Back sweetening a kit wine?

[rtwdonald]

Hello,
Just wondering about backing sweetening a 10L kit wine. I’m thinking of keeping a small amount of concentrate (500ml-1L) out of the fermentation, and re adding it after stabilization.
Has anybody tried this? Will it work? Is that enough juice to hold back?
Any input is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ryan

 

[jgmillr1]

That should work fine and be plenty. It is difficult to gauge how much to hold back without knowing what the sugar level is in the concentrate and what you are looking for as a level of sweetness in the wine. A semi-sweet wine is like 2% residual sugar while sweet wines are 5%+. Depends on your tastes of course.

My gut feel is to follow the directions with the kit to get the wine stabilized and settled (aged). Then add in the reserved juice and let it settle a little longer before bottling. My concern is that is if you add it too soon that there may be still some live yeast that will try to work on the sugar in spite of the sorbate. The other concern is that the reserved juice won't have the same clarity as your finished wine, so you would need to let it settle out whatever is in suspension in the juice prior to bottling.

I personally filter my wine after back-sweetening, so aging and clarity isn't an issue for me. So hopefully someone else who does this will share their experience of what works best for them.