Wine and sugar

[Guitarman703]

I did a stupid thing I have a welches grape juice wine fermenting right now. I have been racking every two weeks. After the second racking one month of fermentation I added sugar approximately 5 ounces or so because the wine after tasting was very dry. Once I added the sugar the wine immediately foamed up about one inch of foam and after about 24 hours no foam. Have I messed up my wine, and am I still on track to bottle in another month? The air lock has all but stopped bubbling. But it still has a little more clearing to do.

 

[pumpkinman2012]

You added sugar to a fermenting wine....well...it will be even dryer yet. By adding sugar, you can stress your yeast resulting in off odors such as rotten eggs, do you have a yeast nutrient?
The only way to sweeten a wine is after fermentation is complete. You will need to stabilize it after the wine ferments to dry, between .998-.992 with meta and sorbate and back sweeten to your preference.
Do you have a hydrometer?

 

[WilliamSlayer]

As pumpkin man said, adding sugar to a wine will keep fermentation going (that was the foaming btw) so allow fermentation to stop. Then, you can stabilize and back sweeten.

 

[WilliamSlayer]

This is my notes for cider, but it can easily translate to wine....

How to Sussreserve

Rack to a fresh carboy leaving all the settled out yeast and sediment behind.

Add:

1/2 tsp potassium sorbate per gallon.
1/4 - 1/2 tsp TOTAL potassium metabisulfite for the batch.

Add and stir gently. Give the cider 4-7 days.

Then rack to a fresh carboy and sweeten. If planning on kegging/force carbing, you can rack to the keg instead of a carboy.

This my proven method for Sussreserve.

As to how much to sweeten, that is very subjective. You should pull a sample, taste, and add sweetener slowly to your desired level. Then scale up for the entire batch.

I sweeten with more cider, usually in a ratio close to 1:5 or 1:6 (1 gal cider to 5 gal hard cider).

Its very easy to make a sweet cider... OR a carbonated cider. But a bit tricky to make one that is BOTH. To do that you must sweeten, then artificially carb (force carb), or sweeten with something non-fermentable (like splenda or xylitol), and bottle carb with priming sugar.[/QUOTE]

 

[Guitarman703]

Thanks everyone