Cab Franc Dessert wine

[akacake]

I've started an RJS Cab Franc dessert wine from a kit. After the primary fermentation I took a SG which was 1.040. I left it another week, and it was still the same 1.040. Tried another kit and it had the same results , stuck at 1.040 after 2 weeks. Room Temp is 21C . Maybe this IS the correct SG for this type of dessert wine? The other types of dessert wines I made at the same time all achieved a SG of below .998. Unfortunately I did not take a SG reading at the start of any of them. Should I dump these or is there any hope?

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi akacake - and welcome. If you are making a kit the kit should advise you what to expect at each "stage" of the process. Never made a kit and have never tried to make a dessert wine but I would imagine that they should be quite sweet. (40 points is about 1 lb of sugar in every gallon of wine) Now, whether the sweetness comes after fermenting dry , stabilization and then back sweetening or comes because the starting gravity is so high that the yeast selected cannot ferment the must without leaving 40 points of sugar only the instructions will tell you.

 

[pdxal]

Are you, by chance, using a refractometer to measure the gravity?

 

[akacake]

Thank you for the replies. I will look and see if I still have the instructions and see what it says for the expected SG. I am using a hydrometer not a refractor, not sure what the latter does?

 

[bernardsmith]

Refractometers measure the sugar content of a solution by measuring the angle that light is bent as it travels through the solution. It is best used for measuring the sugar content of fruit (to help determine ripeness ) but in the presence of alcohol the way light bends is different from the way it bends (refracts) in water... so there are calculations that need to be performed to allow you to make good sense of a reading using a refractometer after fermentation has begun. The up-side of using a refractometer is that it uses a drop of liquid and not a couple of hundred ccs.

 

[jgmillr1]

I checked the instructions for this wine and it says the the target SG is 1.06-1.07 before you move on to the stabilizing and clearing step. Sounds like you are ready to move on if it is 1.04 then.

https://www.rjscraftwinemaking.com/cru-specialty/cabernet-franc-style-dessert-wine/

 

[akacake]

Thank you for your help! I am glad that I won't have to dump it!!