I skipped yeast food. Now what?

[Spikeidaho]

I followed the recipe for for my Mosti Mondiale, but failed to note that I needed to put in yeast food. I'm now about two days away from bottling. Will this skipped step ruin the taste of my Barolo (sp?).


My sons will be bottling my wine, and I will make gifts of it all assuming that it's drinkable. I put some blue berries into the must and my secondary fermenter was merely a covered plastic bucket, as my siphoning system didn't work to put the must into a glass carboy. That was the best that I could do with the equipment that I had.


If these developments weren't dicey enough, I managed to lose my job. I've been laid off three times in the past year, all thanks to this wonderful economy. Don't think that I'll be buying much of anything any time soon, George...

Teachers sure aren't of much value to American society any more.

 

[ibglowin]

Yeast nutrient helps ensure the yeast live long enough to do their job and ferment your wine to dry. Specific gravity of ~0.998 or less. Did you take any SG measurements at the end of fermentation? As long as it did go to dry then your going to be fine but I would check the SG before bottling if you by chance did not make any measurements. Not adding the nutrient will not harm or effect the taste or flavor profile of your wine, but not fermenting to dry will make the wine taste sweet because not all the sugar was converted over to ethanol.

So sorry to hear about your crummy year, teaching was always a fallback job that you could do if nothing else worked out in your degree field, guess not any more these days. Hopefully things will turn around for you as well as the country real soon.

 

[Spikeidaho]

I just measured the specific gravity and it's at .998. The must tastes very bitter. Is that OK for a must that probably shouldn't be drunk for around six months to a year any way? I put some blue berries in there and they're happy little fellows.


Thanks, Mike, for taking pity on me. One of my favorite students, a bookkeeper by trade, moved from my beloved Idaho to New Mexico somewhere. I hope that she's a happy woman.


My faith in Christ hasn't diminished at all, as these were just jobs. On the other hand, the credit card companies aren't as flippant as I am about these developments. How does the old saying go, "When you owe someone, they take a sudden keen interest in your health."


Scott Tudehope
Formerly a teacher

 

[ibglowin]

The Barolo is a huge red that will take a minimum of 12 months to be remotely approachable to drink. I am almost positive what you describe as bitter is just a young tannic or "green" wine that really only needs time in the bottle to age and mellow. If you have access to any 375ml bottles I would bottle a couple of half bottles or splits to sample down the road to see how the wine is progressing.

I am also assuming you have followed the directions otherwise and all is well and ready to bottle (wine has been properly degassed, fined, preservatives added, etc.)

Good luck, you should be very happy with this one down the road when its really ready to drink!

 

[Wade E]

Mosti Mondiale changed their instructions awhile back and added the nutrient part although not all kits include this nutrient so on your kit dont worry about that and I wish they would have just kept the instructions the same for the kits that dont come with these nutrients. As for the Blueberries you added Im sure they are giving off more sugar for the yeast to eat so it most likely started fermenting a little bit again so youll have to wait and check for a stable sg for at least 3 days before moving on and adding anymore of the chemicals. This is a very young wine like stated above so the bitterness is to b expected. When ever adding any type of fruit to be fermented you should also use pectic enzyme as without it you could get a pectin haze from the pectin in the fruit, this enzyme can be added now if you have any to prevent this haze that is possible, its also used to help extract more flavor and color from a fruit and to help break down the cellular structure of the fruit. Sorry to hear about your jib, we took a 10% cut in pay and lost all vacation pay for our company to survive.