nvp1971

Recipes 

I saw another recent thread on this forum about an agave wine not behaving. The conditions described in that thread were unlike mine enough that I decided to start a new thread. Hopefully this new thread does not cause undue noise here.

I started an agave wine on 2012-02-04. The recipe I followed (for 1 gal glass carboy) was pretty similar to mead recipes that I had successfully executed in the past:
- 2 lbs raw "organic" agave nectar from Whole Foods.
- started with 1/2 gal spring water.
- 1 lime sliced.
- 1 small box brown raisins.
- Fermax yeast nutrient (1tsp per instructions).
- Lalvin K1-V1116 wine yeast, 1 packet.

I brought 1/2 gal spring water up to 140 degrees F.

From the 1/2 spring water at 140 degrees F, I took 1/2 cup and set aside into a bowl.

I added 1 tsp Fermax yeast nutrient (per instructions) to the water and stirred it in.

When water reached 110 degrees F, I added one packet of yeast, gave a gentle stir and let it sit for 15 minutes. Yeast was doing its thing, no concerns here.

OG at this point was 1.080.

Once the must cooled to approximately 100 degrees F, I added it to a 1-gal carboy until it was 1/2+ full.

I added the packet of brown raisins and one sliced lime.

I added more spring water and left enough room to add the yeast mixture.

I added the yeast and left a few inches of headroom.

I added my airlock and gave carboy a little jostle to make sure that yeast mixed in without being too violet of a jostle.

For the next 2-3 weeks, starting about 12 hours after adding everything to the carboy, the ferment was VIOLENT! Nice! Lots of activity on the air lock and clearly I was seeing a lot of bubbles in the ferment, both at the head and throughout the mix. Air lock easily bubbled every 2-5 seconds for 2 weeks and every 5-10 seconds for the third week. At the fourth week it was maybe once every 60-90 seconds and mix was noticeably less agitated.

Note that mix temperature remained somewhere between 65-70 degrees and carboy as butted (almost against, but close to) an iron steam radiator in my house.

At week 4, I racked the agave wine and was TOTALLY surprised with the results. After all the ferment, SG had barely changed, in fact it had increased to almost 1.1000! What?! Same results after 3 more tests!

I took a taste of agave wine and it tasted fine, nothing like wine, not rotten, but definitely very sweet with a hint of lime.

I activated a new packet of yeast and added that to my secondary as well as 1tsp of tannins (elderberries). 12 hours later, this morning, I had zero activity.

I decided that given the sweetness of the wine and lack of alcohol content, maybe the issue was with acidity, so I added 1.5tsp of acid blend, and aerated the wine.

6 hours later I am not seeing that much more activity in the wine or in the air lock.

What else might you recommend to get me back on track?

Dicky

Recipes 

Have you tried adding a yeast energiser?

Something isn't right here. If you had fermentation there would be alcohol and the SG would have dropped, not increased.

Dicky

Honda88

Recipes 

when you racked it and got 1.100 was it still throwing off carbon dioxide?? if it was sometimes you can get a false reading

056r

Recipes 

Did you take an OG reading? either im blind or there isnt one in you original post. There is no way to tell what kind of progress was made without an OG.

Insomniac

Recipes 

The only other things to concider are the temp the different readings were taken at, and if the must was fully mixed when the first reading was taken.

nvp1971

Recipes 

Entirely possible. Although airlock was dormant, probably 1 every couple of minutes at this point, looked like there was a lot of fizz during racking, so yes, likely a lot of gas. I was hoping to get a variance of readings if this was the case, but surprisingly all 4 were the same: 1.1000.

nvp1971

Recipes 

I'm going to pop the cap and take another SG reading today to see where I am. Then I'm going to buy and add the yeast energizer as necessary.

nvp1971

Recipes 

The must was definitely fully mixed when the first reading was taken.

Temperature was definitely a variance, however. First reading was around 100 degrees F. Second was closer to 70 degrees F.

nvp1971

Recipes 

1.080. Original posting modified to reflect this.

That's why I was very surprised when my SG turned out to be 1.1!

Insomniac

Recipes 

Well the temp difference would up that to 1.085, but that still doesn't explain it...