Joan,
Lockdude brought up an excellent point that I had not considered. Unlike Southern blueberries, Northern blueberries and cranberries may contain high levels of benzoic acid, which is a preservative. Because I make blueberry wine with Southern blueberries, I have not personally experienced this issue, but have read elsewhere about it. Now that you have some initial fermentation underway, my guess is that the dose of 50 ppm sulfites and the natural benzoic acid in cranberries does a double whammy on yeast. Therefore, it probably takes a few days until SO2in the must leaves solution as gas for the SO2 level to drop enough so the double whammy effect is gone. No science, just a guess. Because you now have some activity, I guess that the SO2 level has dropped significantly andI would wait and see what happens in the next twelve hours. If, by then,the fermentation activity has not increased, I would do as lockdude suggests and create a yeast starter with 1/2 must and 1/2 water. A watered-down starter will reduce the acid level and SO2 level in the volume of must used for the starter. The problem is that you will need to transfer the remaining must to a larger container because once you have a healthy starter, you will be pitching a larger starter back into the remaining must, which will be more than five gallons. Edited by: dfwwino
