Back at the brewing, quick one about sugar...

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Peregrinus

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Hi everyone,

I used to be on this forum around 4 or 5 years ago (same username) but then life got in the way (marriage, house move and recently kids) but now have just started my first brew for that time.

I have an allotment which has a mature plum tree (or gage, not quite sure) from which I picked the required 2.75 kg of fruit from yesterday. I am following a recipe by the late great Berry and I know the sugar he liked to use is too high. Any suggestions? He states 1.5 kg. Is it a case of taking the SG after straining to calculate it?

I'm looking forward to getting back in to brewing, its been a while!
 
Hi,

Welcome to the forum, similar story here - wife, house, kids etc. but I'm now fully back into homebrewing. My missus also has an allotment but alas she doesn't grow much that is fermentable.

With regards to your question I'm assuming it's a 1 gallon (~4.5L) batch you're doing? If so the 1.5 kg is a lot of sugar, if you were to just ferment that alone assuming you had a high alcohol tolerant yeast that could cope with it then it would come in somewhere around 17% ABV.

When I make fruit juice wines I aim for about 1.2 kg total sugar content which should give a finished product with an ABV of around 14%, some prefer it a bit weaker than this.

Googling seems to suggest that raw plums contain about 9.9% sugar. I don't know if you be able to extract all that sugar when juicing them for wine so say you get 8% meaning your 2.75 kg of plums yields 0.22kg of fermentable sugar. I'd then add no more than a 1kg bag of sugar to get approximately 1.2kg total sugar wanted, bit less if you don't want it to be rocket fuel say 800 - 900g to get it in the 12 - 13% alcohol range.

Good luck!
 
Cheers Graz,

having more of a read of Berry's book it appears that this recipe is for a dessert wine which would be high alcohol and very sweet. I am after a table wine of around 12% so I will take a reading after straining and then work out the sugar from there which depending on the plum sugar level will be around 800 - 900 grams at a guess. This also means I have got too much fruit as well but that is not a problem hopefully, just adds to the flavour!
 
The DJ is now made up. The initial SG after straining was 1.025 which equates to 265g of sugar. I was aiming for 12% which requires 1065g and so this made it a nice easy 800g of additional sugar. This I have done but my new SG has come up a little short at 1.085 which is potential for 11.3% so somewhere I have lost 55g of sugar! Never mind, first attempt in 6 years so lets see how it goes.
 

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