Aug 30 2009
What is sugar inversion?
I have had a few questions about “sugar inversion”
so here’s the scoop…
What is sugar inversion?
Before I get to that, let’s start with what yeast has to do to begin fermenting your juice, or more accurately, the sugar in your juice.
Yeast has to first break up household table sugar into two parts: glucose and sucrose. Once the yeast has used some energy doing the breakdown, then and only then can it start actually consuming the sugar and turning it into alcohol.
Inverting your sugar means that you are going to give your yeast a “head start” by breaking down the sugar in advance. This is an important step in learning how to make wine.
How do you do this?
Use about a cup of water and dissolve as much sugar as you can in a saucepan on the stove. Turn on the heat and get the solution close to boiling and add sugar until you can’t add any more – in other words, no more sugar will dissolve.
Now add the juice of 1 lemon. The acid in the lemon will “crack” the sugar molecules and break it down into sucrose and glucose, exactly what our yeast would have to do. Let your sugar mixture cook for about 15 minutes close to boiling (watch it carefully or it could boil over).
Now let it cool to room temperature and use this mixture to add sugar to your juice. You want to add enough to get the specific gravity up to about 1.1 before you put your yeast in.
If you want to learn how to make wine, first learn to invert your sugar. You will be surprised at the difference in flavor!
Happy Winemaking!
