Plum wine - no activity for 3 days after first racking

[cody]

Hello,

I have a batch of plum wine in a 23L glass carboy that has just had its first racking after 1 month secondary fermentation. SG has gone from initial 1.052 to 1.042 (slower than any wine I've made previously).

I normally use EC1118 yeast but this time my local supplier gave me some Lalvin ICV-D254 which I have used but noticed fermentation has been significantly slower.

Primary fermentation took a few days to start, I think I killed my first sachet of yeast by pitching it without rehydrating into a must with about 5 campden tablets dissolved. Second attempt with rehydration seemed to work after another day or two.

Moving into secondary seemed to be OK albeit a consistently slow bubble rate with some foam which I'm not used to seeing.

During this last racking I added 2 more campden tablets and I think I may have killed my yeast as no bubbling for about 3 days.

Thinking of giving it another couple of days and if no activity, using EC1118 which seems to have dealt with this number of campden tablets fine in the past.

Any thoughts? Will switching yeasts have a problematic effect on flavours?

Thanks in advance

 

[djrockinsteve]

You've got to be careful with all that Pot. Meta. you are adding. You should wait until fermentation is complete before adding more Pot. Meta.

 

[skiboarder72]

Thats my thoughts too, I think you up a little high on the sulfite. It will slowly come back down. Try re hydrating a new pack of yeast, and slowly mixing in some of the must in the re hydrating bowl. Then add the whole thing to the must.

 

[cody]

Thanks, I'll sit tight for a little while. I've only got one pack of the EC1118 yeast at the moment and thought it might pay to stick with the original strain of yeast for this batch if possible.

I am noticing a little movement in the airlock over the past couple of days, i.e. pressure seems to slowly build up slightly during the day and go backwards at night without any bubbling or "fizzing" in the must.

Not sure if that's just a side effect of warming up during the day and cooling down at night, or evidence of a tiny bit of activity.

 

[cody]

Just a quick followup on this one, after a couple more days inactivity I rehydrated some EC1118 yeast and pitched it in.

It immediately went to work and started bubbling so my batch is alive again, albeit with a different strain of yeast.