Does anyone have a table, tool, or formulae that allows them to calculate
alcohol and remaining sugar - assuming you know the original specific
gravity and the current?
We all have tables to calculate the final alcohol assuming the wine is dry -
but what about interim clculations? I would like to be able to track both
alcohol and redsidual sugar as fermentation progresses. Anyone have any such
a tool?

Referring to the Lum Eisenman "The Home Winemakers Manual" the only way to
do it is to use a clinitest from the drugstore. You can download the PDF of
the manual online it tells how to do the test in detail.


--
"The speed of light is faster than the speed of sound. This explains why
some people appear to be bright until they open their mouth."


"Ric" > wrote in message
. net...
> Does anyone have a table, tool, or formulae that allows them to calculate
> alcohol and remaining sugar - assuming you know the original specific
> gravity and the current?
> We all have tables to calculate the final alcohol assuming the wine is
dry -
> but what about interim clculations? I would like to be able to track both
> alcohol and redsidual sugar as fermentation progresses. Anyone have any
such
> a tool?
>
>

On Nov 27, 7:27 am, "Ric" > wrote:
> Does anyone have a table, tool, or formulae that allows them to calculate
> alcohol and remaining sugar - assuming you know the original specific
> gravity and the current?
> We all have tables to calculate the final alcohol assuming the wine is dry -
> but what about interim clculations? I would like to be able to track both
> alcohol and redsidual sugar as fermentation progresses. Anyone have any such
> a tool?

Haven't seen an explicit formula for this, but you can certainly
guesstimate this pretty easily, using for example info from Ben
Rotter's site:

http://www.brsquared.org/wine/

under Calculation -> Hydrometer/Sugar/Alcohol Tables

Just remember to take into account the fact that dry wines end up
somewhere around 0.990-0.993. And when you're getting close to dryness,
Clinitest will give you more precise RS values as Walter already
mentioned.

Pp

This is not as straight forward as you might think but there are equations
and tables out there that profess to do more or less what you want.
Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to say exactly which formulation
should be used in what way.



C.J.J. Berry, in "First Steps in Winemaking", has a table that gives the
expected alcohol yield if you ferment to a SG of 1.000. Duncan and Acton's
book "Progressive Winemaking" is a more scholarly book (translated more
difficult to read) that covers this in greater detail and gives a table
based on fermenting out all of the sugar. Both give formulae for
calculating intermediate and extrapolated alcohol yield based on their
tables. Both of these authors should be considered reputable. You will
find the table published by Barry reproduced in other texts but I have never
seen Duncan and Acton's table published elsewhere.



Things get confused when you find the same table published by Barry but with
the alcohol yield column labeled for fermentation to absolute dryness rather
than to SG=1.000. Something is wrong but I have never found the source for
either definition nor have I found raw data that would support either.
Duncan and Acton seem to claim their table is based on empirical
measurements. The other tables are just published without qualification or
source.



Several years ago I set out to determine which table was correct. I could
not definitively show which should be used. I was able to show that Duncan
and Acton's table is consistent with Barry's, hence I have used those
definitions.



This is not insignificant. The table you use can change your determined
alcohol calculation by 1 to 1.5% or more. I did publish my finding in
Winemaker Magazine and I could send you a copy if you would like.



In fairness I will say that one person who contributes on this site, and
with whom I usually agree, took extreme exception to my findings but never
could produce any references that would show that his beliefs were more
correct than mine. I do not want to open that disagreement again!



Anyway, using the equations in the article you can predict what your final
SG will be and you can determing the residual sugar in terms of gravity
units. Or you can determine residual sugar using the clinitest. Either
should be considered relative.



Ray


"Ric" > wrote in message
. net...
> Does anyone have a table, tool, or formulae that allows them to calculate
> alcohol and remaining sugar - assuming you know the original specific
> gravity and the current?
> We all have tables to calculate the final alcohol assuming the wine is
> dry - but what about interim clculations? I would like to be able to track
> both alcohol and redsidual sugar as fermentation progresses. Anyone have
> any such a tool?
>
>

Ray Calvert wrote:
> This is not as straight forward as you might think but there are equations
> and tables out there that profess to do more or less what you want.
> Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to say exactly which formulation
> should be used in what way.

I would agree with Ray that there are too many variables but if you are
only looking for approximations just use the PA scale and subtract one
from the other to get the alcohol level, brix is sugar remaining more
or less. Dissolved solids are mostly sugar and acid.

Joe

"pp" > wrote in message
ups.com...
>
> Just remember to take into account the fact that dry wines end up
> somewhere around 0.990-0.993.
> Pp
>

Yup......... ;o)