Free tool
The eternal country wine question: how much sugar? Take a hydrometer reading of your must, tell it the strength and sweetness you are after, and get the exact amount to add. No guessing at what the fruit brought.
Take the current gravity with your hydrometer after the fruit is in; that way the fruit's own sugar is already accounted for. Dissolving sugar adds roughly 0.6 litres of volume per kg, so add it before topping up to your final batch size.
Sugar adds roughly 384 gravity points per kilogram per litre. The calculator works out the starting gravity your target ABV needs (using ABV = (OG − FG) × 131.25), subtracts what your must already reads, and turns the gap into kilograms. Because you measure the must with the fruit in, its natural sugar is automatically accounted for, which is why grapes, blackberries and elderflowers all need different amounts of help.
This is the number crunching behind every recipe in our country wine guide. Warm sample? True it up with the temperature correction tool, and when it is all over, the ABV calculator tells you what you made.
Starting from water alone, roughly 1 kg of sugar per gallon (4.5 litres) gets you a dry wine around 12% ABV. With fruit in the must you need less, because the fruit brings its own sugar; take a hydrometer reading and let the calculator do the rest.
You do not have to guess: mix your must with the fruit in, take a hydrometer reading, and enter that as the current gravity. The reading already includes every gram the fruit contributed, which is exactly why this calculator asks for it.
Yes. Push the starting gravity much past about 1.120 and many yeasts struggle, which is how ferments get stuck. For a strong wine it is safer to add the sugar in two or three stages as fermentation goes along.
Plain white granulated is the standard and the calculator assumes it. Caster is identical, just finer. Brown sugars ferment fine but bring treacle notes with them. To use honey instead, use about 15% more by weight, or make it properly with our mead honey calculator.
Dissolved sugar takes up space: roughly 0.6 litres per kilogram. Add your sugar before topping up to the final batch size, or your gravity, and therefore your wine, ends up thinner than planned.
Demijohn Journal keeps your readings, additions and notes together, and works out ABV as the gravity drops. Free, in your browser.
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