How not to ...

[MKG]

I feel a bit of a plonker.

You may remember the cans of grape juice I got at next to nothing? Well, I got some more - lots more! And if you also remember, they made a reasonable white wine. OH likes sweet white wine (I never managed to complete her education) so I thought, as you do, well OK - sweet white wine it is. And as the first recipe was so simple and as grape juice is so easy to deal with, I convinced myself I didn't need any notes. What could be simpler?

The grape juice already had enough sugar content for a 8 to 8.5% wine. On to the added sugar calculations, then, and I'm tossing up in my mind whether or not to use some demerara in the mix. Well, yes I am, so it's going to feel a bit heavier than normal and have a strong enough flavour to carry a bit more alcohol - I'll aim for 15% ABV, I think, so I need a total sugar content of about 3lbs. Simples!!

It's easier to see how the fermentation is going without the demerara, so I'm going to use that as a feeder, adding a bit of demerara solution at a time to enable the yeast to get used to more alcohol. That's the way to do it. So, 3 lbs of sugar needed, a pound of which will be demerara (see where this is going?), do the maths (easy) and then make up a syrup of 2 lbs of granulated sugar, stick it in with the grape juice and leave it alone for a while. It went off like a rocket again. There was so much gas coming off that I wouldn't have had a chance of getting a hydrometer reading without taking off a sample and forcibly stopping the effervescence. So I estimated when to start adding the demerara. It was still going well (not quite so active, but healthy) when I added the last four ounces. Now all I was doing was waiting for the fermentation to stop. Which it did, unfortunately leaving behind a liquid with a light brown haze which would not clear.

The penny still hadn't dropped. It wasn't until I heated a sample of the wine - just on the off-chance, you know? - that the haze disappeared. Then it dawned on me - the haze was demerara sugar held in suspension and it was still there because I'd completely forgotten the 8%'s worth of sugar already in the juice. So now I had a gallon of super-sweet wine which is, of necessity, at the top of the fermentation range of the yeast I used (which was stuff you now get at Wilkinson's which will do 18% with no problem and more if you treat it nicely.

And OH doesn't like it.

[Green Aura]

Can't you water it down and start again.

[MKG]

Oh, it's not a chuck-out, GA. I can rescue something.

Doesn't stop me feeling stupid, though

[Odsox]

Hmmm, and I'm taking instructions from this person.

First part of the apple wine complete, it's all sulking, sorry soaking in the larder.

[Brewtrog]

We've all done it, I made a 9% beer once because I forgot that malt extract was basically sugar, so 2 tins of extract plus the usual amount of sugar for 1 tin. To be fair it was a happy accident in that case (very nice beer, a definite sipping beer though). Just blend it with something dry.