Tinned Fruit wines

[Duffbeer]

Ouch, by 1.13 do you mean 1.130, how much sugar did you add ? A standard wine should not realisticaly exceed 1.090 at the start.

[jamiedodger]

i added exactly the amount of sugar it said to add on the original recipe (by OP).

[Duffbeer]

Hmmm the amount seems about right, are you sure your hydrometer reading is correct ?

[lockwood1956]

it has started fizzing i must be doing something right and the SG has moved from 1.13 to 1.10, hopefully that is good too....

yes good that it is moving downwards..

but its better to express SG to 3 decimal points to avoid confusion, I will be very surprised if you are at 1.130 but you may have a different type of hydrometer...or be reading from a different scale, sometimes they have different scales on them. are you reading the gravity scale or the potential alcohol scale?

is this a new hydrometer?

just some thoughts....

[Duffbeer]

Now looking at my own hydrometer, you could be reading the wrong scale it would weigh up with the figures you have, be sure to use the specific gravity part for your readings. Which would mean you had a starting gravity of 1.080 and your second reading was 1.070. On my hydrometer this is the bold numbers with 1000 in yellow at the top then reading 10...20...30....and so on, these should be read as 1.010...1.020 etc.

[lockwood1956]

Thats what I was thinking...reading the potential alc scale

but I'm laid in bed (back still buggered) and couldn't get to my hydrometer

cheers Karl...mystery solved

[ukmike99]

I started a tinned strawberry wine on 21/01/08 and it`s bubbling away nicely.However,I`ve just realised that I forgot to add any citric acid.Is it too late now and how will this affect my wine.Sorry if this sounds daft,but I am a newbie

[lockwood1956]

you can add the acid now, it won't hurt...

and it doesn't sound daft, we were all newbies at one stage, and I've made much worse mistakes than that

fear not

regards
Bob

[ukmike99]

Thanks for that.Thought I`d cocked it up.When I got all the bits to make this,the only thing I couldn`t get was citric acid,so I was going to buy a couple of lemons,but forgot.

[Hippie]

Actually, you might want to wait and taste the finished product before adding more acid.

[lockwood1956]

well........
that would work too

[ukmike99]

Well I think my strawberry has finished.The sg has dropped to 0.990 and there has been no airlock activity for a few days.I`ve racked it into a clean demijohn and am going to leave it to clear.
Seeing as this one was just about finished,I decided to do a tinned peach.I followed the recipe(remembering citric acid this time)but used 3 tins of peaches and a kilo of sugar.
The thing is the OG was only 1.066 and I`ve checked it three times and tested the calibration in water.I would have thought it would have been higher with the extra fruit but as I`m using a 2 gallon container I`ve not made the total up to one gallon,I added a gallon of water in total.Does this sound right and do you think it will turn out ok or should I add more sugar?
Thanks

[lockwood1956]

Remember that the sugar from the fruit hasn't been released yet, so you need to take account of that.

if you were at 1.066, I suspect the sugar from the peaches in 3 tins would take it over 1.080, so i wouldn't add any sugar.

regards
Bob

[ukmike99]

Thanks for that Bob.I am just starting out but I just couldn`t figure out why the og was low.Hadn`t even considered the possibility of the fruits sugar content.
Thanks

[lockwood1956]

No probs dude, thats why we are here