Wine too dry for my taste

[Gunfios]

I have made some orange and mango wine using the wow recipe, (couldnt get white grape juice so used white grape and mango that was available) I think I may have over fermented it ? as it tastes nice but a bit dry for my liking. Is it as simple as adding more sugar after fermentation to sweeten it a touch ???
Hope I'm not making a fool of myself here but I am a complete novice and this is my first attempt at a non kit wine

 

[Vinotinto]

You can back sweeten.
The are proprietary wine sweeteners which are a tad pricey or I think some use non fermentable things like Splenda. Others will have better knowledge than me.
The key is slowly slowly, little at a time. You can always add more but you cannot take it out

 

[IainM]

If you haven't already, then you can kill the yeast using wine stabiliser and then add sugar to taste.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

When i first started making supermarket juice wines i let them ferment until i only saw one bubble in the airlock every two minutes then gave it another week *for the yeast to clean up after itself, the wine was bone dry (.990) and although SWMBO liked it it wasn't to my taste, i was bottling into two litre PET spring water bottles and found two teaspoons of sugar and a good shake was enough to make it drinkable.

*We were told if you didn't let the yeast clean up after itself we risked giving ourselves bad guts and worse a bad headache.

One member decided he would risk getting bad guts and not give it the extra week to speed things up and he was fine so after he did this a couple of times i gave it a go and found this method left the wine just right for me and it wasn't too sweet for SWMBO.

 

[Gunfios]

So basically you can kill the yeast to what suits your taste, kind of trial and error to find what you like. I'd love to know which member was brave enough to risk the bad guts for the greater good, I'd award him a special prize, maybe a very soft 5-ply toilet roll in recognition of his courage :)

 

[Chippy_Tea]

So basically you can kill the yeast to what suits your taste, kind of trial and error to find what you like.

Yes, you will lose a little %ABV but it saves messing about later, i haven't used my hydrometer for years as i know when i get to a bubble every couple of minutes it will be around .995 and time to stop it.

If you want to use your hydrometer and stop it early here is a rough guide.

0.990 is dry

0.995 is medium-dry

1.000 is medium

1.005 is medium-sweet

1.010 is sweet

 

[Gunfios]

That's so helpful, thanks :)

 

[Tanzanite]

If you haven't already, then you can kill the yeast using wine stabiliser and then add sugar to taste.

Wine stabilizer potassium sorbate just stops it fermenting new added sugar, It does not kill the yeast, it makes it sterile by coating the yeast cells and stopping it fermenting, it also needs to be used with campden tablets to get the best effect, The best thing is totally ferment your wine out to completion, then back sweeten with a non fermentable sweetener Truvia (stevia ) any super market (not aldi or diddle) be careful its strong stuff, you might need to adjust the acidity when sweeting.:thumb:

 

[IainM]

Wine stabilizer potassium sorbate just stops it fermenting new added sugar, It does not kill the yeast, it makes it sterile by coating the yeast cells and stopping it fermenting, it also needs to be used with campden tablets to get the best effect

You're absolutely right, I should've said 'neutralise'. I would add that stabiliser is sold as either potassium sorbate, or a mix of K sorbate and campden, and I assumed that latter because that is the one I've used.