Fast Fermentation

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BkR

Junior
Joined
Oct 15, 2019
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Location
California
This is my first post, so I apologize if this stuff has been asked before. I’ve only ever made fruit wines but a vineyard owner owner I know let me go out and pick about 100 pounds of merlot grapes, I figured it was a good opportunity to try making wine from grapes.

I crushed and destemmed them last weekend, added the sulfite and pectic enzyme, waited 24 hours, and added the yeast. I had 3 fermenting buckets with 3 gallons of must in each. I added a pack of EC-1118 to each bucket and pressed the grapes tonight. I started at 24 brix and used a hydrometer tonight expecting to get around 1.010-1.020, but I got 1.000 after only 5 days. Is this normal? My plan was to rack the wine off the gross lees after about 36 hours and then let it sit in primary for another couple of weeks before stabilizing, degassing, etc. is that still ok to do even though my wine is dry and not putting off much CO2 to protect it from oxygenating? Also, there’s not any activity in my air lock since pressing, is it possible it’ll continue to ferment so I can get down closer to .998?

Hope this makes sense, I appreciate any help, because I’m just thrown off a bit because the hydrometer reading was so low, there’s not much SO2, and doesn’t seem to be any activity in the air lock.
 
ive had warmer ferments finish within a week. i would get that wine into secondary.
 
Once again, an airlock not bubbling isn't an indication of the end of fermentation.

Keep checking with the hydrometer.

If you chose to rack now just be careful that the wine does not before re-engergized and suddenly give you a foam fountain. Go slow with the racking and keep an eye on if for an hour or two.
 
Thanks for the advice, I’m going to carefully rack it and k-meta today. I’ll keep a close eye on the next few days and make sure I don’t end up with a huge mess.
 
Once you add the kmeta fermentation , will, if not completed, be inhibited not stopped completely. Foam fountains usually occur at higher SGs but you could still foamhave someing IF the yeast has nor quit yet.
 
Last edited:
I have run 85F and it took three days to get below 1.010.
Yesterday I posted a temperature study graphic in “Heating Pad Under Primary” with ferments at 75, 65, 55, 45. (How does one link it to your question?)

Yes five days to get to 1.000 is normal if the temp runs high. Fermentation is exothermic! For the future check temperatures to see if it is tracking where you want to process.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top