It's fun to go back and watch one of your older videos. You've learned some good tricks along the way to producing quality content. Thanks for the channel. Your tips have certainly helped me make better homemade wines.
Lol, thank you! I often look back at old videos for b-roll clips and I can't believe how far they have come. When I was making those old ones I thought they were pretty good. Now they don't even compare to the better lighting, cameras, mics and editing. I'm hope in 10 years I will look back at these videos today and think the same thing.
This is exactly what I’ve been wondering about, except in regards to red wines not roses. Quite a few reds are sitting in the 20g/L to 30g/L dosage range which surprised me as they seem ‘drier’ on the palette when compared to say a typical 5g/L to 15g/L white wine, which seems ‘sweeter’. Turns out it’s just tannins in the red that balance out with the literal sweetness, and that the sugar content is just to round out the flavour and prevent bitter/acrid wines. Eye opener for a newbie like myself.
Last Summer I had a HUGE bumper crop of Figs. 60+ pounds . So,instead of letting most of them rot on the vine.Every day I'd harvest 3-5 pounds in a zip lock bag and freeze them. 2-1/2 months ago, I started making Fig Wine. ABV 18%.😎👍 I tasted it last week and I'm ready to bottle but I want to back sweeten it. 15 gallons total. I went to my local beer and wine making store and picked up a bag of Wine Conditioner (16 oz) which has sweetener and Potassium Sorbate. I hope this works . My wine is slightly hazy so I am using Buon Vino Mini-Jet Wine filtration machine. I am only using the 1st 2 filter pads cuz if I use #3, it will remove all the color from the wine. I'm wondering what #2 will do if any to the sweetner added ? Will it filter out that? Any tips ?
Great video! I'm trying to avoid adding sulfite or sorbate to my wines just to keep them as natural as possible. I've been fermenting dry, cold stabilizing in fridge for a couple months, adding sugar and bottling after that. I keep all the bottled wine in the fridge permanently and haven't had any pop yet, but I'm wondering if there are other issues to the way I'm doing this. I'm making muscadine wine. Thanks
Hi there a quick question, i put p sorbate in my strawberry wine a month ago but i forgot to add the sugar and its still bulk aging in the demijohns so do i have to re add more sorbate or can i go ahead and add the sugar to back sweeten
Hello, I am new wine producer. I want to make sweet wine. Can I stop fermentation with Potassium Sorbate and Potassium Metabisulfite? If yes in which dosages i can use these. Thank you for your help and your perfect helpful videos
You can't stop it with either but you will end up needing them. If you want to stall it intentionally you will need to cold crash, aka chill the wine to about 30 degrees F. Once it becomes crystal clear you can rack off the lees and add potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite. You can also back sweeten which is a lot easier. I have a video on that which I would suggest checking out.
I am new to this and about to get into this starting next week, so I am still in the leaning stages but this video is great and informative! It has information I that just haven't seen anywhere else, so thanks for posting this gem! My question though is, how did you calculate the percentages and ratios for adding the simple syrup to your liking, so that you know how much to back sweeten? In other words, how do you go about calculating the sample glasses at 2% - 3% vs the 3 gallons - how do go about figuring out those ratios: 1 glass vs the 3 gallons?
My guess would be that the bone dry wine samples are around 100ml or so before sugar syrup is added. Makes it easier to scale it up to the exact amount needed for the carboy. Just a guess though, can’t say for sure.
Help! I forgot to add Potassium Sorbate before bottling after sweetening. I have already corked the bottles. Can I cold crash the wine after bottling to avoid restarting fermentation? Or do I need to uncork and add Potassium Sorbate to each individual bottle?
You can add now if you just sweetened it. If it is starting to re-ferment then you can cold crash but you will need to get them off the yeast somehow. If you have enough fridge space you can just store the wine cold and skip all the above...
Yes, you can do that. Just keep in mind that the acids and flavor compounds will also be concentrated. In a case when your wine is based on a juice concentrate in the first place and it is lacking flavor, you could go that route.
So my blackberry wine is almost done in the secondary fermentation. I'm going to rack it again for aging and clearing because it needs to clear up a bit yet. I was going to add a camptdem tablet and potassium sorbet and let it sit for a few months. Should I wait to add the potassium sorbet right before bottling and sweetening? Or should I just add it when I let it clear. I herd it's supposed to help clearing because it stops the yeast.
I would add the campden tabs when you rack but hold off on the sorbate until it is clear and you are ready to bottle. The sorbate isn't that helpful when your wine is still cloudy and full of yeast because it doesn't actually stop the yeast. It just stops what yeast are in there from multiplying. If your wine is clear it should have very little yeast in it, so you are really just trying to stop those few yeast from multiplying like crazy when you add sugar back in.
The Home Winemaking Channel Ok thanks. I've never really back sweetened a wine, so I don't want to add sugar and have some exploding bottles or something.
I added syrup into my wine a few months ago without adding potassium sobate (I did not see your video before), and I think my wine is brewing again. Am I just wait till it stops bubbling then add camden tablet and bottle my wine? Or can I add potassium sobate into my wine now?? It is still in carboy bottle and airlock.
You will need to wait until it stops fermenting and clears up again, then rack off the lees and add the potassium sorbate and Camden tablets (metabisulfite). From there you can back sweeten again. You may want to consider back sweetening with juice to cut the ABV back a bit depending on what kind of wine it is. Since the syrup you added is fermenting it will be a little stronger than what you had originally intended
I back sweetened my wine. Yet, the syrup (2 cups of sugar to 1 cup of water, boiled for 2 min) settled on the bottom.... any suggestions how to prevent it? thanks
If the wine is clear, you can pour or rack it off the sediment then sweeten it with sugar. Make sure to add potassium sorbate, or it will probably start to re-ferment and pop your bottles.
Potassium sorbate is for stopping yeast to multiply, but what about potassium metabisulfite? I heart that it is for killing the yeast. If it is for killing the yeast, why to put sorbate? Can we just put potassium metabisulfite to kill the yeast and start bottling?
Wine yeast (s. Cerivasiae) has a very high sulfite tolerance, and even creates some SO2 of its own during fermentation. It takes a lot to actually kill wine yeast. More than you would ever put in wine. Sulfite basically creates unfavorable conditions for spoilage microbes and spoilage yeasts so that they stay dormant and in some cases will kill more sensitive bacteria. Additionally it reacts with oxygen so that it is not available to these organisms. One thing to keep in mind is that it is the acid in the wine that is doing a lot of the prevention here also. The lower the pH, the less sulfite you will need. At a pH of 3.75 or higher things are a lot more vulnerable. Tannin also plays a big role in scavenging oxygen. (in reds).
Thank you! A couple of reasons to use simple syrup. It mixes in much easier, so you can quickly taste the effect. Also, the acid in the wine will eventually invert table sugar (sucrose) to glucose and fructose. By making the simple syrup, you are inverting the sugar with heat (and sometimes a pinch of lemon juice for acid). Fructose + glucose tastes slightly sweeter and different than sucrose. If you sweeten with table sugar, you will often find that it tastes good when you sweeten, too sweet after a couple months when it inverts to fructose and glucose. You can totally just use table sugar directly, but it is a little harder to dial in the sweetness just right.
can you add potassium sorbate at any time to the wine ..I've racked off three of my wines n they are so dry started them in August they are so dry should I get potassium sorbate n try it or should I just use sugar syrup .
If your wine is crystal clear without any sediment on the bottom you can add it but there is no need until you sweeten it. You will periodically want to add potassium metabisulfite to prevent oxidation though.
Yes, potassium sorbate before the simple syrup. I would recommend 1/2tsp per gallon. Make sure your wine is clear and you have racked it off any sediment on the bottom before sweetening or it might start to re-ferment on you...
Pineapple. Sounds great!! Did you end up sweetening it? I'm a total newbie just finished first fermentation and it's potent but pretty puckery for my taste. Hope it did turn out well. I'm gonna try pineapple now. ✌️
It is the percent simple syrup really which could be a little lower than actual sugar since it is about half water. But for the sake of blending, it doesn't really matter too much the actual percent sugar as long as you can accurately scale it up to the entire batch. To convert to a percentage easily, just make 50mL samples. Then you can just multiply everything by 2 to get percentages. So if you had 3mL simple syrup and 47mL wine it would be 6% simple syrup. To scale that up, you can take for instance 6gallons which you would want to be 94% of the final volume so 6/.94=6.38gallons would be the total final volume. .38 gallons of simple syrup to achieve the right ratio or about 1.5qts.
@@TheHomeWinemakingChannel So I followed your directions and did 5mL of simple syrup to 45mL of wine. It was perfect, so if I double that it's 10% simple syrup. So my 6 gallons of wine would need to be 90% of the final volume. So 10/.90=11.11. Where do I go from here or did I do it wrong?
You want the 6 gallons to be 90% of the final solution. So if you take 6/.9 it comes out to 6.66. minus the original 6gallons or times .1 it comes out to .66gal of simple syrup for the whole batch.
Just potassium sorbate? You didn't also use K-meta? I'm just curious, I believe the less additives the better. I've been going with both based on previous info I was provided.
Yes, I also use K-meta to prevent oxidation and late malolactic fermentation. The k-sorbate prevents re-fermentation but without a bit of SO2 you are at risk of oxidation or MLF. If MLF occurs after adding the sorbate, you will get a geranium smell which is no good. If MLF occurs before, it is not a problem other than you won't have the malic acid which can be desirable in a semi-sweet to sweet wine.
When I add, I keep track of how much by volume so you can easily scale up. 3% addition by volume will probably read closer to 1.5 or 2 brix since you are likely starting around -1 or -1.5. brix is % sugar by weight.
Definitely but a couple rackings will also remove sediment with a lot less hassle. If you filter with too much sediment, you will be fighting clogged filters. Even with pretty Crystal clear wine it is easy to clog a filter if it is fine enough
The fermentation time is really going to depend on the temperature, available nutrients and yeast strain. It could take anywhere from 5 days to a month depending mostly on temp but also on the other factors. It should hopefully at least be slowing down by now. You can put a hydrometer in it if you have one to get an idea of how much sugar is left. You are fine to let it go though. Stalling is an option also but you will need to get it to 26-30F realistically to pull it off and it can be a little risky with certain yeasts that are prone to H2S production.
So u made good non additives pure wine thats good for you and has beneficial gut bacteria thats good for you and made it into a regular shelf wine 🤔🧐 if i do this i will juat buy store bought wine😳
It's fun to go back and watch one of your older videos. You've learned some good tricks along the way to producing quality content. Thanks for the channel. Your tips have certainly helped me make better homemade wines.
Lol, thank you! I often look back at old videos for b-roll clips and I can't believe how far they have come. When I was making those old ones I thought they were pretty good. Now they don't even compare to the better lighting, cameras, mics and editing. I'm hope in 10 years I will look back at these videos today and think the same thing.
I did this but just kept an airlock on to make sure the wine was stable for bottling. I dont like to add any chemicals. Turned out great.
This is exactly what I’ve been wondering about, except in regards to red wines not roses.
Quite a few reds are sitting in the 20g/L to 30g/L dosage range which surprised me as they seem ‘drier’ on the palette when compared to say a typical 5g/L to 15g/L white wine, which seems ‘sweeter’.
Turns out it’s just tannins in the red that balance out with the literal sweetness, and that the sugar content is just to round out the flavour and prevent bitter/acrid wines.
Eye opener for a newbie like myself.
Great Video, but the important part that I was looking for was how did you set up your taste test?
What do you think about pasteurizing wine to kill the yeast?
Good tip on the potassium!
Note to self...I keep having to remind myself..2:1 simple syrup. Thanks for these amazing videos!!
Last Summer I had a HUGE bumper crop of Figs. 60+ pounds . So,instead of letting most of them rot on the vine.Every day I'd harvest 3-5 pounds in a zip lock bag and freeze them. 2-1/2 months ago, I started making Fig Wine. ABV 18%.😎👍
I tasted it last week and I'm ready to bottle but I want to back sweeten it.
15 gallons total. I went to my local beer and wine making store and picked up
a bag of Wine Conditioner (16 oz) which has sweetener and Potassium Sorbate.
I hope this works . My wine is slightly hazy so I am using Buon Vino Mini-Jet
Wine filtration machine. I am only using the 1st 2 filter pads cuz if I use #3, it will remove all the color from the wine.
I'm wondering what #2 will do if any to
the sweetner added ? Will it filter out that? Any tips ?
Do you add these ingredients and sweetened and bottle in the same day?
Great video! I'm trying to avoid adding sulfite or sorbate to my wines just to keep them as natural as possible. I've been fermenting dry, cold stabilizing in fridge for a couple months, adding sugar and bottling after that. I keep all the bottled wine in the fridge permanently and haven't had any pop yet, but I'm wondering if there are other issues to the way I'm doing this. I'm making muscadine wine. Thanks
Welch's white grape juice has potassium sorbate in it..... so can I just add some of that to my homemade wine?
Just out of curiosity, can Karo Syrup be used to back sweeten wine?
Hi there a quick question, i put p sorbate in my strawberry wine a month ago but i forgot to add the sugar and its still bulk aging in the demijohns so do i have to re add more sorbate or can i go ahead and add the sugar to back sweeten
What about campden in this stage?
I have a question, does back sweeten the wine after all the stuff added will reduce the ABV?
At what point did you add the potassium sorbate tabs? After sweetening it? Or before and do you crush the tabs? Thanks in advance
Hello, I am new wine producer. I want to make sweet wine. Can I stop fermentation with Potassium Sorbate and Potassium Metabisulfite? If yes in which dosages i can use these.
Thank you for your help and your perfect helpful videos
You can't stop it with either but you will end up needing them. If you want to stall it intentionally you will need to cold crash, aka chill the wine to about 30 degrees F. Once it becomes crystal clear you can rack off the lees and add potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite. You can also back sweeten which is a lot easier. I have a video on that which I would suggest checking out.
Bro before back sweetening do we add campden tablets with potassium sorbet?
What's after Potassium Sorbate did you add?
I am new to this and about to get into this starting next week, so I am still in the leaning stages but this video is great and informative! It has information I that just haven't seen anywhere else, so thanks for posting this gem!
My question though is, how did you calculate the percentages and ratios for adding the simple syrup to your liking, so that you know how much to back sweeten?
In other words, how do you go about calculating the sample glasses at 2% - 3% vs the 3 gallons - how do go about figuring out those ratios: 1 glass vs the 3 gallons?
My guess would be that the bone dry wine samples are around 100ml or so before sugar syrup is added.
Makes it easier to scale it up to the exact amount needed for the carboy.
Just a guess though, can’t say for sure.
Help! I forgot to add Potassium Sorbate before bottling after sweetening. I have already corked the bottles. Can I cold crash the wine after bottling to avoid restarting fermentation? Or do I need to uncork and add Potassium Sorbate to each individual bottle?
You can add now if you just sweetened it. If it is starting to re-ferment then you can cold crash but you will need to get them off the yeast somehow. If you have enough fridge space you can just store the wine cold and skip all the above...
Could you just add a juice concentrate for a sweetner
Yes, you can do that. Just keep in mind that the acids and flavor compounds will also be concentrated. In a case when your wine is based on a juice concentrate in the first place and it is lacking flavor, you could go that route.
So my blackberry wine is almost done in the secondary fermentation. I'm going to rack it again for aging and clearing because it needs to clear up a bit yet. I was going to add a camptdem tablet and potassium sorbet and let it sit for a few months. Should I wait to add the potassium sorbet right before bottling and sweetening? Or should I just add it when I let it clear. I herd it's supposed to help clearing because it stops the yeast.
I would add the campden tabs when you rack but hold off on the sorbate until it is clear and you are ready to bottle. The sorbate isn't that helpful when your wine is still cloudy and full of yeast because it doesn't actually stop the yeast. It just stops what yeast are in there from multiplying. If your wine is clear it should have very little yeast in it, so you are really just trying to stop those few yeast from multiplying like crazy when you add sugar back in.
The Home Winemaking Channel
Ok thanks. I've never really back sweetened a wine, so I don't want to add sugar and have some exploding bottles or something.
'll
I added syrup into my wine a few months ago without adding potassium sobate (I did not see your video before), and I think my wine is brewing again. Am I just wait till it stops bubbling then add camden tablet and bottle my wine? Or can I add potassium sobate into my wine now?? It is still in carboy bottle and airlock.
You will need to wait until it stops fermenting and clears up again, then rack off the lees and add the potassium sorbate and Camden tablets (metabisulfite). From there you can back sweeten again. You may want to consider back sweetening with juice to cut the ABV back a bit depending on what kind of wine it is. Since the syrup you added is fermenting it will be a little stronger than what you had originally intended
How remove sour taste
I back sweetened my wine. Yet, the syrup (2 cups of sugar to 1 cup of water, boiled for 2 min) settled on the bottom.... any suggestions how to prevent it? thanks
Hey its been almost 22 days i hav put my wine in jar.. now i tasted little ,but suger is less, do i can add extra suger at this time.... ??
If the wine is clear, you can pour or rack it off the sediment then sweeten it with sugar. Make sure to add potassium sorbate, or it will probably start to re-ferment and pop your bottles.
Add altogether with the sugar?
Potassium sorbate is for stopping yeast to multiply, but what about potassium metabisulfite? I heart that it is for killing the yeast. If it is for killing the yeast, why to put sorbate? Can we just put potassium metabisulfite to kill the yeast and start bottling?
Wine yeast (s. Cerivasiae) has a very high sulfite tolerance, and even creates some SO2 of its own during fermentation. It takes a lot to actually kill wine yeast. More than you would ever put in wine. Sulfite basically creates unfavorable conditions for spoilage microbes and spoilage yeasts so that they stay dormant and in some cases will kill more sensitive bacteria. Additionally it reacts with oxygen so that it is not available to these organisms. One thing to keep in mind is that it is the acid in the wine that is doing a lot of the prevention here also. The lower the pH, the less sulfite you will need. At a pH of 3.75 or higher things are a lot more vulnerable. Tannin also plays a big role in scavenging oxygen. (in reds).
Great video. Maybe I missed it but why make simple syrup instead of just adding sugar directly?
Thank you! A couple of reasons to use simple syrup. It mixes in much easier, so you can quickly taste the effect. Also, the acid in the wine will eventually invert table sugar (sucrose) to glucose and fructose. By making the simple syrup, you are inverting the sugar with heat (and sometimes a pinch of lemon juice for acid). Fructose + glucose tastes slightly sweeter and different than sucrose. If you sweeten with table sugar, you will often find that it tastes good when you sweeten, too sweet after a couple months when it inverts to fructose and glucose. You can totally just use table sugar directly, but it is a little harder to dial in the sweetness just right.
@@TheHomeWinemakingChannel Thank you so much!
can you add potassium sorbate at any time to the wine ..I've racked off three of my wines n they are so dry started them in August they are so dry should I get potassium sorbate n try it or should I just use sugar syrup .
If your wine is crystal clear without any sediment on the bottom you can add it but there is no need until you sweeten it. You will periodically want to add potassium metabisulfite to prevent oxidation though.
what was the PH of your strawberry wine when you decided to back sweeten it?
I would have to check my notes but it was probably around 3.3
The Home Winemaking Channel thanks. It doesn’t seem like too tart. Thanks for sharing.
Can I add strawberries to a wine that has been fermenting for weeks?
It is a little late to add them but it will probably be fine and create a bit of a secondary fermentation with the yeast.
Hi did you put the potassium sorbate in before the syrup, and how much would you recommend per gallon
Yes, potassium sorbate before the simple syrup. I would recommend 1/2tsp per gallon. Make sure your wine is clear and you have racked it off any sediment on the bottom before sweetening or it might start to re-ferment on you...
my wife's face turns red from the sulfites, does the potassium sorbate cause sulfites? if so is there another way to stop the fermenting process?
@@funiwant you could pasteurized the wine. That process uses no additives .
I made pineapple wine I feel that sweet isn't enough, can I add more sugar in finished wine ? How to add ?
Pineapple. Sounds great!! Did you end up sweetening it? I'm a total newbie just finished first fermentation and it's potent but pretty puckery for my taste. Hope it did turn out well. I'm gonna try pineapple now. ✌️
How did you figure out the sugar percentage? I am only familiar with adding 1 part to 2 parts and such.
It is the percent simple syrup really which could be a little lower than actual sugar since it is about half water. But for the sake of blending, it doesn't really matter too much the actual percent sugar as long as you can accurately scale it up to the entire batch. To convert to a percentage easily, just make 50mL samples. Then you can just multiply everything by 2 to get percentages. So if you had 3mL simple syrup and 47mL wine it would be 6% simple syrup. To scale that up, you can take for instance 6gallons which you would want to be 94% of the final volume so 6/.94=6.38gallons would be the total final volume. .38 gallons of simple syrup to achieve the right ratio or about 1.5qts.
@@TheHomeWinemakingChannel So I followed your directions and did 5mL of simple syrup to 45mL of wine. It was perfect, so if I double that it's 10% simple syrup. So my 6 gallons of wine would need to be 90% of the final volume. So 10/.90=11.11. Where do I go from here or did I do it wrong?
You want the 6 gallons to be 90% of the final solution. So if you take 6/.9 it comes out to 6.66. minus the original 6gallons or times .1 it comes out to .66gal of simple syrup for the whole batch.
@@TheHomeWinemakingChannel thank you very much!
What yeast did you use for your strawberry wine?
Lalvin EC1118. It is reliable and does well at a huge range of temperatures.
Just potassium sorbate? You didn't also use K-meta? I'm just curious, I believe the less additives the better. I've been going with both based on previous info I was provided.
Yes, I also use K-meta to prevent oxidation and late malolactic fermentation. The k-sorbate prevents re-fermentation but without a bit of SO2 you are at risk of oxidation or MLF. If MLF occurs after adding the sorbate, you will get a geranium smell which is no good. If MLF occurs before, it is not a problem other than you won't have the malic acid which can be desirable in a semi-sweet to sweet wine.
How did you measure the 2% to 3% simple syrup by volume? Are you talking about being between 2 to 3 brix on the hydrometer after sweetening?
When I add, I keep track of how much by volume so you can easily scale up. 3% addition by volume will probably read closer to 1.5 or 2 brix since you are likely starting around -1 or -1.5. brix is % sugar by weight.
Wouldnt filtering help remove sediments?
Definitely but a couple rackings will also remove sediment with a lot less hassle. If you filter with too much sediment, you will be fighting clogged filters. Even with pretty Crystal clear wine it is easy to clog a filter if it is fine enough
@@TheHomeWinemakingChannel I rake 2-3 times in whole process and give a month time between each raking. Wine colour comes nice and Crystal clear.
nice tutorial
Thank you!!!!
I think I added too much sugar because my wine have been bubbling for 10 days , is it okay to let it continue to ferment?
The fermentation time is really going to depend on the temperature, available nutrients and yeast strain. It could take anywhere from 5 days to a month depending mostly on temp but also on the other factors. It should hopefully at least be slowing down by now. You can put a hydrometer in it if you have one to get an idea of how much sugar is left. You are fine to let it go though. Stalling is an option also but you will need to get it to 26-30F realistically to pull it off and it can be a little risky with certain yeasts that are prone to H2S production.
So u made good non additives pure wine thats good for you and has beneficial gut bacteria thats good for you and made it into a regular shelf wine 🤔🧐 if i do this i will juat buy store bought wine😳