we made a stawberry wine this summer. when the sg was 1.020 i racked into secondary. the airlock looked like a piston going up and down at first. when it slowed i checked the gravity at 1.010. the taste was incredible. i let this ferment to dry, and had to backsweeten and still never got the super taste back. its a great wine, but could you rerack and add some kmeta and sorbate to stop fermentation when the sg is 1.010 or so. id like to try this on a pear i started yesterday.
racking before dry
- Thread starter appleweld
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Adding kmeta and sorbate will not stop a fermentation unless you were to add so much kmeta that you would want to dump your wine out. It would also be possible to start fermenting again at a later time when the sulfite levels came down which most likely would be in the bottle as it doesnt kill the yeast, just stuns it and sorbate just prevents it from multiplying but once the sulfite level came down enough the still existing yeast cells would spring back into action.
thanks for the tech wade. so when is fermentation complete, .990 or .999 ? i know yeast eat sugar to produce alcohol, but when fermentation is complete, are the yeast forever dead? as a side note, we used pure pear juice we cranked through the mill ourself. i froze 2 gallons for an f-pack if needed. would i just dump this in to taste, or does it need boiled or something.
Once the wine is stable (checked by taking sg readings for 3 days in a row with no change) then its time to add sulfite and sorbate. The sulfite is there for a few reasons.1 is to keep ant bacteria at bay which includes Malo lactic bacteria, 2 is for anti oxidant purposes. Sorbate prevents and refermentation from happening. As for adding that juice, you may want to simmer it down to concentrate it so as that you dont dilute the abv of your wine too much. I usually simmer it down to cut in in thirds meaning I will put in 3 quarts and retrieve 1 out of it.
