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(Dan) wrote in message om>...
>
> 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?

The must would be better (IMHO) but sugar will bring out the fruit
too. With only 1 liter of frozen must you may have to do both. Thaw
the must and add sugar to it until you get what you want.

BTW, the Campden may not be enough to prevent the added sugars from
fermenting. You should probably consider using Potassium Sorbate too.

>If I use this frozen
> mixture should I thaw it and let it settle for a period before using
> it?

Yes.

> If I do use this, I assume I will need to allow my wine to clear
> again after sweetening?

Yes I do, but also to make sure the fermentation doesn't kick in
again.

> How often or how long could/should you rack
> after stabilization before botteling? Can you stabilize - wait 10
> days, sweeten - wait 60 days - bottle?

You can. I usually, add Pot. Meta (or campden in your case), wait a
day and then add Sorbate, wait a day, add the sweetener, wait to make
sure fermentation doesn't kick in again and that the wine is still
stable, bottle. Just make sure that if you use Sorbate that you keep
the SO2 (campden) level up.

I usually don't have to worry about the wine clearing because I don't
start this process until the wine is very clear although some times
the addition of sweet reserve causes problems.

>
> 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?

Yes.

> 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 just gently mix it using my wine thief. I usually take the
hydrometer reading the next day or just right before bottling, but I
use a bench trial to figure out how much sugar I'm going to add so I
usually don't adjust. Just measure and add. The hydrometer reading is
more for the records than to adjust further.

> 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?

Not that I'm aware of but it isn't too hard to calculate. Beer brewers
do it by using the numbers to the right of the decimal point. Multiply
this by the volume, sum them, then divide by the new volume.

For example,
If you have 1 gallon of liquid at 1.050 that you are adding to four
gallons of liquid at 1.010;
1*50 + 4 * 10 / 5 = 1.018 - your new SG.

For wine, just subract 1 from the measured SG so a wine with a SG < 1
is accounted for.

For example,
If you have 1 gallon of liquid at 1.050 that you are adding to four
gallons of liquid at .995;

1*(1.050-1) + 4 * (.995 - 1) / 5 = 1.006

If the addition is in cups, just convert the gallons of wine to cups
and it should still work. 16 cups to the gallon.

Just remember that this is an estimate and is only as good as your SG
and volume measurements. This also is hard to do when using dry sugar
because you have to take into account how much the sugar will raise
the volume of the wine. There were some numbers floating around here a
few years ago about this, a search may turn something up.

Andy