Can I ferment without the chemicals?

[Runningwolf]

if you start your wine at say 1.110 and let it go to .990, and then rack and let it clear completely, there would be a very slim chance that it would ferment again when adding sugar.
i guit using sulfites and sorbate but i dont plan to let my wine sit for a couple of years
before i drink it....

This is not correct and you're playing with fire. I can tell you plenty of times when I'm doing trial blends and I add sugar to them within a day or two the t-corks are blown off of them. I don't sorbate them because it's just a small 375ml sample I am doing for a 500-1000 gallon batch. Unless you have an absolute sterile filter (which I do) you should always add meta and sorbate if adding sugar. Even with the right filters I still do.

 

[MangoMead]

This is not correct and you're playing with fire. I can tell you plenty of times when I'm doing trial blends and I add sugar to them within a day or two the t-corks are blown off of them. I don't sorbate them because it's just a small 375ml sample I am doing for a 500-1000 gallon batch. Unless you have an absolute sterile filter (which I do) you should always add meta and sorbate if adding sugar. Even with the right filters I still do.

First I have to say, Is that your dog in your avatar? He is cute as hell.

I tend to agree about wanting to make sure that there is no bottle fermentation going on. I'm not looking to make fizzy wine, nor am I looking to send glass shards flying around my apartment.

But didn't folks make sweet wines before there were meta and sorbate to be had?

As I understand things, and PLEASE correct me if I am wrong, when you add sugar the SG goes up and as our little yeastie friends munch on the sugar the SG goes back down. So it seems that if I take a sample and measure the SG and get XXXX reading, then add sugar I should get a reading of YYYY which is >XXXX.

Then a week(?) later i take a reading and the SG is back to ~XXXX I know fermentation is still going on. I add sugar again, taking SG back to YYYY and wait another week(?). If this time the SG has stayed at YYYY then I know I have topped out the yeasts ABV tolerance and no more fermentation should occur even if I add more sugar? Do I have this right?

Continuing on at this point I think I'd go one of 2 ways, Option one would be to sugar to taste note the SG and let it hang in the carboy another week(?) and check SG again. If the SG had not changed, bottle it.

Option 2 would be to add enough neutral spirit to bring the ABV% up a point or two for insurance, sugar to taste and bottle it.

Again please let me know where I am wrong. You guys are awesome, really.

 

[seth8530]

One of the pitfalls of that method is that the yeast will go to sleep when it decides it has had enough. The yeast does not truly die out, it is more of a dormancy kind of thing. However, their is nothing stopping the yeast from waking back up if more favorable conditions arise such as warmer or cooler temperatures or perhaps some chemical reactions during aging in the wine have changed the acid profile making the conditions more favorable for fermentation. Thus, a wine that had at one point stopped can once again start back up.

Take one of my family members for instance, he made a batch of blackberry wine by taking his blackberry juice adding sugar until he hit the " max tolerance" of the yeast and let if ferment. He later ( after a very long time) bottled the wine and was later greeted with exploding bottles. Not all of them exploded, in fact their was no real rhyme or reason to why some exploded while others did not. Some were still others were carbonated.

Also, I have not done a ton of research into it yet, but I tend to try not to max of the yeast ABV tolerance because I do not want to stress out my yeast.. angry yeast make angry flavors...

Granted, step feeding until the yeast decides to surrender is better than what my family member did, but we have improved more reliable methods nowadays. I personally have never been able to taste sulfite or sorbate in a wine, I do follow the directions but I have never been able to tell.

Why spend so much time and money on these projects just to do things halfway at the end and risk it all?

 

[MangoMead]

Why spend so much time and money on these projects just to do things halfway at the end and risk it all?

A good question that I'll give a two part answer to.

First, I'm a Californian child of the 60's and 70's though I don't eat vegan or even organic religiously like some do, I still do my best to eat the more natural or organic products when I can. If I have a choice to use chemicals or use an alternative route, so long as the alternative works comparably well, I will choose the non chemical option.

Second, I'm pretty sure that at some point the chemicals were the alternative and not the norm, and the techniques to do these things without the chemicals are out there. I'm not looking to do it halfway, I'm just looking to do it differently, do it old school if you will. If it takes a little more work, a little more time, I'm OK with that.

But in the end I'm not gonna compromise on safety, that is a given.

 

[MangoMead]

One of the pitfalls of that method is that the yeast will go to sleep when it decides it has had enough. The yeast does not truly die out, it is more of a dormancy kind of thing. However, their is nothing stopping the yeast from waking back up if more favorable conditions arise such as warmer or cooler temperatures or perhaps some chemical reactions during aging in the wine have changed the acid profile making the conditions more favorable for fermentation. Thus, a wine that had at one point stopped can once again start back up.

I got all caught up in the last question and missed the answer to my actual question. LOL

Ok so maybe you are saying option 2 is the best? Step feed until fermentation stops, then sugar and fortify with spirits for anti-fermentation 'insurance'.

 

[seth8530]

Honestly, if you are anti chemical ( which I do not recommend) I would ferment only dry and fortified wines. You dont need sorbate for dry wines and you can fortify wines well past the ABV tolerance of most yeast (20%) and make it as sweet as you want. The only risk then would be spoilage and oxidation which sulfite is meant to prevent... so you are still risking that.... ( please note that yeast produces SO2 during fermentation... might make you feel better about adding it to your wine)..

 

[berrycrush]

I am making a small batch of concord without K-meta. I use lallzyme to get more color, other than that I let it go natural. Again I am making a desert wine, so I started from 33Brx and should end with enough ABV to stop fermentation. So far so good going into 10th day from start, the fermentation has slowed down to one bubble/20secs in a 2 liter bottle.

 

[MangoMead]

Honestly, if you are anti chemical ( which I do not recommend) I would ferment only dry and fortified wines. You dont need sorbate for dry wines and you can fortify wines well past the ABV tolerance of most yeast (20%) and make it as sweet as you want. The only risk then would be spoilage and oxidation which sulfite is meant to prevent... so you are still risking that.... ( please note that yeast produces SO2 during fermentation... might make you feel better about adding it to your wine)..

Well like I said, I am not flatly against it, and I will probably try it at first if I can get it.

But definitely my preference is to do without, so long as I can do without safely. My crystal ball is telling me I'll most likely be going the fortified route in the long run, as I have a plentiful source of very nice ABV 93% neutral spirit.

Any help on were to figure out how to do the math to know how much to add?

 

[seth8530]

Well like I said, I am not flatly against it, and I will probably try it at first if I can get it.

But definitely my preference is to do without, so long as I can do without safely. My crystal ball is telling me I'll most likely be going the fortified route in the long run, as I have a plentiful source of very nice ABV 93% neutral spirit.

Any help on were to figure out how to do the math to know how much to add?

Wine making takes time, be ready for that... A lot of time.... are you comfortable using mathematical equations?

Also, you need to know for a fact that the ABV is what you think it is.. VERY important or you will not add the correct amount of spirit. Also be ready for a year(s) to age a wine that has been fortified.

 

[Runningwolf]

I stand by what I said. Think of yeasties like little spermies. You can take precautions but it only takes one tiny one to get by to get you in trouble!

 

[Downwards]

It's your choice, but I think if you look at the amount of sulfites you're talking about it's far less than your likely get in your diet if you don't eat organic and such. I'm sort of on the opposite spectrum, I do eat organic, but I do stabilize my wines. To me that's a specialty so to speak, not my main diet. I would liken that to saying I'm on a diet so I'll have my big mac and fries with a diet coke, hehe! I would say eat the healthy meal and treat yourself to a reasonable sized soda with the real sugar.. Everyone will see this different I'm sure.

Totally up to you though, and I say go for it if you want to. Here's another thing you might think of if you want to do things the old way. Bottles and corks are relatively new in wine making themselves and before chems, they very often experienced popped corks and unwanted fermentation. So to say that they must have been able to prevent this somehow in the old days, is actually not correct. What they were able to do in the old days was minimize this by keeping them at cool and steady temps (caves and cellars) and really just hoping for the best. But prior to bottles and corks, wine was kept in things that were not so airtight- like amphorrae and barrels and such.. You might simply aim for that model with gallon jugs and airlocks on them. That way any new gas can escape through the airlock and pressure will be minimal. Unlike the old stuff though, this will also keep oxygen out at least until you drink some down, but then you could bottle only what was leftover with the aim of drinking it soon.

 

[Downwards]

Also you could go with gallon jugs (or half gallon, like growlers) and a bung. At least then if you had a ferment restart, you'll just hear the bungs sailing across the room but the glass will be intact. You'll need to check these often though because if you do lose a bung, the wine will oxidize quickly without the K-meta to protect it.

 

[MangoMead]

Wine making takes time, be ready for that... A lot of time.... are you comfortable using mathematical equations?

Also, you need to know for a fact that the ABV is what you think it is.. VERY important or you will not add the correct amount of spirit. Also be ready for a year(s) to age a wine that has been fortified.

Yeah I can use a formula if I have a calculator to do the heavy lifting, no problem.

I'm not planning on letting anything I make age much at all. I plan on making stuff that I'll be enjoying ice cold while I sit out in the heat watching my drum smoker do it's thing. Low brow Skeeter Pee inspired tropical fruit brews. I know some here say it barely counts as wine That's cool, I'm making what I know I'll like to drink.

I stand by what I said. Think of yeasties like little spermies. You can take precautions but it only takes one tiny one to get by to get you in trouble!

HAHA I Like that. But what I really want to know is, who is the cute doggie!

 

[chrisjw]

How about using heat to pasteurize the wine to kill the yeast?

 

[MangoMead]

How about using heat to pasteurize the wine to kill the yeast?

I asked about that earlier but you are the only other one to bring it up as an option.

I have not really seen any info on doing that in a home setting, but I'd be into exploring the idea as long as it did not evaporate out too much of the ethanol.

Off the top of my head I'm imagining running the wine through a stainless tube coiled through a hot water bath and then into a second coil in a cold water bath to quickly heat and then cool the wine.

I'm looking forward to learning why this probably will not work

Seriously, I'm learning a lot here.

 

[MangoMead]

I love serendipity. Found this fortifying calculator while searching for pasteurization info.

 

[jamesngalveston]

I have read all day about sorbate and most people say that sorbate is not needed if your wine is dry, are over 12 percent abv....
some say use it regardless the abv
some say use it only if you add sugar
most say its not needed in a fortified wine
confusing...to me.

 

[Downwards]

I have read all day about sorbate and most people say that sorbate is not needed if your wine is dry, are over 12 percent abv....
some say use it regardless the abv
some say use it only if you add sugar
most say its not needed in a fortified wine
confusing...to me.

In regards to this, I would feel comfortable leaving out sorbate in a dry wine, for sure. Yeast can't eat sugar that isn't there. I can't imagine why the over 12% ABV though if the wine is sweet.
As far as added sugar, I think they are talking again about a dry wine. If the wine has residual sugars it's the same thing to the yeast.
With my fortified wines I still sorbate and k-meta. I know it's probably pretty unlikely that they will restart, but I just like to be sure.

 

[MangoMead]

OK found this chart over on the homebrewtalk forum and it seems to originally come from milk pasteurization but I'm gonna say that I see no reason these temps and times cannot be at least used as a rule of thumb for wine.


Temperature Time Pasteurization Type
63ºC (145ºF) 30 minutes Vat Pasteurization
72ºC (161ºF) 15 seconds High temperature short time Pasteurization (HTST)
89ºC (191ºF) 1.0 second Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
90ºC (194ºF) 0.5 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
94ºC (201ºF) 0.1 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
96ºC (204ºF) 0.05 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
100ºC (212ºF) 0.01 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
138ºC (280ºF) 2.0 seconds Ultra Pasteurization (UP)

It seems to me the sweet spot for the flash Pasteurization device I am proposing would be somewhere just short of the boiling point of ethanol (to avoid bubbles in the line and weird back pressure volcano type scenarios) so lets say 77c. I guess you would have to experiment a bit but it looks like about 5-10 seconds at 77 would be enough. I bet you could tweak the flow of some sort of gravity feed system to make sure the wine was in the hot tube for that long before getting quickly chilled again in the cold bath.

Since the wine is never exposed to the air while it is hot it seems like oxidization would be avoided.

The trickiest part might be getting the hot bath stabilized at 77 while heat is being sucked out of it.

Another option would be to push the temp higher to say 90c and put in some kind of check valve to keep volcano events from occurring. Then pressure spikes would just get pushed out the back end unless somehow the pressure blew the whole thing up, which really seems unlikely so long as the temps stayed well away from 100c and you are not making water steam. Ethanol vapor has a way smaller expansion ratio than water (~400 vs ~1700)

What do you folks think?

Edit: If this thing worked I guess you could use it to Pasteurize a must before fermenting as well.

 

[BeeWine]

You can ferment the wine using the stepped additions of sugar and end up with a sweet wine. There is an older [85 years i think} fellow living a few miles from me that makes wine this way!!!! It will work. Would I recommend making wine this way? No This will make a hot wine that takes a long time to age and mature. I would also not make wine without Camden.

John