Making Wine Without
Sugar
Making wine without sugar is like making
Kool-Aid without sugar. You’ll
get a fruit tasting drink but it will taste like
flavored water without any kick at all.
That is not to say that making wine without
sugar is like making Kool-Aid at all, but both drinks need
sugar for taste but also for very different reasons. Let’s just
say right off the bat that there is no making wine without
sugar. It just isn’t happening. This has nothing to do with any
personal preference or any kind of secret family recipe, making
wine without sugar is impossible because just like sugar gives
Kool-Aid its sweetness, sugar also gives wine its fermentation.
Any attempt at making wine without sugar is like trying to
create a chemical reaction necessary to the making of wine
without the main ingredient. It just cannot happen.
Sugar is the ingredient that reacts when you ferment wine to
create alcohol. So making wine without sugar is
simply making fruit juice. Grapes are the most well known fruit
that wine is made from, so let’s just stick with that for this
discussion. Grapes have a certain level of natural sugar in
them that is normally not enough to ferment into alcohol alone.
Wine makers all have their secrets, from what kind of yeast
they use to how much sugar they add to get their alcohol
content. You can find charts available that tell you how much
sugar to add to get a certain alcohol content but many
experienced wine makers prefer to use their own judgment based
on age old family recipes and their own personal
experience.
Just Like
Beer
Traditionally wine has higher alcohol content than beer, but
if you use too little sugar then you get a wine with about the
same amount of alcohol as beer and that is wine with just no
punch at all. But whenever you are adding or changing the
amount of sugar in your fermenting wine it is always a good
idea to keep an eye on how much alcohol content you will get
from the sugar you have added to your mix. There are
instruments you can use to check for alcohol content and you
want to keep track of that, because too much alcohol content in
your wine can be dangerous and potentially illegal. Always know
what you are doing when you are making wine because not only is
it something that could potentially be dangerous to drink if
done incorrectly, but it takes months to make a batch of wine
and if you make a mistake you will spend months regretting
it.
So now we know that making wine without sugar just is not
possible. Sugar is what gives the wine its alcohol content and
wine isn’t wine without alcohol content. The amount of sugar in
your fermenting wine will determine how much alcohol content
you will have and it is very important that you keep a close
eye on the potential alcohol content of your wine.
|