Skeeter Pee - a question about backsweetening

[bernardsmith]

Making my first batch of SP and I am trying to get a handle on how sweet most people like this. My thinking is about 4 oz per gallon, (about 1.5 lbs for 6 gallons) but is that what most of you add or do you find that folk prefer this even more sweet?

 

[jgmillr1]

Probably depends on how much lemon and deacidifiers you ended up using to get to the final TA. I use a LOT of each to maximize the lemon flavor and my TA typically ends up around 14g/L. So my SP can take upwards of 90g/L of sugar without seeing too sweet.

I'd measure your TA and multiply by say 5 for a starting point on your sugar addition.

 

[bernardsmith]

Probably depends on how much lemon and deacidifiers you ended up using to get to the final TA. I use a LOT of each to maximize the lemon flavor and my TA typically ends up around 14g/L. So my SP can take upwards of 90g/L of sugar without seeing too sweet.

I'd measure your TA and multiply by say 5 for a starting point on your sugar addition.

is that a good rule of thumb to use to determine how sweet a country wine might need to be ie 5 times TA for the amount of sugar you might consider?

 

[jgmillr1]

A factor of 5 will be sweet but not yet cloying, to my taste at least. Going down to 3 still brings out plenty of fruit flavors while remaining less obviously sweet. A factor of 7 is getting cloying to me.

I find it's just a rough starting point to dial in the final sweetness for your own taste through bench trials. Acid can vary quite a lot with fruit wines and some sweetness seems to bring out more flavor.

 

[bernardsmith]

I guess I knew that the more acid there is in a fruit wine, the more sweetness it may need to balance that acidity but I never thought about viewing the measure of TA being a useful starting point. Great idea. Thanks.

 

[jgmillr1]

I actually use this same process for my sweet grape wines too. Concord can easily run a TA of 10g/L. A lot of the hybrid grapes can be high as well. It gets me in ballpark so I can do bench trials and dial it in. And like you said, fruit wines are all over the map.