Sparkling blueberry mint

[Jasper24]

I have a blueberry peppermint wine that I am about to bottle. I will be using encapsulated yeast and champagne bottles to get the sparkle. My problem is that I want this to be a sweet wine as well.

Do anyone know how long it take for encapsulated yeast to cause carbonation and how much extra sugar should I add to get a SG of about 1008 after fermentation is complete. I plan on pulling the yeast and recorking while I still have some sweetness to the wine.

I would be grateful for any help.

Hallie

 

[Redbird1]

I'm not sure I'm understanding your process. I don't know what pulling the yeast means or how you would plan to recork bottles.

A sparkling, sweet beverage is really tricky to make. You can't tell the yeast which sugar is for carbonating and which is for sweetening. There are a couple options however. All of these are after primary fermentation is complete.

Pasteurization. Calculate the sugar needed for priming (getting the desired carbonation level) and the sugar needed to get to 1.008. Add them together and add it to your batch, and once it reaches the desired carbonation level, pasteurize the bottles to kill the yeast. This will be tricky since it is hard to know what the carbonation level is without opening a bottle to check.

Artificial sweeteners. Use regular sugar for priming, but use an artificial sweetener for the backsweetening since yeast won't eat the artificial sweetener. This is the easiest, but some people don't care for the taste of artificial sweeteners.

Bottle off a keg. If you have a keg setup with a contraption called a beer gun, you can carbonate the wine in the keg and then transfer it to bottles. Keg setups and beer gun are expensive if you don't already have it, but this method leaves you with the nicest finished product since there won't be any sediment produced by the yeast consuming priming sugar.

 

[Jasper24]

I'm not sure I'm understanding your process. I don't know what pulling the yeast means or how you would plan to recork bottles.

A sparkling, sweet beverage is really tricky to make. You can't tell the yeast which sugar is for carbonating and which is for sweetening. There are a couple options however. All of these are after primary fermentation is complete.

Pasteurization. Calculate the sugar needed for priming (getting the desired carbonation level) and the sugar needed to get to 1.008. Add them together and add it to your batch, and once it reaches the desired carbonation level, pasteurize the bottles to kill the yeast. This will be tricky since it is hard to know what the carbonation level is without opening a bottle to check.

Artificial sweeteners. Use regular sugar for priming, but use an artificial sweetener for the backsweetening since yeast won't eat the artificial sweetener. This is the easiest, but some people don't care for the taste of artificial sweeteners.

Bottle off a keg. If you have a keg setup with a contraption called a beer gun, you can carbonate the wine in the keg and then transfer it to bottles. Keg setups and beer gun are expensive if you don't already have it, but this method leaves you with the nicest finished product since there won't be any sediment produced by the yeast consuming priming sugar.

Redbird1

Thank you for your reply, I am still very new to wine making so sorry I wasn't clearer.

I have read several threads that state you can use encapsulated yeast trapped in the plastic stoppers with screens to make your wine sparkle. I was thinking about using this method to make my sparkling wine. I was also thinking that once I achieved my desired carbonate level that I would pull those stoppers with the yeast in them and put in new stoppers without the yeast.

My problem is when would be a good time to pull the yeast loaded stopper and exchange them for the stoppers without the yeast.

Being new to wine making I am unsure how long it would take the yeast to carbonate the wine. Also how do you pasteurize the wine.

Thanks for your help

Hallie