10 months in and still sweet....

Hi, I'm getting to start bottling last years wines (I'll need the carboys in a month). After bulk aging (in 6 gallon carboys) my Cab (from grapes) tastes a little too sweet for my liking, gassy and on the cloudy side. I checked my notes from my last racking (4-5 months ago) and it tasted sweet then. Knowing I wasn't going to bottle until fall I thought it would go dry(er) and clear up.....but didn't. What would happen if I pitched some yeast to start fermentation back up......? Never had this issues with wine that's been sitting this long. My other wines turned out fine. Thoughts?

did you take are hydrometer readings during the process to ensure that you finished fermentation and have you been adding any k-meta?

Of course....per my notes:

Crushed 9-21-15
Pressed 9-27-15: S.G. @ around 1.060
10-5-15: S.G. 1.040 slow fermentation
10-16-15: stirred, racked to 6 gallon carboy...not much fermentation action, still sweet (S.G 1.030)
1-15-16: S.G around 1.010 added ML Bacteria
4-7-16: S.G. around 1.00, racked and added 1/4 tsp of K-meta for preservation.

Additional background: primary fermentation was in open 6 gallon buckets, I didn't add any yeast to this batch, it fermented naturally. Thoughts?

Without adding any yeast and just letting whatever yeast is on the air is kind risky. I would add a yeast starter and see if you can't get down some more.

I seen to be a little slow today, did you say you did an MLF on this wine? If so, hopefully someone with more experience than I have with MLF will chime in.

pete1325 said:

Of course....per my notes:

Crushed 9-21-15
Pressed 9-27-15: S.G. @ around 1.060
10-5-15: S.G. 1.040 slow fermentation
10-16-15: stirred, racked to 6 gallon carboy...not much fermentation action, still sweet (S.G 1.030)
1-15-16: S.G around 1.010 added ML Bacteria
4-7-16: S.G. around 1.00, racked and added 1/4 tsp of K-meta for preservation.

Additional background: primary fermentation was in open 6 gallon buckets, I didn't add any yeast to this batch, it fermented naturally. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Your last posted SG reading was 4/7/16 @ 1.00, what is it today? Fruity wines can be dry and still be perceived as sweet due to the fruitiness. Your SG today will tell the tale about whether or not you got dry.

You let MLF go for about three months, did you test for completion before you added KMS?

Johnd: The S.G. as of yesterday was the same....around 1.00, maybe 1.01. I had a small glass (or two) and although I don't think it's as dry as my other wines it still has an average alcohol volume. I filled a gallon jug about 3/4 full and pitched some yeast (Lavin Bourgovin RC 212) just to see what'll happens. I've made Cabs in the past and they never were this sweet 10 months later......I guess 2015 could have been a "fruitier" year for Cabs.....

Julie: I agree......right after I pressed I should have stopped any native yeast from kicking in with Pot-Sorbate and pitched a yeast....i.e. RC-212 (which I normally do with juices) this way you reduce the risk.

If it were mine, I would pitch more yeast to try to get it to ferment further.

What's the % alcohol? High alcohol will also be perceived as sweet, and may be beyond the yeast ability to survive

I don't think your ABV is much more than 7.8% which might account for some of the sweetness. Personally I would have taken a more standard route, i.e. chapitalize to 1.090, skip the sorbate, 1/4 tsp. K-Meta per 6 gal, let it sit for a day, pitch your RC-212, MLB at 1.030, wait 3 months, SG- .995, rack and perhaps add some clarifier plus K-Meta to 60 ppm, let sit 6 more months. I think with that routine you would have ended up with something more to your liking.

Ok so you have at least one issue going on here...you never finished fermentation. For some reason it stalled/did not complete. A SG of 1.00 is not dry, 0.996 or less is dry. You should have tried to get it to complete possibly by heating the container a bit, or adding some nutrients to get it to finish. You added SO2 in April which is going to retard fermentation ever getting restarted. I assume you tested that ML fermentation was complete before you dosed it with SO2 back in April.

So it sounds like you have added more yeast to try to get it to complete. Hopefully your choice of yeast is one which can help a stuck ferment restart in a high SO2 environment. Or that you used some kind of starter to get the yeast really happy. Scott Labs has some excellent instructions and products that could help. Suggest you visit their web site.

Going forward this wine is going to be very difficult to stabilize unless you can sterile filter it...even big doses of SO2 and Sorbate may not be enough to prevent fermentation in the bottle at some future date...

At a minimum you better buy another carboy as this one is going to be in use for another year if you chose to keep this wine.

Thanks to all....really good advise/guidance. The yeast starter I added to the gallon jug did nothing, no fermentation!. Turns out my buddies Cab from the same grapes/crush/press is also on the sweet side. Although I added 1/4 tsp (per 6 gallons) of K-Meta back in April will that dissipate and possibly continue to ferment or did I kill off all the yeast with that one dose? My thoughts are to rack it now and let it sit in the carboy for a few more months and maybe it will dry down below S.G. 1.00. Thoughts?

Another issue you may have is if you put it through ml and all of the malo acid is gone, then the ml bacteria will start eating the sugar and create VA in its place. Also adding nutrients at this point can be dangerous for if the yeast doesn't eat it then spoilage bacteria may.