Advice wanted, what are my options to sweeten?

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Spud

Born again brewer
Joined
Mar 12, 2015
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Suffolk
Ok simple question. I'd like to brew a few girl party friendly bottles of wine for the lass.

Normal wines, full strength, but with sweetness somewhere between dessert and medium. So I'd like to achieve this by adding some form of sweetener that won't ferment.

So what I'm looking for is a few hints and tips.

1) What options do I have to sweeten my wines?

2) Based on a gallon demijohn, how do I work out how much would I add of the different sweeteners?

3) Is sweetening done in the last demijohn prior to bottling? Or is there a different time I'd be better off doing the sweetening?

Ideally I don't want something that will break down and taste artificial, so it needs to taste natural and stay that way.
 
You need a hydrometer then assuming you are going to stabilise the wine back sweeten with sugar or juice to around 1010 to start, better to go for a lower reading then increase the sweetness than use too much and it be over sweet.
 
This is some advice I was given by James smith on facebook's "wine and beer making homebrew uk" page. Dunno if it helps?

James Smith:
Medium to Sweet Wines - To the bulk matured dry wine add a crushed campden tablet and 1g (1/2 teaspoon) potassium sorbate per gallon. Sweeten to desired sweetness by adding sugar / grape concentrate / grape or apple juice. For a medium wine add 60g to 100g of sugar or 250ml of apple / grape juice or 60g grape concentrate. For a sweet wine, add up to 200g sugar or 500ml of apple / grape juice or 125g grape concentrate.

Sugar (As a Sweetener)
Place the sugar in a saucepan and cover in a little wine. Bring to boil and add to rest of wine and stir. Adding 100g sugar, will increase 1 gallon of wine by 65ml.
1 X 5ml Teaspoon of Sugar = 5g

S.G. / g sugar/L / g sugar/Gallon / Wine Style
1 0 / 0 / / Dry
1.01 / 30 / 136 / Medium Dry
1.015/ 44 / 200 / Medium Sweet
1.02 / 57 / 259 / Sweet
1.025 / 70 / 318 / Sweet
1.03 / 83 / 377 / Sweet
1.035 / 97 / 441 / Dessert
1.04 / 110 / 500 / Dessert

Id sweeten up half, adding a little at a time. Once your happy with half, do the same to the rest. You can always add more, but cant take away!
 

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