Need help please

[roos2er]

I bottled my blackberry wine about 4 months ago and just opened a bottle and its in very bubbly? I am very new to wine making and really am not sure what went wrong.

The corks are not backing out at all but I would assume that they are starting to ferment in bottle????

What can I do to fix this?

 

[bigdrums2]

If you already bottled then enjoy your sparkling blackberry wine. You can't do anything to it now. You have to really make sure it is degassed before you bottle. There is a drill attachment that I use with my carboys that is good.

 

[Runningwolf]

Is this wine from scratch or a kit. If you're sure it is C02 and not refermentation you have two choices. As said above enjoy the extra tingle or dump it all back into a carboy and degas.

 

[roos2er]

No this was not a kit wine.
I am 100% fine with opening all the bottles and putting them back in a carboy if thats what I need to do. Is there a way to know if CO2 or refermentation?

If I re-carboy this I want to make sure I get it right this time!!! Are there any iother steps I should take besides the degass??

 

[oldwhiskers]

Did you sweeten before bottling? If so did you add sorbate to stabilize to prevent renewed fermentation?

 

[roos2er]

no I did not sweeten before bottling and yes on the sorbate

 

[Julie]

Well if you did not backsweeten, then my money is on the degassing.

 

[roos2er]

After I degass shhould I ad some sorbate to stabilize just in case its re-fermenation?

 

[Duster]

I would agree that a good degassing is all you need but if you want to make sure, once you have it in the carboy take an SG reading? it should be somewhere around 0.995. this should eliminate any guesswork of a possible stuck fermentation.
With that said, I'm not even sure a stuck fermentation would restart after the addition of sorbate?

 

[Runningwolf]

No, do not add additional sorbate.

 

[Wiz]

With any wine, never be in a hurry to bottle. After fermentation has completed I leave fruit wines, including blackberry, to age in the carboy for at least 6 months. Never had a problem with self-degassing.

Mike

 

[roos2er]

Thanks to all that have replied. While it was a bit painful to open and dump my first BB wine back into a carboy hopefully and can get the "what I think is" CO2 out of it and re bottle in a week or so.

 

[bigdrums2]

I haven't done it, but I heard blackberry with a little oak is very nice.

 

[Wiz]

I wouldn't make blackberry without oak.
Mike

 

[Noontime]

One thing I would do is make sure you have enough SO2 since your're now exposing it to air again. I'd degas it as quickly as possible and get it in bottles again. A good way in the future to see if it's refermenting or just gassy, just put a bottle somewhere warm and see if the cork starts coming out and/or it drops any lees. If its just trapped gas you always have the option of degassing when you open the bottle (if you're giving a bunch away it might be better to rebottle I suppose). Unless you have bottles popping there's no rush to find a fix.

 

[roos2er]

One thing I would do is make sure you have enough SO2 since your're now exposing it to air again. I'd degas it as quickly as possible and get it in bottles again. A good way in the future to see if it's refermenting or just gassy, just put a bottle somewhere warm and see if the cork starts coming out and/or it drops any lees. If its just trapped gas you always have the option of degassing when you open the bottle (if you're giving a bunch away it might be better to rebottle I suppose). Unless you have bottles popping there's no rush to find a fix.

If I put a bottle somewhere warm and the cork does start to come out what does that mean re-fermenation or that it needs to be degassed?

I removed the 2 cases of wine from the garage because it was getting to warm (70 ish) there to store the wine and desided to try a bottle. This is when I noticed what I "think" is C02 on the wine.
In this enviroment none of the corks had started to back out.

 

[Noontime]

If there's CO2 in there, it's not going to affect the cork that much (although I guess if you got it really warm there could be expansion); the presure in the bottle is going to remain basically the same weather the gas is trapped in the wine or in the ullage space.

There are no hard and fast rules (unfortunately)...if the wine is in 70 to 80 degree range that SHOULD promote refermentation if there's any viable yeast in the bottle. This SHOULD push out the corks a bit and create some lees after awhile. But if your corks are in there really well you could just get a bottle bomb where the bottle fails before the cork does.

We have an extra bathroom where we put anything suspect in the tub with a shower curtain. That way if anything does pop or explode it contained and we can watch it for awhile at room temp.