Freezing query

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RickCov

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Hi guys, I'm new to home brewing and have a small question. I recently racked my wine and froze it over night to kill the yeast. But now that it's thawed, not just the yeast has settled at the bottom but so has all the fruit debris. Should I rack again leaving the debris and yeast or just shake it up? I'm concerned that if I rack it again leaving the debris the quantity will be much less. Any ideas.

Thanks in advance.
 
I don't know much about wine, but freezing yeast doesn't necessarily kill yeast. It will kill some but most will survive and if you stir it up, they will get transferred and reactivate if warmed up.

Of course this may be different for wine yeast vs beer yeast. Isn't there something you add to wine to stop fermentation, like potasium sorbate?
 
Hi guys, I'm new to home brewing and have a small question. I recently racked my wine and froze it over night to kill the yeast. But now that it's thawed, not just the yeast has settled at the bottom but so has all the fruit debris. Should I rack again leaving the debris and yeast or just shake it up? I'm concerned that if I rack it again leaving the debris the quantity will be much less. Any ideas.

Thanks in advance.

I'm assuming that because your desire was to kill the yeast, you were ready to rack off the lees. You essentially did a super cold-crash which will take most of the particles in suspension and drop them to the bottom. The trub at the bottom should be a combination of yeast, fruit, random other things.

Why shake it up and undo everything that you just accomplished?

To your point about the quantity... It is the way with homebrewing/winemaking. You will always have less product than your batch size because of the trub you describe. There's no avoiding it. You could shake everything up, but then you'll have all that crap in your wine. I'd rather have less good wine than more wine with crap in it.

And, stevo is right. Freezing won't kill many of the yeast cells. k-sorbate will stop yeast from reproducing. That coupled with a careful rack of the wine off of the lees post-fermentation will ensure fermentation doesn't re-start.
 
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