetening. Its a good thing I made test batches so I don't ruin my 6 gallon cider or Welch's batches. But now I need to figure out what a correct SG is before I bottle the big batches.
So my questions are as follows:
#1 - Why do I actually feel the sugar in the cider when I take a sip? I only used a half cup but I didn't heat it in water first, I just threw it right in and mixed thoroughly.
#2 - I sweetened to where these all tasted good at bottling. Obviously that was wrong. How do I know when I've hit a good sweetness level that won't be overpowering as it ages and the alcohol bite recedes?
For the ciders, I sweetened each gallon with 1.5 cans of apple juice concentrate, then tasted. There was still a very bitter taste so I added half a cup of sugar. That sweetened it up just right (or so I thought). The SG was 1.020 of one and 1.024 of the other. Then I bottled. Now 4 days later they just taste like sugar.
For the Welch's I sweetened each with 1.5 cans of grape concentrate (no sugar). The black cherry wasn't quite done fermenting so it still had some original sugar in it (but these were tests anyway). The resulting SG was 1.034 for the grape and 1.042 for the black cherry grape. The grape was actually very good just too sweet as it was more like grape juice with a teeny after bite of alcohol. The black cherry grape just tasted like straight grape juice.
Now I don't like dry, I'm more of a wine cooler type person (I know, very manly) but obviously I went overboard on the sweetening. Its a good thing I made test batches so I don't ruin my 6 gallon cider or Welch's batches. But now I need to figure out what a correct SG is before I bottle the big batches.
So my questions are as follows:
#1 - Why do I actually feel the sugar in the cider when I take a sip? I only used a half cup but I didn't heat it in water first, I just threw it right in and mixed thoroughly.
#2 - I sweetened to where these all tasted good at bottling. Obviously that was wrong. How do I know when I've hit a good sweetness level that won't be overpowering as it ages and the alcohol bite recedes?