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Most country wines and meads finish bone dry, and a lot of them are nicer with a touch of sweetness back in. Tell it your batch size and the gravity you want, and it works out how much sugar or honey to add.
Stabilise before you sweeten, or the yeast will ferment this sugar and can burst bottles: add sulphite and potassium sorbate to a clear, racked wine first. Then add in stages and taste as you go. Rough guide: 1.005 is off dry, 1.010 medium, 1.020 sweet.
Sugar raises the gravity of your wine by a known amount: roughly 384 points per kilo per litre for plain sugar, a bit less for honey since it is not pure sugar. So to lift a batch from its dry finishing gravity to a sweeter target, you just need enough to cover the gap across your volume.
One thing this maths cannot do is tell you what tastes right, which is personal. Add most of it, stir it through, have a sip, and creep up on it. And the part you must not skip: stabilise the wine first, or the yeast will eat the sugar you just added and can burst your bottles.
Backsweetening is adding sugar or honey to a wine, mead or cider that has already fermented dry, to bring it up to the sweetness you actually want to drink. It is done at the end, once fermentation has finished and the wine is clear.
It depends on your batch size and how much you want to raise the gravity. As a worked example, taking 4.5 litres from a dry 0.996 up to a medium 1.010 needs roughly 164 g of sugar, or about 216 g of honey. Add in stages and taste as you go.
Yes. If you add sugar to a wine that still has live yeast, it will simply ferment again, and in a sealed bottle that builds pressure and can burst it. Stabilise first with sulphite and potassium sorbate on a clear, racked wine. There is a stabilising calculator on this site for the doses.
Both work. Plain sugar sweetens cleanly and predictably. Honey brings its own flavour, which suits a mead or a fruit wine, and you need a little more of it by weight because it is not pure sugar.
Demijohn Journal keeps your gravity readings, recipes and full fermentation history in one place, so you know exactly where a batch started and finished. Free.
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