Hello all, I’m new to the forum here, hope you’re all having a great day. I make cherry wine every year by heating the cherries up to 150° in water, putting them through a fruit press, adding K Meta, and fermenting the juice and pulp. I’ve never had this happen before but it was fermenting on its own (pretty strong) when I went to put the yeast in the next day. I added the yeast and it’s now on the downhill side of fermentation. Never seen anything like this before and it scares me because whatever survived the heat and K Meta is probably not very friendly. Has anyone run into something like this? Thanks!
Wild Yeast
- Thread starter JFitz
- Start date
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* all fermentations in the factory are done with mixed cultures, ie unless we sterilize the media at 121C for thirty minutes there WILL be organisms which we can culture
* would I be concerned? The process you have been doing has a protective barrier of pH, food poisoning organisms as a rule don’t grow below pH 4.0 and lower pH is more protective. Added meta is another selective barrier. The main risk is that a culture developed which produces off flavor/ aromas.
* 150F 65C is hot enough that this should kill all yeast (yeast are fairly easy to kill). My assumption on process was that you heated in a pot on the stove, ,, this then leads to the question of post process contamination. If you have a dried culture on the press, or filter bag or spoons or plastic pail etc, ,,, you have inoculated the must. (note traditional fermentation’s were done by inoculating by reusing the same equipment year after year)
* at this point you should be producing significant alcohol, 5% is a barrier which keeps most bacteria out, 11% is more selective. You should be anaerobic/ generating CO2 another barrier.
ie wine is a safe food system, the risk is mainly flavor degradation.
* all fermentations in the factory are done with mixed cultures, ie unless we sterilize the media at 121C for thirty minutes there WILL be organisms which we can culture
* would I be concerned? The process you have been doing has a protective barrier of pH, food poisoning organisms as a rule don’t grow below pH 4.0 and lower pH is more protective. Added meta is another selective barrier. The main risk is that a culture developed which produces off flavor/ aromas.
* 150F 65C is hot enough that this should kill all yeast (yeast are fairly easy to kill). My assumption on process was that you heated in a pot on the stove, ,, this then leads to the question of post process contamination. If you have a dried culture on the press, or filter bag or spoons or plastic pail etc, ,,, you have inoculated the must. (note traditional fermentation’s were done by inoculating by reusing the same equipment year after year)
* at this point you should be producing significant alcohol, 5% is a barrier which keeps most bacteria out, 11% is more selective. You should be anaerobic/ generating CO2 another barrier.
ie wine is a safe food system, the risk is mainly flavor degradation.
Thank you very much for the response, I really appreciate it! I’m hoping whatever inoculated it doesn’t give any off flavors, it is a 15 gallon batch. Gravity is at 1.010 (went faster than I expected) so I’m racking it today.
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