Measuring O.G. after adding raisins/sultanas

[nik2]

I haven't made many wines yet, but so far I've been adding sugar to get the O.G. to 1.090 before adding the yeast.

For my next wine I'm using sultanas (elderflower wine), which I'm planning to soak overnight and then chop up before adding. I was wondering about the sugar from the sultanas though - from chopped sultanas do I need to wait a while before measuring the gravity because it'll take a while for the sugar to leach out?

If I left the sultanas in while fermenting, would this also make my OG measurement a bit out (as sugars continue to be released)? So far I've taken any pulp out before pitching the yeast which has made it all very controllable, but then it was wines like blackberry and rhubarb where it was easy to see that a lot of the juice had been extracted.

Nik

 

[nik2]

After reading around I'm thinking it's not a big deal. Sugar content of sultanas is only 10%. So for a recipe needing 500g that's only 50g of sugar which is not a lot compared to the 1 kg of refined sugar that's going into it.

Raisins would have been a different story at 65%. Jack Keller reckoned most of the sugar would be extracted if you left it overnight and had used pectolase (http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/sugar.asp)