hi jim! we made two 18% peach wines & 17% pear/raisin wine. if you think
you're in the 18% range, I'd stop adding sugar now. the first peach dried
out nicely w/o probs & resembled an entre deux mers in character. the pear
wine stalled @ around 15 and we had a dickens of a time restarting it.we
ended up using Turbo yeast as a last resort. it finished @ 1.000 but all
remarked on a background fruityness. The 2nd peach stalled @ 1.01 & we
decided to let it be: it made a nice dessert wine with a sneaky kick & a
dirty hangover. we used lalvin 1118 which was rated to 18%.I'd say let it
be & watch it dry out.... HTH, regards, bobdrob


"jim" > wrote in message
...
>I wondered if anyone had advice on the following matter...
>
> I am making a rice-wine and I'm using gervin gv26 yeast. It states the
> capability to reach ~21% vol and my intention is to get as close to that
> percentage as I safely can. I want the wine to ferment out dry, so while
> this is an experiment, I don't want to push it too far and find myself
> high and (not) dry.
>
> So far, the 5UKGallon wine has had 10.45KG (23 lbs) of sugar which would
> seem to put it somewhere north of 18.5% alcohol - assuming it ferments to
> sg 1.000. Today, for the first time so far, the fermentation seems to
> have slowed slightly.
>
> I have been tracking the SG drops, but with some anomalies (for example
> addition of 3 litres of water some time after starting didn't seem to
> change the SG - perhaps due to post addition aggitation adding straining
> bag contents back into the liquid). Annoyingly I didn't take a pre-sugar
> SG. If the SGs were all believable the wine would already have made a
> 0.182 drop making the wine ~25.5% which is clearly erroneous)
>
> The question is when to stop feeding the wine with more sugar. I don't
> want to push it till it will ferment no further as I will end up with
> residual sugar. I am happy to stop where I am if it is the only way to
> achieve my 'dry' goal. The ~5UKGallon batch had 55g of minavit nutrient to
> work with - a compromise on the amount stated to achieve full potential.
>
> Does anyone have any experience of this kind of scenario or vaguely
> similar which I can use to extrapolate likely success with further sugar
> additions?
>
> Many thanks for any advice,
>
> Jim
>