Yep used the fruit varieties before (from our garden and my MILs), never added any citric acid or tannin, the guy who taught me to brew used a very simplified method, hence my trying to be a bit more 'sciency' with it now!
Pgkevet yep that's pretty much the line I was going down. Check how much sugar there was in fruit to start, add more sugar to the desired point then let it brew.
Cloddopper you may be onto something with the length of time the fruit was stored, and also possible defrosts/refrosts affecting quality. We have always used frozen fruit but it tended to be that I would brew in the autumn after we had all the fruits harvested, these sat until spring in the freezer and were moved between freezers and reweighed sometime Dec/Jan.
I did actually inherit one of those tulip style testers from a homebrewer, unfortunately it rolled off of a kitchen worktop during a move :-(
Hydrometer readings were taken between 20 and 24C with my wine hydrometer being marked as needing 20C. I've been using this online calculator which does have an option to adjust for differences in temperature:
http://winemakersacademy.com/wine-alcohol-content-calculator/I'll look up the method you give. The batteries were going on the scale so that could have also affected the amount of sugar, but it shouldn't have been by too much as it's roughly 1lb of sugar that my bowls hold and I used 2 of them for each wine. I'll make sure and calibrate next time, new batteries in now.
The wines are stopped (potassium sorbate), although I'm starting to think that my hydrometer is broken as the white currant and black currant said they had no sugar left but noticed yesterday that they are still popping despite the potassium sorbate! Going to have a go at the oldest one tomorrow (gooseberry and we've never had a bad batch of it before) adding some sugar to see if that helps the taste. If not I may go down your brandy route (although the bean one may get used as slug bait!). Gonna be hubby doing the repeated tastings though as I've got 10 days left before I'm due to pop this baby out!
Thanks for the help and the ideas guys. I feel a bit despairing each time I walk into the kitchen and see the demi-johns at the moment. Was half tempted just to pour them all down the drain the other day, but that may be the hormones.
Dans