Wine Conditioner Part 2

[mainshipfred]

From the original post here is a brief summary. Around this time last year I made a peach wine. Fermented it dry and instead of using K-Sorbate and simple sugar to back sweeten it I used Wine Conditioner which is supposed to have sorbate. It was bottled around February and in June I had a cork blow. Since then I had 4 more blow. Yesterday I uncorked and put the wine back into a carboy. The gravity after back sweetening it was 1.006 or 1.007. I just took a gravity reading and it is still at 1.006. This is after around 7 months in the bottle. If the gravity stayed the same I would imagine it hasn't been fermenting. I'm really puzzled, where do you think the effervescence is coming from?

 

[ratflinger]

Wouldn't take much fermenting to pop a cork. I'd throw some sorbate at it.

 

[winemaker81]

What @ratflinger said.

Unbottle the wine, add sorbate + K-meta, and carboy age for a month. If things are stable, rebottle.

Call this one a cheap lesson, as you didn't have to dump the carboy. [I'm very happy your wine is recoverable!]

 

[mainshipfred]

I appreciate your reply's though I still have concerns. 1.006 or 7 is not dry. I would think that after 7 months a differential .001 +/- reading should indicated no refermentation has taken place so perhaps the sorbate in the conditioner did work. I'm going vacuum degas and let it sit in the carboy for a few weeks without adding any sorbate. If the gravity starts dropping I'll just let it finish and back sweeten it again using sorbate and simple syrup. Since sorbate doesn't stop fermentation to me it doesn't make any sense to add it until I'm sure there is no fermentation going on.

 

[VinesnBines]

Fred, did you test the SG of the whole batch when you emptied it all into the carboy? If so, some bottles may have been higher SG while others were lower - less sugar. It doesn't make sense but then it might. We see that wine from one part of the carboy has a different flavor than other areas so it seems that some areas could have a higher SG than other areas. It is odd but frankly you know you had re-fermentation and move on from there. It happens. Scratch your head and have sage advice for others.

 

[mainshipfred]

It was taken after all the bottles were back in the carboy. Also prior to bottling I filter all the carboys into a large enough vessel to hold the entire batch. So at bottling time the wine is pretty homogenous. It is a bit of a head scratcher.

 

[VinesnBines]

I agree. This is why I've started bottling fruit wines dry and back sweetening upon opening or rebottling for gifting and warning the recipient to refrigerate soon. That or bottling in 22 ounce beer bottles and crown capping. Not pretty. Or bottle in champagne bottles with crown caps. JUst ideas for future protection.

 

[winemaker81]

Fred, the fact that you've had only 5 corks blow in 7 months indicates the fermentation rate is very low. If the ferment is slow enough, the sorbate will inhibit the yeast, and fermentation won't progress, which is why I suggested add it now. If the SG doesn't change during the following month, you're set and can re-bottle. If it does progress, you're no farther behind.

I agree with @VinesnBines that your wine may not have been as homogeneous as you believed. Over the past year I noticed that I did not mix kits as well as I thought I did -- I consistently got a different SG reading the following morning before I inoculated batches. The differences are not always significant (+/- 0.002), but some were. This was a bit of a shock to me, as I was sure I did a good job of mixing, but my results indicate I did not.

Conditioner and glycerin are both very thick, and do not distribute easily. Another point may be the age of the yeast -- if the wine was a few months old (I can't recall what you said), the yeast was older, and it's not necessarily evenly distributed. So it's likely you had pockets of viable yeast and pockets of non-viable yeast.

My current method for glycerin is to start the final siphon, add K-meta (and sorbate for the few wines I backsweeten), and direct the siphon into the measuring cup that holds the glycerin. I use the stream to flush out and rinse the cup, then when I have a couple inches of wine in the fermenter, I stir manually for 30 second. Half way through and at the end I stir again, this time with a drill-mounted rod, about 1 minute each time, changing direction half way through.

I have FWK Strawberry and Blackberry in production -- each kit received a conditioner pack + bottling pack (K-meta + sorbate) before going into bulk aging. Each has another conditioner pack, which I will add prior to bottling in 4 to 6 weeks, using the glycerin process.

I'm honestly surprised, but these kits probably need both. At bottling time I'll check SG to compare against the pre-bulk age value, and again after the final conditioner addition. The SG of the dry Strawberry was 0.996 and post-conditioner was 1.006. Based upon that, if the SG still measures 1.006, if I add the full second pack, I should get ~1.016. If the current SG is not 1.006, it will indicate I need to improve my mixing.

 

[winemaker81]

I agree. This is why I've started bottling fruit wines dry and back sweetening upon opening or rebottling for gifting and warning the recipient to refrigerate soon. That or bottling in 22 ounce beer bottles and crown capping. Not pretty. Or bottle in champagne bottles with crown caps. JUst ideas for future protection.

I've never had a problem with stabilized wine re-fermenting in the bottle. I buy sorbate in small packs when I need it, and bin it after 12-15 months, so whatever I have on hand is fresh.

However, I did learn the hard way to ensure a wine is fully fermented before bottling. I was lucky -- I spotted corks pushing out -- none blew. I had to unbottle the batch, let it finish fermenting, and rebottle. In the grand scheme of winemaking, a cheap lesson.