Issue with Plum country wine.

[joshua]

Hi, I'm new here and not sure if I'm posting in the right place. I made some plum wine using lavulin 1116. I started out using 13lbs of plums to make 3 gallons of wine. I added my surgar, my original sg was 1.11. so the first packet of yeast I put in didn't take, must sat for 2.5 days and nothing happened, so I prepped and added a 2nd packet. Seemed to be going fine till the 6th day. I went to stir it and remove the fruit and got some floaties. I checked the other floatie articles and they didn't seem to look like mine so i figured i'd check. Is my wine still good? Spoke with the guy at my local brew store and he said it's probably an infection and best to pitch it and start another.

 

[Julie]

Welcome to WineMakingTalk. What is your sg now? If it is lower then your must is fermenting. How does it smell? I doubt it is ruined, just keep an eye on it.

 

[joshua]

sg is at 1.000 and it smells yeasty if anything. I tasted it and it has a medicinal alcohol flavor to it. not sure if that's due to lack of sweetener or what.

 

[Turock]

Sounds like it has biological growth.

Did you add meta to the must on the first day? This is very important because you want to kill off bacteria on the fruit and stun the naturally occuring yeast before you pitch culture.

You have to sanitize all equipment with meta solution--anything that touches the wine needs to be sanitized, even your hands.

During the ferment, you must provide the yeast with nutritional support with yeast nutrient. Divide the nutrient into 3 doses and pitch it 3 times during the ferment to keep the yeast fed. Stinky ferments are almost always caused by lack of nutrient. You may not be able to save this batch.