Too much sugar

[goranmagdic]

Good afternoon! I received a wine kit for Christmas, and have started making my first 1 gallon batch of date and rainsin wine, using the following recipe:

1kg Stoned Dates
500g raisins
1.5kg sugar
High Alcohol yeast
Pectolase
Yeast Nutrient

After adding 4.5 litres of water, and letting the fruit soak overnight, I took a sample, and my hydrometer floated way above the scale. I had to add almost 2 more litres (stirring after each jug of water) to get the specific gravity to around 1.090 (if I've read it correctly). Do you think the recipe has too much sugar, as the high floating level of the hydrometer suggests? Or have I done something wrong?

Thanks,
David

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I make the total amount of sugar in the DJ to 1100g for 13%.

 

[goranmagdic]

Thanks for the tip, very helpful :)

 

[Cwrw666]

I bought an old country wine book off ebay a while back, first published in 1955 - and all the wine recipes have at least 3 1/2 lbs of sugar in them, some have 4 lbs and one truly bizarre recipe has 6lbs of sugar in a gallon!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Was this picture on the cover. :lol:

 

[Cwrw666]

Was this picture on the cover. :lol:

:lol:
So far I haven't tried any of the recipes except for one for beer which was basically a jar of malt extract plus 2 `small handfuls of hops' plus a lb of sugar made up to a gallon. Well I skipped the sugar and used 2 jars of malt extract (from our local wholefoods shop). It's currently conditioning in the bottle but actually tasted ok when I bottled it - very strong, very malty, but it could have done with more hops; so maybe 1955 hands were bigger than modern hands?

There's another one I'm about to try as well - `Hop Ale' - which is hops, dandelion root, gentian root, and dark brown sugar. No malt! Should be a novelty...