The degree of wine is an outdated indicator, but still used today, although it’s more correct to speak of a fortress, which is understood as the volume fraction of ethyl alcohol in a given drink (% vol.), Although for some reason this indicator is called “revolutions” among the people.
How many degrees in wine
Wine includes drinks made by alcoholic fermentation. According to how many degrees there is in wine, it is divided into dry (10-11.5% vol.), Semisweet (12-15% vol.), Liquor (12-16% vol.), Sweet (14-18% vol. .), dessert (15-17% vol.) and sparkling (9-13% vol.). Fortified wines are the strongest (up to 21 volume percent).
Factors that determine the strength of wine
The technology of making this drink affects the degree of wine. Ethyl alcohol is poured into the fortified wine , so it has the greatest degree. Real wine is made only from grapes, so the word "wine" is preserved in the new name, while earlier there were "grape wines" and "fruit wines". When making various wines, it is important to choose the right grape variety. For different varieties of wines, their own varieties are used with their characteristic sugar content, acidity, ripening dates. When making white wines, wort is separated quickly from the pulp. The first pressure wort and gravity are used to make high-quality wine, ordinary wine is produced from the following fractions. For red wine, first red pigments are extracted from the berries of the grapes, sulfur is introduced to suppress the vital functions of microbes, and the wort is also clarified by fermentation. At the end of the last process, the wine is poured. Then the young wine is sent for aging.
There is an opinion that the aging of wine affects its strength. This is actually not the case.
How to determine the strength of wine
The easiest way to determine the degree of fault is to use a hydrometer. His pipe should be dry and clean. The hydrometer should not touch the walls of the vessel in which the wine is located and measure the strength. Determination of strength is carried out at a temperature of 20 about . If the temperature differs from the above, amendments are introduced according to regulatory or technical documentation.
Degrees in Home Wine
Home-made wine differs from an industrial-made one primarily in that sugar is added to home-made wine at the beginning of fermentation to ferment the alcohol, and also at the end to obtain a certain taste.
Wine with 16% sugar and the same volumetric amount of ethyl alcohol has good stability. To degrade 1 g of alcohol, you must add 1.7 g of sugar. In a roaming wort with a strength exceeding 15%, yeast begins to die.
In the original must, there should be 27% sugar (we get the product of 16% described above by 1.7). If the wort contains 15% sugar, then you need to add 12% (120 g for each liter of wort).
However, it is real at home to get wine with a strength of more than 9-12% vol. difficult. If you want to make fortified wine at home, you must add ethyl alcohol to it. The recipe for the preparation of this drink: 5 kg of isabella grapes are taken per 1 liter of ethyl alcohol, to which 600 g of sugar and then 100 g of sugar per liter of juice are added.
Knead the berries and leave covered for 3 days. Then filter the juice, squeezing the pulp, add 600 g of sugar, stir until it dissolves. Pour juice into a jar, put on a glove for 10 days. After this period, add 100 g of sugar, 200 ml of water, after which this syrup is heated on the stove. This solution is poured into wine, the glove is pulled on again for a period of 5 days. After this period, add ethyl alcohol (200 ml / l of drink). Stir, a jar - a glove, wait for the end of fermentation. After falling off the gloves, the wine is drained from the sediment and removed for ripening.
Determining the strength of homemade wine
Degrees in homemade wine can be determined using a wine meter, which measures the density of sugar-containing raw materials in wine. With a known initial density of the wort, the strength of the wine can be calculated. 1 g of sugar is equivalent to 0.53-0.6% of the strength of the future wine.
If you do not have a wine meter, then you can do it yourself, because its design is quite simple.
You can take any test tube or other vessel with a sealed bottom. Then it must be immersed in water with a temperature of 20 degrees. Gradually, they load her with a load, but so that she swims without reaching the bottom. Determining the boundary of the cutoff of water, put the mark "0". After that we take sugar (dry) weighing 25 g, which we dissolve in water and bring the volume of water to 100 ml. We place the vessel again in the liquid and put a new label. The density of this solution is 25. We take the vessel out of the liquid and apply a hatch between the two markings.
In addition to this method, the strength of homemade wine is determined by a hydrometer, using a special table for converting the density of the hydrometer to% ethyl alcohol. The hydrometer is lowered into the wort or the finished wine. In this case, the fortress is calculated as the difference between the densities of the initial wort and the finished wine.
Finally
Thus, the degree of wine shows the strength of the latter, which is determined by the volume fraction of ethyl alcohol in the drink. The amount of alcohol in the wine made at the factory depends on the technology, grape variety and does not depend on the age of the drink. In this wine, you can determine the strength using a hydrometer. In a homemade drink, rarely the strength exceeds 9-12%. To increase it, you must add ethyl alcohol. In home wine, a fortress cannot be determined with a hydrometer. For this, it is necessary to use special devices - a wine meter or hydrometer. Moreover, when using the latter, the fortress is calculated by the difference in the densities of the initial wort and the finished wine.