Stabilizi ng trouble

[Troll]

I made a batch of maple wine and fermented dry (.995). Added kmeta and wine conditioner and in 2 weeks wine was again dry. Added new sorbate and added truvia (stevia) and waited 2 weeks and bottled. A couple months and Wine is carbonated. There is no sediment. I read stevia is non fermentable? i have had bad luck sweetening wines and stablizing. chemicals are new? and dosing is per spec. I had a similar problem with blueberry, reason fior replacing chemicals (thought they might be old). Wine was not "gassy" when bottled and is not bad bur worried about bottle bombs and questioning my back sweetening ptrocess.

 

[barbiek]

Are you waiting 48 hrs after you stabilize before adding sweetener? I think it may be 24 hrs after but I wait 48 hrs, check sg then add sorbate check sg again before you add sweetener never had a problem. Another problem might be.. if you purchased the sorbate at hbs it might be expired. Your hbs probably don't sell it fast enough. Your best bet is to order it or pick it up at a winemaking store that gets a lot of traffic hope I helped!

 

[salcoco]

sorbate has about a 6 month shelf life. one plan I might try is make a small batch of your sweetened wine, say one bottle, let it sit around for about two weeks and see if it starts. if not sweeten the larger batch and again wait a few weeks before bottling . in each case k-meta and sorbate should be added at the same time.

 

[BernardSmith]

I can see a couple of issues, Troll.
1. How long between achieving the final gravity of .995 and stabilizing? A few days? A few weeks or a few months? How often after reaching that gravity did you rack the wine? What you may be doing is trying to stabilize your wine when you have an active colony of billions of yeast cells. You really want to stabilize your wines when there are very few active cells, so you may need to cold crash your wine and rack the wine off the lees and repeat this several times if you are not in fact aging your wine.
2. The other potential problem I see is that Stevia is often cut with dextrose and dextrose IS fermentable. You may want to check to see if you bought 100 percent pure Stevia or Stevia augmented with dextrose.

 

[Troll]

The wine was clear with no activity for weeks and no sediment. The sorate could be old but was just purchased. The last attempt I used pure stevia which I thought was non fermentable but? Is there a need to wait between sorbate and sweetening? Isn't conditioner sorbate and sugar?

 

[Grousehawker]

Did you de-gas?

 

[Troll]

Yes it was gas free vac and time and totally clear

 

[treesaver]

I would like to know more about your maple wine. How does it taste? I have thought about doing this, but wonder how I would like it! I'm gathering sap right now to make syrup, and would like to see a recipe to get off on the right foot. I presume you just watered syrup to the gravity you want to start with, to get to a starting point!

I've used sorbate many times, and kept it around till I used it up. Was not awhere that it could get old, but guess I was lucky, as I've never had any issues!

 

[Troll]

Used syrup and sugar-don't have my notes handy and it was a little week flavoring wise. Sweetened was much better and even the carbonation improved the flavor. I think as you said- just diluting syrup to the SG you desire would work. I did nothing to the acidity and only added nutrient.