Adding sugar water during primary?

[Beniskickbutt]

Is it okay to add more sugar water during fermentation in primary?

I think I should be ok but wanted some reassurance from you seasoned vets.

Here's what I did...

I mixed some welch 100% natural concord grade concentrate and sugar water in my 6 gallon primary fermentation bucket. Got to an initial reading of 12% abv (I should really start using SG )

Fermented for 5 days and got down to about 5%~ so far on the reading (so far so good).

I then noticed my bucket was only filled to 4gallons rather than the 5 needed to fill my carboy. I panicked since I had read its bad to leave space in a carboy.

Thinking quickly to fix my shortage, I boiled a little over half gallon of sugar water at 12% abv and let it cool and tossed it into my primary. I then boiled another little over half at 13%~ abv and tossed this into my primary as well.

Has anyone ever done something similar? I'm hoping my fermentation isn't dying off and i'll just end up with a batch of overly sugary juice.

 

[WVMJ]

You just added more volume at the same OG to an active ferment, no problem with the fermentation (as long as you cooled the syrup down first before adding!). Slow down a little and dont panic, it might have been better to go to the store and get another can of concentrate and dilute that in some water and add it to your wine so you didnt dilute the flavors any. There are very few situations where you need to act fast, like when the racking can slips out of your carboy, when your bottling bucket gasket spring a leak, when you add dry sugar to an active ferment and it goes volcano, those demand fast action, other things are slower and let you think about them or even post a question on here before its an emergency. A little bit of oak goes very well with concord. WVMJ

 

[Beniskickbutt]

You just added more volume at the same OG to an active ferment, no problem with the fermentation (as long as you cooled the syrup down first before adding!). Slow down a little and dont panic, it might have been better to go to the store and get another can of concentrate and dilute that in some water and add it to your wine so you didnt dilute the flavors any. There are very few situations where you need to act fast, like when the racking can slips out of your carboy, when your bottling bucket gasket spring a leak, when you add dry sugar to an active ferment and it goes volcano, those demand fast action, other things are slower and let you think about them or even post a question on here before its an emergency. A little bit of oak goes very well with concord. WVMJ

Awesome! good to hear. I actually added all concentrate my recipe called for but just failed at added the correct amount of h2o so I should be good. All is well with the world

 

[bernardsmith]

Awesome! good to hear. I actually added all concentrate my recipe called for but just failed at added the correct amount of h2o so I should be good. All is well with the world

All is probably well with your fermentation , but with the world? I am not so sure. Sadly, we seem to be living in the middle of a particularly violent and hostile age where folk abhor difference - and they are proud to show it, where we tend to say "me" and "mine" and where the circle that includes "we" and "ours" contains so very, very few.

 

[WVMJ]

Bernie, no drinking and writing, WVMJ

All is probably well with your fermentation , but with the world? I am not so sure. Sadly, we seem to be living in the middle of a particularly violent and hostile age where folk abhor difference - and they are proud to show it, where we tend to say "me" and "mine" and where the circle that includes "we" and "ours" contains so very, very few.

 

[MaltedBayerl]

Got to an initial reading of 12% abv (I should really start using SG )....

.... I boiled a little over half gallon of sugar water at 12% abv and let it cool and tossed it into my primary. I then boiled another little over half at 13%~ abv ...

I think you have mixed up some terms. It is 0% ABV until its fermenting. ABV is Alcohol By Volume. The potential ABV is maybe what you were looking at, but everyone seems to measure sugar levels in gravity points. (1.050, 1.106, etc.)