How do I know when my wine is ready to be bottled?

[dave45]

>I still would love to know how to make a semi sweet wine without using a load of chemicals or have bottles go bang

in theory - keep adding sugar a bit at a time until you reach the limit for the yeast - somewhere between 11 & 13 % ABV usually. Then add some more, as after that point any further sugar will not be fermented, so will sweeten the wine.

A hydrometer is useful and cheap. (measures "specific gravity" or "relative density" of a liquid, relative to water at standard temperature and pressure bla bla )

Water is 1.0000
Sugar increases it.
Alcohol is less, so a dry wine would be 0.995, say, and a very dry wine 0.990
Add sugar to this dry wine and if it doesn't ferment it will take the gravity back up to 1.000 maybe. taste it. You can always add more (but not take it away) once fermentation is over.

To make a low-alcohol sweet wine I guess you have to use chemicals.

As a word of warning... my dad made elderflower cordial, racked it, campden tabletted it etc then added more sugar. And gave it away, one half-litre to me. I got a fone-call warning me to release the pressure.. all his bottles were exploding. He was right. So yeast CAN survive campden tablets. Maybe he just didn't use enough.

[MKG]

Yep - basically what Dave said ...

1. Use a low-tolerance yeast and give it more sugar than it can handle, or ...
2. Use a high-tolerance yeast but stop it (metabisulphite AND sorbate) before it's used up all the sugar, or ...
3. Ferment to dryness and then sweeten up when all the yeast has gone, or ...
4. Add some sweeteners which the yeast can't ferment, or ...
5. Use a high-tolerance yeast and loads of sugar (sweet and very strong), or ...
6. Sometimes a fermentation will just stop (no control) at that stage.

There's probably more.

Mike