Follow Up Warning To Increasing The Alcohol Level In Your Wine
April 9, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Tips
I received a very insightful reponse to my most recent post on increasing the alcohol level in your wine, which I thought I should share with you all as there is a “darker side” to it that you should be aware of!
Mark writes:
“I have a couple comments on your blog post. First of all, you should add a caution statement about adding sugar into fermenting wine. It needs to be added very slowly. The first time I did this, I dumped about 4 lbs of sugar into my 6 gallon primary while it was still actively fermenting. WOW what a mess. It foamed up like crazy and overflowed the primary bucket and went all over the floor. Lesson learned.
The next point is that I have found that adding extra sugar at the beginning has much the same affect if all you want is about 15% alcohol. If you start with a brix of about 30-32 I usually end up with at least 15% alcohol without having to add sugar a second time.
Lastly, there may be a consideration on the type of yeast you use. Some yeasts will burn themselves out and drown in the alcohol when it gets up around 13-14%. I have not experimented much with this but I do know that Cote des Blancs has a good tolorance for higher alcohol content.
As far as the taste is concerned, you may find that the final RS needs to be higher in the bottled wine if the alcohol content is higher to achieve the same taste as you’d have with a lower alcohol content. That has been my experience anyway.
I hope this information helps.- Mark”
Thanks Mark – certainly worth mentioning to everyone!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
I always add sugar to my kit wines (WineXpert Island Mist varieties) and have never had any problem whatsoever. I add the sugar before pitching the yeast and I stir it in very well. It has never foamed on me while adding, stirring or after pitching the yeast. You do have to be careful that you don’t get the alcohol level too high or the wine will bite you on the finish. There is a real benefit to adding it to the Island Mist kits – they are a low alcohol, semi-sweet finished wine that are a bit on the sweeter side. I have found that the added alcohol gives a nice bite to the palet after the sweet fruity taste. I don’t personally drink sweet or semi-sweet wines (have been on the low carb diet for 10 years) but all my friends that do like semi-sweets rant and rave and swear that it is the best wine they have ever tasted. I have performed this on at least 6 or 7 different types of the Island Mist wine kits – all with success. I have found that adding any more than 5 lb of sugar to a 6 gallon kit is too much – the finished wine is too hot. Now I normally add between 2.5 to 3.5 lbs to a kit, depending on the starting brix of the reconstituded juice.
So – just curious then – what sort of yeasts/wines does this work with? Seems to me if you just choose the wrong type, you’ll not be able to increase the alcohol content and just end up with 30 bottles of really sweet wine….
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Thanks for the comments Timothy. Good to add some different perspectives and experiences!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
Good question Greg. You’ll want a yeast that’s specific to the amount of sugar you’re going to be using.
A good reference chat for yeast can be found at Wine Maker Mag
Most wine and beer making yeasts will take into the 14% to 15% range before you shock them. Distillers yeast can go up to 21%…
Adding additional sugar is called chaptalization, so you know. Anytime you are adding substantial amounts of additional sugar, however, is it very important that you add additional yeast nutrient and also check your acid levels. Meaning, adding amounts like 3lbs of sugar will not leave enough nutrients for viable yeast leading to extremely long (and poor) fermentation times…