Dan,
I've been following the directions on Jack Keller's wine site for finishing
a wine, http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp . Since I like
semi-sweet wines, when I'm ready to finish a wine (after bulk aging), I
stabilize the wine, sweeten to taste, wait 10 days (or bulk age for 30
days), and then bottle. This gives the wine time to drop any yeasts
sediment. Remember to rack before bottling. So far, I'm happy with the
results.
Darlene

"Dan" > wrote in message
m...
> 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