Front loading excess sugar

[Rice_Guy]

. . . still curious about the process but I'll have to find a yeast with a lower alcohol tolerance before I try it again. Maybe I'll try a beer yeast or a - gasp! - bread yeast.

My experience with safale beer yeast is they were dirty/ high foam and still fermented dry.

 

[winemaker81]

I'm almost 2% over the 71B tolerance so far. I'm still curious about the process but I'll have to find a yeast with a lower alcohol tolerance before I try it again. Maybe I'll try a beer yeast or a - gasp! - bread yeast.

AFAIK, the published ABV ratings of yeast is an average of laboratory conditions. In the wild (e.g., your fermenter), you can get more or less. I recall at least one person stating they step-fed EC-1118 up to 20%.

This is why it's not recommended to count on the yeast dying on schedule.

 

[BigDaveK]

AFAIK, the published ABV ratings of yeast is an average of laboratory conditions. In the wild (e.g., your fermenter), you can get more or less. I recall at least one person stating they step-fed EC-1118 up to 20%.

This is why it's not recommended to count on the yeast dying on schedule.

Yes, I think the best description of yeast activity might be "whimsical". They usually perform as expected but can certainly be playful.

I wish I could have been more historically accurate with my test but yeast technology has changed a lot in the last 75 years. Some old recipes make vague reference to "general purpose yeast" or "red wine yeast." Others do offer a bit more detail by saying "Chablis yeast" or "Bordeaux yeast" or "Port yeast". I actually found some labelled as such sold by Braumarkt in Europe. And get this - they even have organic yeast. Who knew there was such a thing?!

 

[Earldw]

Tolerance is a range, and it's up to the individual yeastie beasties to decide when they are done.

If it were me, I would stick with fermenting to dry and then back sweetening to the desired level of sweetness. I like the control that process gives me, rather than leaving it to chance and possibly ruining the batch or having to blend with another to make it drinkable.

But it's your wine, so give it a shot if the risk is acceptable to you!

I have, at least for the next few years an almost inexhaustible supply of blackberries and muscadines so the risk is somewhat mitigated. I’d like to land on a recipe that doesn’t need to age until my funeral to drink well

 

[winemaker81]

I have, at least for the next few years an almost inexhaustible supply of blackberries and muscadines so the risk is somewhat mitigated. I’d like to land on a recipe that doesn’t need to age until my funeral to drink well

THAT is the conundrum. If you make a wine with lots of body, sugar, etc., it takes time to age, as it has more going on inside it. OTOH, if you made a thin wine, such as DB, it ages quickly.

The only answer I know of is to make as much wine as you can, so that when the current batch has aged to your liking, you have a lot of it to drink, while the succeeding batches are aging.

 

[BigDaveK]

Thought I'd update on my front-loading dandelion experiment - racked today.

The SG pre-sugar was 1.004 so I felt good that my numbers would be a decent approximation. I added sugar to 1.120, used 71B (14% tolerance), and let her rip! Today the SG was .998, we're approaching 16%, and still slowly bubbling though I don't know if it's off gassing or still slowly fermenting. Guess I'll know for sure later.

There was a bit of sweetness and I really liked it! I back sweetened some left over, smoothed it out, but the astringency is noticeable. My gut (and mouth) tells me I probably won't back sweeten at bottling time. I'm glad I tried the process. In fact, I'll have to do it again!