Stuck fermentation

I Made a wine based off a recipe that a coworker gave me. The recipe is 2 cans of hawaii's own guava strawberry concentrate, and 1lb sugar per gallon of water. I made a 6 gallon batch. It's been about 4 weeks and the gravity is still around 1.050. I don't have an OG because at first I was told 1 cup of sugar per gallon. I added the remaining sugar dissolved in some water the 3rd day. I'm using Lavlin 1118 yeast and gently stirring with a sanitized spoon every other day to keep the yeast off the top and into the must. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get the gravity on this wine down? I have thought about adding yeast nutrient but I'm not sure what affect that would have. Info for the concentrate can be found at www.hawaiisown.com/products/guava-strawberry. I appreciate any help.
Matt

Warm it up, agitate, add nutrients, and add more yeast. That usually fixes my stuck fermentations

doesn't seem to contain sorbate (preservative - this is added to prevent natural yeasts from spoiling the juice - also bad for wine yeasts, but maybe they didn't mention it??).

If there is some kind of preservative then the only way around this is to add buckets of yeast. Make a good sized starter with sugar water or something and pitch this into the juice with yeast nutrient. If this doesn't get it going then you're screwed. Shaking/agitation may help because yeast initially require oxygen to proliferate to get to large enough number to start fermentation

sounds like good juice.

Thanks for the replies. I will try to make it over to the LHBS for some nutrient in the next few days, keep agitating, and add some more yeast.

As long as it does not have any sorbate preservitives it, I would pitch some EC-1118 yeast in there it will get things started.

love that ec-1118. it's like the slutty whore of the yeasts. it doesn't care what you do to it, it will always get the job done

Hi,

Just wondering if your fermentation took off?

what temp is your must? get it up around seventy or a little better and whip the daylites out of it to git some O2 into it. then make a yeast starter,
hydrate your yeast thenwhen it starts to foam up good add a 1/4 cup of your must, wait a half hr and add some more must, and repeat doing this 5 or 6 times till you have half a quart of starter going good then pitch to your must. stir good 2 or three times a day.

jim

I added some yeast nutrient and another packet of yeast and it seems to be fermenting down now. I try to stir it up at least once a day. I have noticed a foam at the top that looks like starsan, has anyone else had this show up in a batch before? I can take some pictures when I get home if needed. I don't think anything is wrong with it bc the samples from hyd readings taste fine and I don't see any evidence of bacteria forming.

Here is a picture. I don't think it's bad, just curious if it's normal.

Looks pretty normal to me. I noticed that your original juice used HFCS, I've never used anything that contained it before so I'm not really sure how it behaves.