Back sweet vs. Carbonation

[mrchaos101]

Please explain this to me.

If I add juice/sugar to back sweeten wine...I understand I add to wine and wait 10 to 11 days then bottel.

But I am reading on the hard lemonaid...they add sugar...and bottel to carbonate.

How does it carbonate one and not the other.

How long does it take to carbonate the hard lemonaid after you bottel.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

Although your post is kind of confusing, I'll give it a guess as to what you mean.

1) Don't know much on the subject of wine...

2) You can add juice/sugar at bottling time for the purpose of sweetening it. You either have to use non-fermentable sugar, pasteurize for the purpose of killing the yeast, or keep it cold to make the yeast go dormant.

3) See #2

4) Same as beer...about two to three weeks in the bottle.

 

[Yooper]

Please explain this to me.

If I add juice/sugar to back sweeten wine...I understand I add to wine and wait 10 to 11 days then bottel.

But I am reading on the hard lemonaid...they add sugar...and bottel to carbonate.

How does it carbonate one and not the other.

How long does it take to carbonate the hard lemonaid after you bottel.

If you add sugar/juice to wine to sweeten it, it will continue to ferment and it will carbonate (and then the corks will pop out or the bottles will explode), the same as with hard lemonade. The idea is only adding enough sugar to carbonate the wine- a prescribed amount of sugar so that the bottles won't blow up.

If you want to sweeten a wine, and avoid bottle bombs and/or carbonation, the wine must be stabilized first with a combination of sorbate and campden tablets. Once the wine is completely fermented out, and completely clear and no longer dropping any lees at all after at least 60 days, it is racked into the campden and sorbate and allowed to rest for a few days. Then it is sweetened to taste, and allowed to sit for a few days to ensure fermentation doesn't restart, then it is bottled.

 

[DoctorCAD]

Just adding juice or sugar to wine will not necessarily sweeten it. If there are enough yeast cells in your wine, it will simply start fermenting again. That is what carbonates it, the CO2 from additional fermentation. To sweeten wine, you need to add the correct amounts of k-meta and k-sorbate to inhibit the yeast. No fermentation, no carbonation.

 

[mrchaos101]

Just adding juice or sugar to wine will not necessarily sweeten it. If there are enough yeast cells in your wine, it will simply start fermenting again. That is what carbonates it, the CO2 from additional fermentation. To sweeten wine, you need to add the correct amounts of k-meta and k-sorbate to inhibit the yeast. No fermentation, no carbonation.

K-sorbate and Potassium Sorbate are same? Use Sorbate to "kill" yeast?

AND once yeast is dead, the sweet will stay in wine... but how do you carbonate and keep sweet in? If you need yeast cells to carbonate, dont they keep going till surgar is gone...or till top blows?

 

[slym2none]

Unless you force-carbonate, you have to pick one or the other.

 

[Yooper]

K-sorbate and Potassium Sorbate are same? Use Sorbate to "kill" yeast?

AND once yeast is dead, the sweet will stay in wine... but how do you carbonate and keep sweet in? If you need yeast cells to carbonate, dont they keep going till surgar is gone...or till top blows?

Sorbate doesn't kill yeast. It inhibits yeast reproduction, so it's used after fermentation finishes to prevent the sweetening agent from fermenting.

If you use sorbate, you will not be able to bottle carbonate.

It's easy to make a dry wine or cider. It's easy to make a sparkling dry wine or cider. it's easy to make a still sweetened wine or cider. It's very difficult to make a sparkling sweetened wine or cider without kegging gear.

If you want to stabilize, the cider/wine needs to be completely clear and racked off the lees (so that there are few yeast still in suspension and no lees at all) and into a mixture of campden (sulfite) and sorbate. The usual dose of campden is 1 crushed and dissolved tablet per gallon, and for sorbate it's 1/2 teaspoon per gallon. It can be mixed in a little water, and then the cider/wine/mead racked into it. That will ensure no fermentation will occur.

Sorbate doesn't kill yeast, but it inhibits yeast reproduction. That's why it doesn't "work" if you add it to a fermenter that has billions and billions of yeast, as the yeast doesn't need to reproduce then. Campden doesn't kill yeast either, but sorbate works better in the presence of sulfites so it is added along with the sorbate.

This is cider, not wine, but it's the same process: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=508303

A beginner write up may be helpful to answer these questions.

 

[HB_in_Subic]

Another option is to leave it dry, add about 4 oz of corn sugar for carbonating 5 gallons. Wait a few weeks and it will be carbonated. Then add some lemon or sugar to taste per glass.

 

[fuelish]

I advise one and all to listen to Yooper in any and every thread she posts....the lady knows her stuff and speaks the truth Carry on, Yooper, you are an incredible asset to this site...

 

[mrchaos101]

Learned a lot here. The Raspberry batch was stabilized and back sweetened per advise given i have about 9 days more to wait to bottel.
Yooper....how long can wine sit in the secondary after I have done this? Would it hurt if I wait a month or two before I bottel?

 

[Yooper]

Learned a lot here. The Raspberry batch was stabilized and back sweetened per advise given i have about 9 days more to wait to bottel.
Yooper....how long can wine sit in the secondary after I have done this? Would it hurt if I wait a month or two before I bottel?

As long as it's topped up appropriately, it can sit for a very long time. Maybe years.

 

[mrchaos101]

Thank you.

 

[2pot]

You CAN carbonate and sweeten in the bottle.
I bottled an apple cider a few months ago and did this.
You just need to add a fermentable sweetener to carbonate and a non-fermentable sweetener to sweeten.
For carbonation add the appropriate amount of corn sugar,table sugar,DME,brown sugar, carbonation tablets, what ever you would usually use to carbonate your beer.
To sweeten I used Xylitol you could also use Stevia.
I used 1/3 cup of brown sugar and 2/3 cup of Xylitol.
Of course you would not want to stabilize (sorbate) or there will be no carbonation.