Country wine - sugar?

[chams]

I'll post here as I think my question was a bit OT in another thread.
Chevette Girl posted in another thread about making wine with fruit and sugar.

When you use sugar as your fermentable, what kind do you use?
If it's just regular table sugar, do you use it as is, or do you invert it?
The skeeter pee recipe which was referred to in the forum mentions heating table sugar with water and lemon juice to invert it.
I'm curious if this is required, or just makes the ferment easier.

Upon some other reading it seems I'm more confused. Some say to invert the table sugar, and some say it's debatable...
Apparently, the yeast with citric acid will split the sucrose into glucose and fructose as the first stage of ferment anyway.
Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[akueck]

The yeast can invert the sucrose on their own [not *every* yeast strain can, but so far as I know all commercial beer & wine strains can]. If you want to do it yourself, it's one less thing they have to do. There will be a difference in the fermentation kinetics (the yeast have to switch from one sugar source to the other, usually causes a hiccup if you're keeping close tabs), but otherwise there shouldn't be much difference.

The sugar in these wines is to boost the OG, as most fruits don't have enough sugar in them to get to the 10-14% range on their own (grapes are the exception of course). So you can use any sugar you want, the idea is that the fruit contributes the flavors and the sugar is just there to be turned into ethanol. There are some threads floating around about using regular cane vs. powdered vs. confectioners sugars (try author = Pewter). IMO you can use any fully refined sugar and get essentially the same result. For a more unique taste use something like sucanat, turbinado, agave, honey, etc.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I started out with fruit wines, all I've ever used is plain old white sugar, usually bought at the bulk food store. I've never inverted the sugar (never even thought about it till I saw your post, Chams!) or changed it in any way, and my yeasties haven't seemed to have a problem with it so far.

So far in my experiences, yeast takes a little bit longer to process white sugar than sweet grape juice, and a little longer again to process honey.

And as Akueck said, the reason you use it is because most fruits don't have enough sugar to reach a desirable alcohol content.

There are some things I prefer to make with honey (crabapple wine being one because I can pick out notes of both the crabapples and the honey) and some I prefer making with sugar (like raspberry and red currant), either because the fruit flavour is so delicate I don't want to risk losing it behind the honey's flavour, or because the fruit flavour is so robust I don't want to waste the money on honey when I won't be able to tell the difference at the end anyway.

Even so, there are several ways to approach fruit wines... the winery I like going to in Niagara-on-the-Lake takes the fruit's juice and adds sugar to raise the potential alcohol to about 12%, so their flavours are very strong. Their raspberry wine is absolutely divine, but I actually prefer my blueberry to theirs.

I don't generally have access to that much fruit OR an efficient way to juice it, so I take what I have, squash it in a bag, boil the water with the sugar and pour it hot over the fruit bag in the primary bucket. Does a good job setting colours (it's rare that I've lost colour on anything I've done like this and I'm really not the most diligent about keeping the light away from my wines) and also makes me feel a bit better when I think about how many little bugs might have traipsed across (or through) my fruit before I got to it, at least I've scalded their little buggy germs... I don't like starting out with campden tabs because too many friends are sulphite-sensitive, I only use campden tablets with fruits like pears, which can start to spoil before the pectinase has finished its thing. I find boiling the sugar is the best way to make sure it's all dissolved, I use a steel stock pot, put sugar and water all in and crank up the heat, get it to a full rolling boil, remove from heat and pour over fruit. I haven't managed to burn sugar yet and by the time it's at a rolling boil it's all dissolved. Then I let it cool and add pectinase as required. I also add lemon juice to my fruit wine must to try to get it to a similar acidity level as grape juice would be. I know on this forum we don't add acid at the beginning for meads and mels, but I don't think the same acidity problems result from using sugar as you get with honey, I have plans to start some more wines and mels soon and plan to start recording pH as well once I get my new pH meter out of its box and learn how to calibrate and operate it ... [note to self, kick procrastination habit one of these days...]

When I want to find out how a fruit flavour might work with honey, once the bag's fermented for a week or two with the sugar, I take it out, put it in a clean freshly sanitized carboy and pour a kilogram of honey and 3/4 gallon of water over it and do a second run fermentation. I don't bother with adding more yeast or pectinase and rarely bother with nutrients, the fermentation is generally pretty quick and around 10%. It usually goes dry and I rarely get more than a gallon so I really need to do more sampling now that some of these second runs have had some time to age a few years. I used to boil the honey and pour it over hot and then add the lees back once it's cooled off but I've since stopped, not boiling it is SO much easier and I haven't had anything go funny on me yet.

I've used brown sugar a couple of times on second runs to good effect with mulling spices and apples or cranberries, I bet it would kick butt with citrus or pineapple too.

I'm not sure I'd want to try confectioner's sugar (icing sugar) as that has corn starch in it and I don't know if yeast eat that or not, or whether it messes with the potential alcohol calculation based on the specific gravity (I'm lazy and regular sugar's really cheap, why mess with it?), I think the instant-dissolving powdered sugar is the same chemically as white table sugar but the crystals are smaller and it's more expensive.

I recorded from my online research from somewhere I didn't document that 2 lbs of refined sugar in 1 US gallon of water makes a must with a SG approximately 1.090 (~11.8%), so that's what I use as my ballpark, most of the fruit wine recipes I've made have called for at least 2 lbs of sugar.

Most of my recipes have come from Terry Garey's Joy of Home Winemaking, but Jack Keller's website has a lot of good ones too, I just ignore the suggestion for the campden tablet.

 

[chams]

Thanks both for your response. That clears things up nicely.
Chevette Girl, if you are boiling the sugar anyway, why not add a couple tbs. of lemon juice and invert the sugar? Saves your bugs from the job.

 

[wayneb]

One other reason to consider inverting the sugar before using it, is that some strains of yeast will produce increased levels of phenolic compounds when they metabolize sucrose rather than glucose. This can lend a slightly harsh character to the flavor profile of your fruit wines.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Thanks both for your response. That clears things up nicely.
Chevette Girl, if you are boiling the sugar anyway, why not add a couple tbs. of lemon juice and invert the sugar? Saves your bugs from the job.

Honestly? Never occurred to me because I didn't know anything about it... in today's must (which has been boiled and is cooling while the raspberries thaw), it's because I don't have any lemons in the house

 

[Chevette Girl]

...although now that I'm thinking about it, I almost always have added lemon juice to my wines to bring the acidity to something similar to grape juice, so the citric acid is there to help the yeasties anyway...

 

[TheAlchemist]

Isn't powdered sugar just cane sugar pur in the dry grinder and with the tar beaten out of it?

 

[Chevette Girl]

As far as I know, that is correct. I use it for my traditional Scottish shortbreads...

 

[akueck]

Yes indeed, powdered sugar is just sugar that has been...powdered. Very fancy. Many packaged powdered sugars also contain anti-caking agents (aluminum sulfate, etc) as the tiny crystals absorb water a lot faster. We have powdered our own sugar (and salt) at home with a food processor or mortar & pestle.

Feeding glucose to your yeast can indeed cause changes in flavor profile. I read an article in Zymurgy about increasing glucose levels (vs. maltose) in hefeweizen worts to encourage clove & banana flavors. Nifty!

 

[JayH]

Most commercial powdered sugars, at least in the US, have some corn starch in it. This is very helpful when using it in whipped cream for frosting and such.