Annoying Newbie Fermentation Question

[Dragonmouse]

I'm not a newbie winemaker, but I am new to the forum. I did a little research and I did find a few things that I thought were applicable to my question, but, decided I'd annoy you guys anyway. I belong to a fishing/shrimping forum and we all give the newbies a hard time for posting questions without searching and please know, I have thick skin so, fire away at me.

My wife and I have been making wine for about 7 years. We are also beekeepers. I actually got into beekeeping so I could have some real, true, homemade mead. This is our first year keeping and we are about to spin out some frames next week. We have a friend down the road helping us so, we are going to combine forces and do it together. We have 5 hives. I have my pictures on Facebook if you want to see them. You can send me a friend request at www.facebook.com/jay.floyd1 or check out www.jayfloyd.com

OK, enough of that. I will tell you a bit about what I do and what is happening and maybe you can give me some helpful hints...maybe. We have won ribbons every year in the State Fair, so, I'm good with what we are doing. I frankly don't spend a lot of time with it and have never done a lot of research, other than to find recipes and then, go with it. Everything I have ever done has been totally by "feel and common sense". So, here is what I do....followed by a question.

I always make 5 or 6 gallon batches and have 5 carboys (four 5 gallons and 2 6 gallons). I follow the recipes I get off line and typically add in 10 lbs of sugar to each batch...I never use a hydrometer (Don't be a hater). I did the first year but it was such a pain I quit using it. I thought I had a pretty good feel for things by that time, and I really don't care to know what my potential alcohol level is. I just drink it and give it away. It's strong enough that when I'm peeling shrimp and listening to Jimmy Buffet, if I drink a bottle, by the time I'm done....I'm done, if you know what I mean.

OK, so, everything but the yeast on day one into the Primary Fermentation bucket, next day yeast, punch down a couple of times a day for 7 to 10 days, then into the carboy, no campden tablets at that time. I rack it every couple of months for a year and I double rack it (Don't be a hater again), and I rack everything when I do it. OK, so, when it stops bubbling and it tastes very dry, I figure it's done. I use clarifier if it is cloudy but other than that, I watch for the bubbling to stop in the airlock and taste. I do use a hydrometer here also if I have any questions and I never bottle if it's greater than 1 ...so, I figure it's as dry as it's going to get.

I back sweeten it with Global Vintners Inc. Wine Conditioner. It has Liquid Invert Sugar and Potasium Sorbate. We add to taste because my wife and I both like a sweet wine (If I want a stout red to drink with a fabulous steak I grill, I'll go buy one). Anyway, over the last couple of years, we've started popping corks. Fermentation is happening after bottling and I don't understand why. I thought it may have been a bad batch of the sweetener, but, another batch did the same thing. I'm fortunate to have a couple of extra refrigerators to put the wine in, but that is getting old. So.....oh, I forgot to mention, I sanitize as good as I can I think, so, that shouldn't be the problem. I was reading about not double racking and degassing, and all that, and I have no idea what all that is. I'm about as simple as it gets when it comes to my wine.

So, fire away...I know excess sugars will cause fermentation in bottles, but what am I doing wrong. I also use a wine thief to bottle the wine to prevent excessive oxygen in the wine, so, that isn't it.

Help a newbie out...if nothing else, you guys should have fun laughing at me....heh.....

 

[Dragonmouse]

I forgot to mention, we do muscadine, scuppernong, apple, pear, blueberry, peach, mango (overripe from the farmer's market), strawberry, etc. i think Blueberry is our favorite...so far. It seems like the corks get popped on the strawberry, mango and grape varieties more than anything. Maybe it's excessive sugar but how can that be if it has stopped bubbling and the hydrometer is less than 1? My yeast is Red Star Brand...and I typically use Montrachet or Pasteur Red, unless I am intentionally making champagne, which we've done some of and then I use a higher powered yeast. Also, when I make champagne, I typically resweeten with natural juices instead of sugars...it makes it cloudy but MAN it's good...and I do use champagne bottles and stoppers when I do it intentionally...just as an FYI....

 

[DoctorCAD]

There is only one reason for your trouble.

Get ready for it...

The fermentation is not done.

Nothing you can do to stop a fermentation, short of cold crashing and sterile filtering or pasturizing.

USE YOUR HYDROMETER! It will tell you when it is done.

 

[Dragonmouse]

Right, but if the hydrometer is less than 1, it should be done, yes? Tell me about cold crashing and sterile filtering. Pasteurizing ain't gonna happen. I'm not boiling my wine.

Also, I've had wine for 2 solid years in the carboy and then bottle it and still had it pop corks. I have my wine inside in my study, so, it's 68 to 72 degrees in there all the time, so, being outside in a shed isn't slowing down fermentation. Did that the first year and learned the hard way that cold will stop fermentation. This is my first attempt to reach out to someone to try to figure out what is going on.

 

[Julie]

Oh you guys kill me when you don't want to use a hydrometer. Use the hydrometer, just because it is less than 1.000 does not mean it is done. You need to have the same reading for at least a week to know that is is done fermenting. My wines go down to .994 and sometimes .990.

And wine conditioner, throw it away and take some wine out of the carboy, warm it up and add sugar to that to backsweeten your wines. You will be surprised at how much better the wine taste.

You need to take more control of your winemaking, you are pretty much driving blind. Put enough sugar in your must to get an sg around 1.080 or 1.090. Fruit wines are better if ABV is between 10% and 12%.

Sorry for being a hater but your killing me

 

[Boatboy24]

Have you tested your sulphite levels? One thing that comes to mind is a spontaneous Malolactic fermentation. I don't know why it wouldn't happen until the wine is in the bottle though.

 

[cpfan]

I think you're fermenting in bottle because of the wine conditioner. It contains enough sorbate to keep the conditioner from fermenting, but not enough to keep the wine from fermenting the sugars in the conditioner UNLESS a fair amount of conditioner is used. Since you are sweetening to taste, I have to guess that not enough conditioner was used.

Solution...add sorbate before sweetening the wine.

BTW...do you have any feel for how much conditioner you are adding to each batch? RJ Spagnols used to recommend a minimum of 15ml of conditioner per litre, if not adding sorbate. Not sure what Global Vintners would recommend.

Steve

 

[jamesngalveston]

my last mango batch went to 1.085 before it was done. I rely nothing but the hydrometer.. I do not care how long it takes.. I have learned that here many times over....Trust in the hydrometer...Period.

 

[cpfan]

my last mango batch went to 1.085 before it was done. I rely nothing but the hydrometer.. I do not care how long it takes.. I have learned that here many times over....Trust in the hydrometer...Period.

I hope you meant 0.985, because 1.085 indicates a lot of sugar left.

 

[GreginND]

I agree not enough sorbate in the conditioner. You will have much better control adding the sugar and sorbate separately. Also make sure you add the campden when you bottle.

Sorbate does not kill yeast. It only prevents it from multiplying. You may have added your conditioner too early while there is still a lot of active yeast. Make sure you let it clear dry as long as possible so it is very clear before you sweeten and bottle.

 

[jamesngalveston]

sorry, cp..i did mean 0.985

 

[cimbaliw]

I'm with CP and Greg. With my one go with wine conditioner I had referment. Not the worst thing that's ever happened to me. After the SG dropped a few points, I got the stuff to stop with addtional sorb. Now I've got some swell tasting high octane apple.

Welcome to the forum. By the way this is the most civil forum I've ever belonged to.

Bill C.

 

[Abrnth3]

Dragon, I am sure it is the fact that you are not sorbating the wine before you add the conditioner. Like a few others have hit on, the conditioner has sorbate to prevent the conditioner from fermenting but not to stop your wine from renewing fermentation.

 

[BernardSmith]

I agree with others that your back sweetening may be feeding the yeast and so you are encouraging re-fermentation but I think that there may be another very different reason. You don't say that every bottle pops a cork and you do say that you are not familiar with degassing. That makes me think that there may be enough CO2 (carbon dioxide ) in your wine to expel corks.
I apologize if what I am about to say is so obvious that it does not need to be said.
Fermentation is the activity of yeast transforming sugar into alcohol AND carbon dioxide. In fact for every molecule of alcohol the yeast produces it produces a molecule of CO2. Unless you are confident that you have removed all the CO2 before you bottle the wine then you can be pretty certain that a significant quantity of CO2 is dissolved in the wine. That CO2 in the wine finds its own equilibrium and will remain dissolved but it is very likely that when you forced a cork into the bottle you exerted additional pressure and it is the cork that is preventing the CO2 from escaping. Over time, and with changes in temperature and air pressure the CO2 exerts enough pressure on the cork to overcome any friction created between the inside surface of the neck of the bottle and the surface of the cork. The wine under pressure from the CO2 pops the cork and gushes out.
Now, I have a theory (as yet untested) that certain kinds of wine in contact with more fruit particles for longer are less likely to hold onto the CO2 than wine made with less contact with those particles of fruit (the particles act to nucleate the CO2 and so the CO2 is less likely to remain dissolved in the wine, all other things being equal - the particles act to create mini volcanoes of gas). In fact you may have observed nucleation occurring if you added say, yeast nutrient a few days after pitching the yeast. It's nucleation that causes the wine to froth and produce bubbles that can threaten to overflow a filled primary bucket. In short, then, my thinking is that your wine is being bottled while there is still enough CO2 in the wine to expel your corks. The solution is to actively work to remove the CO2 before you bottle (use a vacuum to suck out the CO2, use a drill to whip the CO2 out, each time you rack, rack so that the wine runs down the inside of the carboy as a sheet of liquid exposing more surface area ) or else wait until the CO2 has expelled itself (if you leave a glass of soda out at room temperature overnight all the fizz will be gone by morning. Leave the same glass in the fridge and it will still be quite effervescent the next day). Unlike soda in a12 oz glass open to the air, five gallons in an airlocked carboy may take many, many months for all the CO2 to escape, but while you say that you have aged your wine for as much as two years you don't say anything about the frequency of racking - racking would help expel the CO2 in the wine. You also say that you back sweeten but you don't say whether you add Sorbate and K-meta to stabilize the wine before you add sweetener. Unless you stabilize your wine adding sugar are simply feeding the yeast.
How can you tell if the cause of the popped corks is re-fermentation or simply because of CO2? If you are not stabilizing your wine before you add sugar then my money is on re-fermentation. If your wine is refermenting then there will be a drop in the specific gravity from the time you bottled the wine until the wine pops the cork. If you can measure the gravity of the remaining wine it should be less than the gravity of the wine when you bottled it. If the gravity is unchanged then the cause of the exploding corks is likely to be the wine degassing itself.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

Have you tested your sulphite levels? One thing that comes to mind is a spontaneous Malolactic fermentation. I don't know why it wouldn't happen until the wine is in the bottle though.

I agree - I also in my younger days had malo take off in the bottles - especially in the warmer climate and there were corks flying !! and wine everywhere !!

 

[Turock]

I agree with Greg. Wine needs to stabilize before sorbate will work. You have to get rid of as many yeast cells as is possible before sorbate will work. That's why you never sorbate a cloudy wine.

So you can have one, or a combination of problems---too much CO2 remaining in the wine. This why you allow fruit wines to bulk age for a year. Fermentation still happening---this is why you allow your wines to bulk age and finish the fermentation in the carboy. Sobating too early--this is why you bulk age, rack and get the wines clear. Wine conditioner--not enough sorbate in it and sometimes it gives off flavors. We hate wine conditioner--go to sugar. Sorbate too old---old sorbate will not prevent re-fermentation. Date all your sorbate and throw away after one year. Possible MLF--but this is not common.

 

[BernardSmith]

References to MLF as a source of Dragonmouse's popped corks are really interesting. I have two or three questions. I think that these questions are relevant to this thread but if you think I am hijacking the discussion I will happily start a new thread.
How likely is it that malo-lactic fermentation can take place if the bacteria are not deliberately introduced?
Dragonmouse refers to several wines that are more likely to pop than others: do fruits such as strawberry and mango contain enough malic acid to produce an MLF?
And my third question is if even if the potassium sorbate is old doesn't the chemical itself produce an off aroma similar to geranium in the presence of MLF? In other words, wouldn't Dragonmouse have noted an obviously strange smell associated with the wine in those bottles whose corks had blown?
OK -four questions: Isn't there a chromatographic test to see if malo -lactic fermentation has taken place or does that test simply identify the presence of malic acid in the wine?

 

[saramc]

I am also more inclined to say the wine conditioner is the culprit. You are bulk aging for a year, sometimes two, so the wine is more than likely degassed. It reads that you are not adding the wine conditioner until closer to bottling, otherwise your batch would have just fermented in bulk. As to why some bottles popped corks & not them all, it could simply be distribution of remaining yeast cells, who really knows, but I bet they all would pop if given the chance. I used wine conditioner one time on a gallon pulled from six gallon carboy just to see what it was like. I used the dose recommended on label, my 12 month bulk aged clear, sediment free wine was well below 1.000 & since I wait 10-14 days before bottling I caught the continued refermentation. Chucked the wine conditioner.