First Post and a Few Questions

[Woreign]

Hello,

I started making fruit wine a few months ago when I received a 6 gallon starter kit. I'm not sure what prompted me to want to make my own wine, but I find the science behind the whole technique fascinating...

Anyway, my first batch of wine is a cranberry-pomegranate that I made from store bought juice. Everything has been going smoothly and according to plan. Yesterday I added campden and sorbate to stabilize the wine that is in a 6 gallon carboy. And today I added a flavor-pack, which I made by reducing 4 gallons of the regular juice into 1 gallon. This calculated out to be the same ratio of the 1/2 gallon jug of surplus wine that I added regular juice to top off with a few months ago. And this 1/2 gallon tastes terrific!

Anyway, here are my questions:

1. When I get ready to bottle in 4 weeks, do I need to add any more campden or sorbate?

2. The 1/2 gallon "topping off" wine that I'm enjoying now is slightly carbonated. Is there a safe way to add carbonation, or should I just be happy with a non-sparkling wine?

I also have a second carboy of pineapple-orange-banana that fermented quite quickly and has already settled and cleared. It's less than a month old, so I'm nowhere near ready to anything with it.

 

[Wade E]

Sorbate is added only once per batch of wine. Sulfite (campden tablets are added about every 3 months so unless you didnt add the right amount to begin with I wouldnt add any more now. As a side note you should wait about a week before sweetening after stabilizing to let the agenst mix in properly and then another week before bottling after sweetening to make sure it doesnt start to ferment again.