Hi Ray, thanks for your input.

I was really meaning dry as having fermented pretty much all the available sugar. I thought as I wrote SG 1.000 that it
wasn't the right way to express it, but that is how I worked out the alcoholic content (if it ferments to 1.000 then it
will be about 18.5% by vol - if it ferments lower then it will be even higher.)

I have made several wines which went down to ~0.990 and suspected what you have confirmed, that confirmation is very
handy as many wine facts are still fuzzy to my newbie-winemaker head.

When the fermentation speed slowed down I suspected it wasn't going to reach total dryness. Now it is so active in the
secondary I think I have a good chance I stopped feeding the day I posted as it seemed like it had to be the right
move.

Cheers, Jim


Ray Calvert" > wrote in message et...
> If you want this to be dry, which is hard to achieve in a high alcohol wine, you proabably should stop here.
>
> Some comments on your deffinition of dryness. If you put alcohol in water which will be perfectly dry, you will end
> up with a SG of considerably below 0.990. I have fermented 13% wines to below 0.990. If you have or are aiming at
> 18-21% alcohol and defining dry as 1.000, you could end up with a considerable amount of sugar in the wine. There has
> to be to counter the low gravity of alcohol. You will probably have residual sugar of 2 to 4%.
>
> Just some comments.
>
> Ray
>
>
> "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
>>
>>
>
>