Pressure in bottle

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cmpeters111

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I made 3 gallons of blueberry wine over the summer. It sat in a carboy for about 10 weeks or so and then i added over half a bottle of wine conditioner which had potassium sorbate. I also added potassium metabisulfite to kill off any yeast. The wine has been bottled for about 5 weeks now. This weekend I opened a bottle and it let out some slight pressure when it uncorked. It didnt blow the cork off when it was pulling out and no wine shot out but it just made me a bit nervous. I thought the sorbate in the conditioner would have prevented that since i added more than 2 ounces/gal. It was more like 3ounces/gal. The wine also had slight carbonation to it. Any suggestions on what i should do?

Thanks
 
Im not sure if you problem or not, if you just bottled then it may just be the compressed air from corking. That takes a while to work its way in or out. I will say that I dont trust whats in there as far as not using additional sorbate at any rate of adding it. I always use the prescribed sorbate even if I were adding that product.
 
Also, if there is any fermentation in the bottle you will see some sediemnt also, it will usually look whispy.
 
Personally I would be concerned. There is sufficient sorbate in wine conditioner to prevent fermentation of the wine conditioner, but not enough to prevent re-fermentation in the wine unless a minimum amount of wine conditioner is added.

Also metabisulphite does NOT kill yeast, contrary to popular misconception (or wine-making myth). K-meta stuns yeast but does not kill. It will come back, it's juat a matter of time.

Steve
 
I agree with cpfan. Sulfite just keeps the yeast from working until the S02 levelcomes down to a tolerable ppm. Wild yeast isnt as tolerant to yeast which s why we add sulfites in the beginning to hold back the wild yeast letting the more tolerant wine yeast start up. It will not stop a fermentation unless you totally dose the wine with a large quantity of sulfites and at that point you would not want to drink it.
 
I just went looking for my notes on wine conditioner. The info that used to come with RJ Spagnols wine conditioner in Canada said at minimum 15ml per litre to get enough sorbate. According to an online conversion tool, 15ml is .50 fluid ounces. So 2+ ounces per gallon should be enough.

Steve
 
I popped the cork off of a few more bottles just to satisfy my conscience and there wasn't any abnormal pressure. I think i was just a little gun shy after reading some other stuff online. As wade said it could have just been the compressed air from corking. 3 oz/gal of wine conditioner with sorbate premixed i would hope would be enough to neutralize anything off. Thanks for your posts and thanks for taking the time to dig back through your notes cpfan.
 

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