Free Joy of Home Wine Making by Terry A. Garey Page A

the hydrometer. On my hydrometer, the specific gravity scale runs right beside the potential alcohol, and the PA scale is done in whole numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. It is easy for me to compare them when I want to.
    You’ll notice that the SG scale gives you more accurate reading, but the PA is a lot easier to understand. In beermaking, using the actual SG is a lot more important because of beer’s finicky nature. In this book, however, I will refer mostly to PA because I think it is easier for the beginner to understand. If you end up with a hydrometer without a PA scale on it, you can check the chart above. Most hydrometers from wine supply houses these days have them, though.
    If the must is considerably warmer than 59°F or 15°C, you will need to adjust your calculations. The only way I know is to adjust by the SG.
     
C ELSIUS
F AHRENHEIT
C ORRECTION TO SG R EADING
10
50
subtract .6
15
59
perfect
20
68
add .9
25
77
add 3.4
35
95
add 5

     
    So, if your must is a little warm, your reading will be a little low, and if it is too cool, it will read high. Check the SG and compare it to the PA on your hydrometer. For the most part, as long as the must isn’t over 70°F, don’t worry. It’s accurate enough for what you are doing.
    When reading recipes from some books, especially older ones, you may notice that they sometimes leave off the first digit or two when they tell you what the SG should be. Instead of 1.050 they casually say 50.
    Sometimes it’s important to know EXACTLY what you are doing. Say, for example, you’ve obtained several gallons of lovely fresh apple cider that you want to turn into wine. You measure the PA. The lovely cider reads 6 percent PA. You know some of that is suspended fruit and the rest is sugar. So, say it has 5 percent PA in it. This is nice for hard cider, but it’s not enough for the wine you want to make. The question becomes how much sugar or honey do you need to add to bring it up to 10 percent PA?
    Relax. Be calm. You will need to add about 1 pound of sugar or honey per gallon to get 10 percent potential alcohol in the finished apple wine. Another half pound will give you up to 12.5 percent. I arrived at these figures by using the Pearson Square, which will be discussed later in the section on fortified wines. At this point, I simply want you to know you don’t have to do everything by rote.
    If you are making wine with whole fruit, don’t forget that there is sugar in the fruit! Always add the minimum amount of sugar at first, then, as the wine ferments, add a little more. Give the yeast a chance to make use of the sugar in the fruit.
    There is no easy way to gauge this, of course, but the hydrometer gives you a pretty good chance. Generally, two and a half pounds of added sugar per gallon will give you a dry wine, and three pounds of added sugar per gallon will give you a sweet wine. Be sure you dissolve the sugar or honey well before you measure.
    By the way, it is always easier to make a dry wine and sweeten it up than it is to hope that the yeast has eaten all the extra sugar you thought it might. Did it eat the sugar, and leave you with a sweet wine that has finished fermenting for sure, or do you have a potential for cork blowing here because the fermentation stuck or the yeast wasn’t quite up to par? Maybe there was more sugarin the fruit than you thought. Chances are it’s OK, but chances are chances. Ferment it out, THEN sweeten.
    When taking a reading of any must or wine, remove it from the main lot with a sanitized wine thief and use a thermometer to find out the temperature of the liquid.
    Numbers can be our friends. Don’t let them get a stranglehold, that’s all. We are making wine, not the secret formula to cure the common cold (alas).
    Don’t put the wine or must back in the fermenter. Toss it out. There are just too many things that can go wrong between getting the wine out and measuring it. Better to waste half a cup or so than to contaminate your