How Can I Increase The Alcohol Content?

I received an email the other day asking what kind of sugar was needed to increase the alcohol content of a typical wine to 13 or 14% and I thought this would make a great blog post!

So if you’re interested in learning how you can increase the alcohol content of your wine read on!

What you’ll want to use is corn sugar, which you can buy from your local wine making supply shop.

Incidentally – if you’re into making your own beer you can use it also to carbonate your beer in the bottle (so it has multiple uses).

To increase your alcohol level you typically would do this as part of the primary fermentation and it is called “chaptalization” and is a common practice when making port or other fortified wines to increase the alcohol content.

Basically you let your primary fermentation happen and once the S.G. reduces to the point when you would rack to your secondary you add the sugar to your wine must (in the primary) so that you can reenergize the yeast to produce more alcohol (typically adds another 3 or 4 %).

So in essence you are doing your primary fermentation twice before you transfer your wine must to your secondary.

I followed this procedure when I made a chocolate raspberry port kit from Winexpert and I can tell you it definitely works.

To help you all further I tracked down some online instructions from Winexpert for one of their port kits  and this should point you in the right direction if you wanted to give it a try.

Wineexpert Downloadable Wine Kit Instructions:

• #1 – Selection Speciale
• #2 – Selection Speciale

Try it and let me know how it goes!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

P.S.  To find out how you can easily calculate the alcohol of your wine read “Easiest Way To Calculate The Alcohol Content Of Your Wine”

P.S.S. He was also curious if the extra alcohol affected the taste and if so how. Would love to hear your comments on this!

P.S.S.S. Be sure to read the follow up post “Follow Up Warning To Increasing The Alcohol Level In Your Wine“

How To Make Wine: The Essential Ingredients Explained

I’ve received numerous requests from people asking to explain what the main ingredients/chemicals used in wine making are and why they’re used.

Here’s a quick video I shot today that will give you some good insight into why we use things like:

• Bentonite
• Potassium Metabisulphite
• Potassium Sorbate
• Isinglass
• Yeast Nutrient
• Pectic Enzyme
• Acid Blend
• Campden Tablets
• Sanitol

So if you’ve always wanted to know what each was used for check out the video below!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

Wine Making Using Household Items

Here’s another interesting video that I found on YouTube that shows you how to make wine using store bought grape juice.

 
This type of wine would probably fall under the “Baby Duck” category – easy to drink and it’ll give you a good buzz, but not something that’s going to win any awards.

If you make this wine let me know how it turns out!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

How To Make Wine From Coca Cola

Have you ever considered making wine from Coca Cola?

I can’t really say I had … at any point in time, but I came across this video on YouTube and it peaked my interest.

See for your selfL

Sounds tempting until you see what happens when he tastes his wine “experiment” …

So what do you think? Something you’d try?

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

Why You Can’t Always Assume What Your Wine Is Doing

With a number of batches of wine under my belt I subconciously must have felt that I could “sense” how my current batch of wine was progressing. I quickly found out that this was unfortunately not the case and here’s why!

I started working on a batch of white wine back in November and I made the mistake of rushing through the preparation so that I could just get it done versus enjoying the moment.

The one thing I didn’t cut corners on though was cleaning the equipment, which I had soaking in a pink solution overnight so I was good there.

I added all of the ingredients as I should except for the yeast …

The package suggested that I hydrate the yeast first but I felt it would be fine if I just sprinkled it onto the wine must (as other kits I had done said to do that so I figured I was good to go). 

I tested the S.G. and temperature and everything looked good.

I then added a brew belt to the primary and let things begin.

Now I typically judge how things are progressing with my wine by the yeast smell and the bubbling in the airlock and while there was definitely a yeasty smell after a few days I didn’t see much in the way of bubbling action going on. This was concerning!

I decided to leave the brew belt on for a few more days (due to the lower temperature in my basement) to see if that would help and it didn’t seem to.

Convinced that the fermentation was stuck I went to the local wine making supply store and bought more yeast in anticipation of having to start over again.

The guy at the store suggested that the wine was starved of oxygen so leave the lid on the primary unsealed to let oxygen in – this should help with the fermentation. He also clarified that you typically don’t have to rehydrate dry yeast with kits but you would have to with fruit wine since the since the juice wasn’t balanced for things like sugar levels or acid levels and therefore need a bit of a “kit start”. Thought that was interesting!

When I got home I decided to test the SG before I added more yeast fully expecting it to only have moved a little but was absolutely shocked to find out that the fermentation was completely finished! That’s right, it had feremented from 1.08 all the way down to 0.998 but had done it really “discretely”.

I absolutely couldn’t believe it! So just when you think you can sense how well your wine is doing, it’s best to get the real picture of what’s going on by double checking with some simple measurements like SG.

Certainly a lesson learned for me!

On a side note:

I had left the yeast packet in my jacket pocket and only realized this after I had put my jacket into the washing machine that was set to use warm water. Luckily I remembered this early on in the washing process and I can only imagine how my clothees would have smelt after being washed in warm water and yeast after 30 minutes …