How many wine makers do we have here?

[DavidH]

Good luck! Hope it makes you HAPPY.

 

[wekiva bird]

kuntrygirl: How is the fig wine doing?

 

[kuntrygirl]

Ooooo. So glad that you asked. My calendar on my phone poppes up to tell me to check on it. So I will be checking on it today. I will be so disappointed and heart broken if I failed in trying to make it. I am so looking forward to drinking some fig wine. On yesterday, I gave myself a chuckle. I walked into the room where all of my wine are in buckets where they are fermenting and I realized none of them are labeled. Lol. So I don't know what is what. Lol. I think that means I have too much going on. Lol

 

[kuntrygirl]

Ok. Just checked on the fig wine and my readings are all good. My hydrometer is showing 17% alcohol but when I tasted a sample, it doesn't have a 17% alcohol taste. I just finished a 21 day experiment with a wine recipe that I found on You Tube (2 cute Indian or Pakistan ladies - not sure which) and that reading was only 7% but it tasted like 27% alcohol. So I'm confused. I will let it set longer to see if there is any change. My Japanese plum, peach and grape wine is doing great. I found some muscadine and I hope to pick those up on Saturday. I will probably get 10 gallons of muscadine. I'm excited about making muscadine wine.

 

[DavidH]

What you are reading is the sugar content or potential alcohol. You should read the wine before the fermentation begins then when it is finished. Take you first reading and subtract your final reading and that is the actual alcohol content. Example start 27% - now 17% = 10% alcohol content. Hope this helps.

 

[kuntrygirl]

Yea I did all that. Lol

 

[DavidH]

What was your readings (then and now)? Do you have an air lock on it? Is the air lock still bubbling?

 

[kuntrygirl]

I posted over in the wine forum group that I belong to on another site. I'll see what they suggest. But thanks for offering help.

 

[DavidH]

OK, got my fingers crossed for you.

 

[Totalcolour]

Hydrometers don't measure alcohol - most comonly used measre eith % sugar, degrees brix or degrees balling. They can be considered equivalent. The alcohol content in wine will be approximately half or slightly more than the starting sugar content, except that yeasts can only go up to about 15-16 percent alcohol. There are really few yeasts that can go to 17-18 % . The high alcohol level actually kills the yeast. To get higher alcohol content you would have to fortify the wine.