Using Champagne yeast

[banannabiker]

I am currently working on wine batch #10, and for some reason I started using champagne yeast along about batch 3 or 4. (I believe it was all I had at the time) Anyway-I figured yeast was yeast, at least it was not bakers yeast. What I found is that when I open a bottle that was fermented up to 6-8 months in the secondary, and showed no active fermintation at the time of bottling, it still has a distinctive 'fizz' to the wine. I finally got around to buying some standard wine yeast and used that for my latest batch, but i was wondering if my experience would be considered normal for Champagn yeast, or if I needed to let it sit longer in secondary? I generally don't try to boost the alcohol content by adding sugar after fermentation stops, so I don't think that is the problem. I generally start out with sufficient sugar to reach around the 12% alcohol level, but my memory might be flaky.

 

[iVivid]

Could be CO2 trapped in the wine?
Degassing is my forte now, after figuring out how important it is!

 

[djrockinsteve]

Take a gravity reading and check to your final reading. Could be excess CO2 or refermenting.

 

[BernardSmith]

My guess is that this has little or nothing to do with the fact that you are using "champagne yeast". I think if you experiment with yeasts that you will find yeast is not yeast. Different yeasts bring out different flavors and different yeasts add different character to the wine. Some yeasts will produce nicely compact lees and other yeasts will result in loose lees. And obviously, some yeasts will survive in low levels of alcohol and other yeasts thrive in high levels... I agree with djrockinsteve that this fizzing could be due to inadequate degassing before bottling or it could be that your wine has begun refermenting and that refermenting may be due to MLF bacteria or the yeast itself.

 

[cpfan]

bananabiker:

First, for most people, especially kit makers, champagne yeast (aka EC-1118) is "standard wine yeast".

Second, CO2 is a by-product of all yeasts, even bread yeast. If your process doesn't allow the CO2 to escape, then you will get what you described.

Steve