Quote:
Originally Posted by nexcom28
I guess by burning question is, how do you know the alcohol content without specialized checking equipment?
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The more you do it the better a sense of alcohol content you get, but generally speaking it all depends on how much sugar to yeast you put in, type of sugar used, and how long you let it ferment. If for example you want a sweeter wine with less alcohol you would let it ferment for only a handful of weeks, say two to three. If you want a fruitier wine with a medium alc content you might let it ferment for a week longer (depending again on sugar to yeast ratio).
For dryer wine with more kick, let it ferment as long as it will go (as per above-mentioned hydrometer), something in the 6 week timeframe.
Basically if you keep your wort near a source of warmth, like near a household radiator, and you added in a higher than normal amount of sugar and yeast to match, and assuming your fruit juice concoction is right, if it "catches fire" (as in starts fermenting like the blazes) and you let it go for like 6 weeks you should have some pretty damn potent wine.
By the way, I don't know if you did this or not but when you first boil your fruit it helps if you first put it into a clean pre-boiled (sterile) white pillow case, then boil it in that. Once the boiling is done and the batch has cooled, just lift the pillow case, wring it out good into the pot, and something like 99% of your impurities will be instantly removed. The rest can be cleaned after fermentation via the finings method I mentioned above.
Pear wine sounds great, btw. You may also in future want to try a pear & apple blended wine. It's incredible.