Orange Wine is Refermenting

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Kief

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Hello Everyone: I started 3 gal of an orange wine in February and fermented it dry. It was weak bodied, so I stabilized it 2 weeks ago and decided to sweeten up last week( 1 cup sugar/gal ) After about 5 days this wine returned to active fermentation. ----why?------Kief
 
How did you stabilize and please include amounts so we can help troubleshoot.
 
masta, I added 1/2 ea of packets of sorbate and sulfite to a cup of the wine. The packets indicted they were appropriate for a 6 gal batch. I stirred the cupful into the carboy and replace the airlock. I racked and added my sugar 8 days later. After 5 more days I had major bubble action.
 
Kief,


Don't know how much was in the packets you added but if they were close to what Winexpert adds to their kits the sorbate packet would contain 5.5 grams.


Based on the numbers I could find you want to add 1/2 tsp per gallon of sorbate to prevent refermentation. Sorbate weighs ~1.25 grams per 1/2 tsp so the total amount you need is 1.5 tsp or 3.75 grams. One half of the package if is was 5.5 grams would have been 2.75 grams if you did it perfectly.


Obviously it wasn't enough sorbate due to your refermentation so I guess you have no choice and wait until it stops and try again.


Just for clarification on the amount of sorbate that isincluded in Winexpert kits. It is 5.5 grams and this amount is calculated toyield just under 200 PPM, a rate consistent with preventing bacterial growth, while staying below the taste threshold of 99.9% of the population.


WE kits that have an F-Pack for sweeting actually add more sorbate than the 5.5 grams since the F-Pack does contains additional sorbate.


Hope this makes sense and bottom line is that when adding chemicals you need to follow the instructions for that particular brand since they are not all interchangeable.
 
masta: very informative. next time I will be more precise. In the meantime, this wine's ac was too weak anyway 8% ( I think )This should make for a better wine. thank you again------kief
 

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