Primary fermentation Question

[SpaceBoy31]

Hey everyone

I am at the 6th day of primary fermentation and today when I went to press the grapes down I noticed that half the grape skins had not risen to the top - is this a sign that the yeast has run it's coarse and processed all the sugar?

I have noticed some people say to add sugar again and some say to put into the demijohns. When I added sugar before the Primary fermentation I added enough to get the SG to 1.09.

Which should I do?

Any help is apreciated!

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

A sign that the fermentation is finished is the gravity reading. It would help a lot if you described what type and style of wine you are trying to get, how can anyone advise you to add sugar without knowing what your goals are? What yeast? What kind of grapes? 1 gal or 50 gal? You making a dry table wine or a big old port? WVMJ

 

[sour_grapes]

As WVMJ said, you really need to take a reading of the specific gravity using a hydrometer to tell where you are in the process.

Your starting SG of 1.090 would result in a wine of about 12%. That certainly falls within the range of "normal," so no more sugar is required. If you want more alcohol than that, you needed to have added more sugar at some point, but I honestly don't know if adding it at this point is a good idea or not. Post the current SG and someone may be able to advise you.

 

[Turock]

Don't add more sugar. Take a hydrometer reading and if at 1.000 or below, get it over in the secondary because the wine is no longer protected by the CO2 cover. If you want the wine to have some sweetness, you wait until you've bulk aged it and it's clear and ready to bottle. THEN you add sugar, sorbate, and some K meta.

 

[BernardSmith]

Don't add more sugar. Take a hydrometer reading and if at 1.000 or below, get it over in the secondary because the wine is no longer protected by the CO2 cover. If you want the wine to have some sweetness, you wait until you've bulk aged it and it's clear and ready to bottle. THEN you add sugar, sorbate, and some K meta.

Hi Turock, I don't mean to hijack Spaceboy's thread (and I don't believe I am) but when you suggest that the next time to add sugar is if Spaceboy is back sweetening the wine the yeast needs first to be stabilized with sorbate and K-meta how soon after stabilization can the sugar be added - at the same time? A day or two later? A week later?

I ask this with the understanding that before Spaceboy stabilizes the yeast he needs to take a reading with his hydrometer to make certain that the gravity has not dropped even a hair for at least three days , but if the gravity is absolutely stable below 1.000 and is at, say, 0.995 for three days can you add sugar minutes after adding the sorbate and k-meta or should you wait a few days to allow the stabilizers to do their work on any remaining yeast?

 

[Noontime]

but if the gravity is absolutely stable below 1.000 and is at, say, 0.995 for three days can you add sugar minutes after adding the sorbate and k-meta or should you wait a few days to allow the stabilizers to do their work on any remaining yeast?

Best practice is to rack, then stabilize, then wait some time (a week or so), then sweeten. The sorbate doesn't kill yeast, it just prevents them from multiplying. So if you add sugar right after stabilizing, the live yeast will start chomping away and building a larger colony again. So you rack to get most of the yeast out of the wine, then hit the much smaller population of yeast that remain with sorbate and kmeta, allow time for the last generation to die off, and then sweeten.

 

[Turock]

Ok---he is making a grape wine here. Not something that is a kit or early drinking wine. Therefore, all these wines need to spend time in bulk aging, and I suggest a minimum of 1 year and most likely 1 1/2 years before any backsweetening attempts. There are a number of reasons for this:

First, you cannot add sorbate to cloudy wine that is full of yeast cells. It is very important to remove as many yeast cells as possible so that the sorbate can work to prevent the few remaining yeast cells from causing a possible re-ferment.

Second, you can't evaluate a young wine for any level of sweetness because the whole attempt is not just making a wine sweet. Rather, it is more of a balancing of sweetness with the acids present. And when wine is young and not at its robust flavor, it is very hard to evaluate this. Additionally, if you have a delicate wine, it's even more difficult to evaluate it and you will probably end up sweetening it too much and THEN the flavor is very tamped down. You have to be careful when sweetening delicate flavors.

Third, bulk aging does many things for a wine. You have to allow enough time for sediments to flocculate together so they fall out. And there are more bulky types of sediment that you can see, but there are more micro-sediments that should be allowed to fall out. Such as volatile esters, as they are unstable components as well. Many of these esters are microbial in origin and not considered to be part of the varietal characteristic. Bitter and astringent compounds can also be removed thru bulk aging--BUT, you have to allow enough time!! All these types of components are unstable----so aging can be thought of as stabilizing the wine once these unstable components have been allowed the TIME to fall free of the wine.

Fourth, aging stabilizes tannins,pigments, and color.

So----you are doing yourself a disservice by hurrying your wines into the bottle.

Bernard---sorbating and adding of meta is done right along with sweetening a stable and properly aged wine. We do it at bottling time and immediately bottle. However, don't add sorbate directly to the wine because it is not soluable in wine. It is only soluable in water where it becomes sorbic acid which IS soluble in wine.

 

[SpaceBoy31]

Hey everyone, thanks for the info!

I am making a grape wine and I measured the SG shortly after posting this which read 1.000 so I moved it into secondary fermentation (in a 1 gallon demijohn which I added 2 tablespoons of sugar syrup.)

Thanks again!

 

[Turock]

After everything I just wrote about this, you added syrup? Why did you do that?

 

[SpaceBoy31]

Not after, before reading everything you put...
It'll be quite potent now huh.

 

[pjd]

After everything I just wrote about this, you added syrup? Why did you do that?

Really makes you wonder why you even try! I'm glad you did, I learned from your post, Thanks!

 

[Turock]

Sigh, I can only TRY to infuse a bit of knowledge but if people don't want to listen to me, then they will remain in their problem. But I'm glad I didn't write all that in vain, and that you got something from it, pjd!!!

 

[Turock]

Oh, I see where he did that before he read my post. Spaceboy--don't ever add more sugar when the ferment is complete. All you do is cause it to continue to ferment and you can't add more nutrient at that point. Backsweeten is different from what you did there.