General Questions

[Jennifer Zigler]

I would still consider myself a beginner although I have made a few batches but wanted to try a few new things that I had some questions about. Currently for Christmas presents I have 4 2-gallon batches of fruit wine that I made from frozen constraint ( I have only done fresh fruit so this was new). I did "second fermentation" in my food grade buckets since they wont age for long. They have been done fermenting for about 3 weeks and siphoned twice in that time. I want to back sweeten using condition which I did on my last batch but although I stabilized using potassium sorbate and camdan tablets 6 weeks after bottling they were very sparkling making be thing fermentation restarted in the bottle. I am trying to prevent that on these batches. Do I need to wait after stabilizing to back sweeten and then wait to bottle? Also I wanted to try to Clarify/Filter using egg white and wanted to know any tips or tricks with that. Should I egg white filter before stabilizing and back sweetening? How long do I wait after adding the egg white solution before siphoning?

 

[mainshipfred]

If I were to guess it would be they weren't degassed enough. The CO2 has nowhere to go when bottled.

 

[pgentile]

I have only back sweetened one batch in the past five years of wine making. Used a commercial conditioner that contained sorbate, Added recommended amount of potassium metabisulfite. Bottled a few days later, few weeks later had corks popping. All had fermented the sugar in the conditioner. What I did wrong I'm not sure. I didn't add any sorbate other than what was in the conditioner. I assumed there was enough, but maybe not. But I should have made sure it was stabilized before bottling.

Many here let time clear their wine. Never used egg whites here. I believe you would rack/syphon once it has cleared after adding. I would imagine you could do this before or after back-sweetening, but someone with more knowledge will hopefully chime in.

And as Fred says, make sure you are completely de-gassed.

 

[stickman]

I have used egg whites a few times in the past. Egg whites are only recommended on reds, typically where rough tannins need to be removed, this is because tannin is required for the egg whites to coagulate and drop to the bottom. Egg whites can take about 3 weeks to fall clear.