I am planning out the finishing of my first batches. I have 1
gallon's of both strawberry and bannana. I have a 6 gallon batch that
is 3 gallons of both straw/bannana blended. The two recipies for
these wines are from Jack's site. I also have 4 gallons going of
raspberry/honey. This isnt a true melomel since I used 6# berries, 6#
honey then sweetened with sugar and my hydrometer. All batches where
fermented dry and are now aging. I plan to bulk age all of them for 6
months racking ever 60 days. The rasp. has already cleared after 2
weeks in primary and the others are hazy still after 2 months.

Anyway when bottling I want to stabalize and sweeten but need some
advice on this. I have 1 liter of must I siphoned off each batch that
I have frozen now. This was prior to yeast but after I used camden.
Should I use this too sweeten or will a water/sugar mix bring out
enough of the original fruit characteristic? If I use this frozen
mixture should I thaw it and let it settle for a period before using
it? If I do use this, I assume I will need to allow my wine to clear
again after sweetening? How often or how long could/should you rack
after stabilization before botteling? Can you stabilize - wait 10
days, sweeten - wait 60 days - bottle?

Also, how do you go about sweetening? siphon some wine out of a
caraboy, add sweetener back in then top off with wine you pulled out
and consume what is left? How do you mix the sweetening agent into
the wine, and how long do you wait after it is added to consider it
fully mixed so you can take a hydro reading? I also was hoping to
bottle 1/3 dry, then sweeten slihgtly and bottle another 1/3 then
sweeten some more and finish botteling so that I would better know my
tastes after aging another 6 months, but if you wait a period of time
before taking readings I dont know that is possible? I assume one
would not want to siphon the wine into a primary pail with a sphigot
and then from that sweeten and bottle?

Finally. Is their any charts or formulas that would say for example.
1 cup of liquid of S.G. 1.09 added to 1 gallon of S.G. .9 will raise
the batch to?

TIA for any of these answers! I have been wondering these questions
for a week or two.


Dan