Can you stabilize twice?

[Hunt]

I have a banana wine thats been bulk aging for about 3 months now and today i took a small sample of it for tasting. The banana flavor is comming out rather nice but there is also a very strong bitter taste that I think could be corrected with a little sugar. The trouble is I can not remember if I stabilized the wine once it came out of primary. My question is is it ok to stablize a wine if you can not remember if it was already stabilized. I dont want to mess up.
Thanks
Joshua

 

[Turock]

You should never use sorbate until wine is clear. It is bad technique to use it in cloudy wine right out of the primary. Wine needs to be cleared of most of the yeast cells for sorbate to work.

You should never use more sorbate than normal doses because too much of it will give a bubblegum flavor. And never more than one time because sorbate is very stabile in wine.

 

[WineQuest]

What do you mean by stabilize? Are you talking about cold stabilizing? Or are you talking about sorbate for the sugar you are about to add?

 

[Hunt]

Meaning adding the sorbet to prevent secondary fermintation.

 

[WineQuest]

You are a bit off on your terms. Primary fermentation is where the yeast consumes sugar and the by product is alcohol and co2. Secondary fermentation is also, and preferably, called malolactic fermentation and is when Mali lactic bacteria consumes the malic acid and produces lactic acid and co2. When a wine is back sweetened and starts to ferment again the term is refermentation. What you are trying to prevent with sorbate is refermentation. Not trying to be hyper critical but like most things in life communication is key and using the correct terminology is important.

Unfortunately I will not be much help with your sorbate question. When I have residual sugar I do not add sorbate but instead run the wine through sterile filter to remove all of the yeast.

 

[djrockinsteve]

You can add twice the sorbate to a wine and usually have no apparent taste. Beyond that you will get a geranium taste.

Recommended dosage is 1/2 teaspoon per gallon.

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

Keep a Notebook and you wont have to ask us what you did I thought the geranium smell was sue to adding sorbate to a wine followed by MLF DJ. WVMJ

 

[grapeman]

It is said that if malolactic bacteria is in the presence of sorbate and becomes active that it may convert some of it to geraniol which gives the geranium odor. Too much sorbate may be detected in a lot of people as the typical bubble gum taste.